Elfkin’s pick of Diary of Anne Frank is probably a major contender. Around here, every adult I know had read this book as a school assignment. (Yep. One day I got together with every single person I’ve ever known and asked them if they had ever read this book. 100% affirmative. ) <— hyperbole
All I’m saying is, go to the library and look up the plays. You’ll find them in the 800’s, not alphabetically by author in the fiction section. Arguably that’s a grey area, since plays and poetry both go under the 800’s, which is general literature (you’ll find biographies of writers, criticism, and humor writing there too), so I’m sorry I muddied the waters with those two. But still, fiction is prose stories. And lots of stuff that isn’t factual is non-fiction.
[QUOTE=chatelaine]
I was going to nominate Cosmos.
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Dam decent of you…and insightful. 
I think elfkin may have a winner with The Diary of Anne Frank.
OTOH, I haven’t read any of the other titles she nominated. 
I have. Good readin’, that.
Nitpick: If you are talking about Richard Wright’s Native Son, that’s fiction. I think you meant to say Black Boy, though. 
Same could be said for any biography (certainly all autobiographies) and any history book. Many science books would qualify as well.
Around the same time I read The Diary of Anne Frank I remember reading Elie Wezel’s Night. It was later assigned reading in one of my High School lit classes. This is also a book I find most people I mention it to, have read.
We’d agreed to leave the facticity of the Bible out of this discussion. Feel free to take it up in Great Debates. Thanks.
I see what you’re saying, but it seems to me that all science books are fiction since they’re all theory and theories are subject to change at any given time.
[sup]I have a feeling you’re going to rip me up on this one, too.[/sup]
I nominate Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. I’ve heard it mentioned more than a few times here on the boards and just about everyone I know has read it. Usually more than once.
Of the books mentioned so far, I have read The Demon-Haunted World, A Brief History Of Time, Fast Food Nation, Green Eggs and Ham, Walden, and Gould’s Ever Since Darwin (among others by the same author). You can add me to the tally for each of these volumes.
Of those listed above, I can’t recommend The Demon-Haunted World strongly enough. It should be required reading, for everyone. More people reading that volume might not necessarily halt our society’s slide into neo-medievalism, but it couldn’t hurt.
I hesitate to admit that I’ve read almost nothing mentioned in this thread (leaving aside the ridiculous notion that poetry, drama, and Green Eggs and Ham count as non-fiction). I have read most of Steven Jay Gould’s books and Hofstadter’s Godel Escher Bach. How about the Tao Te Ching? That’s a lot easier to get through than the whole Bible.
We hadn’t read the whole discussion - time constraints and all. Sorry.
Let me try this again. “Fiction” means a prose story–a novel or short story. “Non-fiction” just means that it isn’t a novel or short story, not that it’s absolutely factually true. Thus, Greek myths, astrology, any scientific theory no matter how crack-brained or accurate, Dianetics, urban legends, and all sorts of other things are classed as non-fiction (urban legends go in the 390s). Go to a library and look through the non-fiction stacks, and see what you find.
The term “non-fiction” is not a synonym for “proven fact.”
trust her on this, as I recall, she’s a trained librarian.
Though given that she has the right definition, the discussion may want to change to “what book regarding science/social sciences or current events has been read by the most Dopers.”
I wonder if most of the women here have read Our Bodies, Ourselves?
Considering the large number of dopers from the Chicago area and that it was a recent best seller, how about Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.
Inteesting. Then perhaps we should narrow the OP down some. Because if we’re not going to include religious works (which is fine by me), then we probably shouldn’t include philosophy, collections of essays, or any of the poems and plays already discussed.
How can we word it so that the responses are geared to factual (reasonably so, anyways) popular literature?
**The Elegant Universe ** by Brian Greene gets a lot of recommendations whenever a theoretical physics thread is started. About 1/3 through, but I’ll finish it this summer, I promise!
No votes for The Joy of Sex? Oh well, this is a smart crowd and you folks probably already knew that stuff already…