# What book is read the most? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 15, 2010, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148 "2010-04-15T01:35:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2010, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/61 "2010-04-28T18:08:01Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I agree with your logic for the most part. And yeah–because it’s so easily a nightly read, I’m thinking GNM is a likely winner. Not to mention, it can be read several times at one sitting, being as short as it is. And seeing how its target audience _loves_ hearing the same book over and over again. While it’s great bedtime reading, the Firebug has frequently asked for it at other times of day too. I’m not even going to try to estimate the number of times my wife or I have read it to him in the past year. Hundreds, certainly. (Though now that he’s closer to three than two, he’s starting to grow out of it, more’s the pity.) > [@](#): > > Incidentally, it freaks me out that “Love YOu Forever” is on that list. That’s a terribly freakish book; I’d love to see it re-illustrated by someone with a vaguely Lovecraftian sensibility to the art. I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one who thinks that. My wife and I thought parts of it were just plain creepy. > [@Reepicheep](#): > > My guess is _Green Eggs and Ham_ by Dr. Suess. I pick this over GNM, because not only has this been the book that I’ve read as bed time book more times than any other, this is also the book most adults I know say is their favorite Dr. Suess. They read it more than GNM to their kids. I have no way of proving this guess. It comes only from conversations at work, when we talk about kids. In terms of books that you read to your kids, GE&H is longish, and (like most Dr. Seuss books) a bit of energy is required to read it aloud. I’m not sure if the Firebug has ever said “Again!” after I’ve read GE&H (as he often does after I’ve read other books to him), but if he did, I’d tell him we need to read something else first, before re-reading GE&H. A Seuss book really has to be pretty short to read it multiple times at a sitting. _Hop on Pop_ or _Mr. Brown Can Moo_, sure, but not _The Cat in the Hat_ or GE&H. (I must confess that I don’t like GE&H nearly as much now as when I was young. While Dr. Seuss’ world obviously works differently from ours, usually you _wish_ our world could work more like his. But in the case of GE&H, I definitely prefer to live in a world where whether the grumpy guy tries green eggs and ham is somewhat less important than calamities involving ships, trains, and cars.) ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2010, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/62 "2010-04-28T18:28:24Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > do Jews read the Pentateuch all the way thru on a three year cycle the way Christians do the Gospel? Shouldn’t there be a ‘some’ before ‘Christians’? Episcopalians read through the Gospels on a cycle like that; Southern Baptists don’t. Lutherans do; Pentecostals don’t. > [@TheoS](#): > > I would not be surprised if the Bible was the answer. If the question included “of all time”, I wouldn’t doubt it for an instant. (lack of other things to do, see, experience etc.). I would be surprised if ‘of all time’ made much of a difference. Remember what the literacy rate was like between the time the Biblical canon was defined, and the time of the Protestant Reformation. And remember that, west of the Byzantine Empire, the Bible was read exclusively in Latin for almost all of that time, which most listeners wouldn’t have understood. I think the point in history where the Bible would have gotten the most reads would be in the era (varying from one part of the predominantly Christian parts of the world to another) where most people could read well enough to get by, and when the Bible was in practically everyone’s homes but few other books were. 19th-century America would be a good for-instance. But even then, it would be a fairly rare person who would have read the Bible in its entirety more times than brother **Shodan** has. I have to ascribe to our literate but book-deprived forebears the good sense to prefer reading the Gospel of Matthew or Paul’s letter to the Corinthians for the hundredth time, or even the less interesting parts of Isaiah or Jeremiah for the fiftieth time, to slogging through Leviticus for the tenth time. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2010, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/63 "2010-04-29T00:08:03Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Assume a billion and a half Christians world wide, of whom, say, 10% attend church often enough to have heard one or more Gospels read all the way thru at least once every .83 years. Let’s assume this goes on for thirty years each. > > The Gospels must therefore have been read thru thirty seven billion times in the last thirty years. > > _Good Night Moon_ was published in 1947, and has sold (thru 1990) 4 million copies. [Cite.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodnight_Moon) Assuming all 4 million copies were read 500 times, you still see that the Gospels have been read cover to cover almost twice as much in thirty years as GNM has in almost sixty. > > Regards, > Shodan Three problems with your math: 1. It conflates “read” and “read to.” If you count “read” as a separate category (which I think you should), then far fewer than those 10% will qualify. 2. I’m really not sure that the three-year rotation is common among 100% of churches; if it’s not, it throws your calculations way off. 3. The Wikipedia’s cite itself goes to a blank page, and searching the Writer’s Almanac for the statistic turns up a blank (in fact, their index has no listing for Margaret Wise Brown). The context of the stat, however, is annual sales; according to [this cite from 2007](http://www.playthings.com/article/CA6431998.html) (obtained from a previously-linked Wikipedia page), in 2007 sales equaled 16 million. If we accepted your stats with this one change, you’d see that GNM has been read cover to cover more than twice as much as the Gospels, in double the time. I still think the gospels might be in contention, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t think those calculations amount to much :). ---
**Author:** ![lee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lee/32/7455_2.png) [@lee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lee)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2010, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/64 "2010-04-29T05:36:24Z")
The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter is short enough to read in one session, and I did that just last night to my son. In a few years, I would not be surprised to see a Boyton book on that list. ---
**Author:** ![lee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lee/32/7455_2.png) [@lee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lee)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2010, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/65 "2010-04-29T05:40:49Z")
> [@ShibbOleth](#): > > My kids’ favorite Seuss book is _Fox in Socks_, but that’s just because they are evil. That book should be banned. I love reading that book out loud. It won my heart when my daughter brought it to my mother, and my mother started reading it out loud. I still hear her asides when I read it to my daughter (dear lord Lee Ann!), and picture the rolling eyes and glares at me. She had no idea what was in store when she started to read, but she read it all, no cheating. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/66 "2010-04-30T02:01:20Z")
> [@lee](#): > > The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter is short enough to read in one session, and I did that just last night to my son. In a few years, I would not be surprised to see a Boyton book on that list. Very true. It’s actually my wife who reads GNM every night; mine is The Going to Bed Book. I love Boynton. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/67 "2010-04-30T03:31:03Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Assume a billion and a half Christians world wide, of whom, say, 10% attend church often enough to have heard one or more Gospels read all the way thru at least once every .83 years. Let’s assume this goes on for thirty years each. > > The Gospels must therefore have been read thru thirty seven billion times in the last thirty years. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I just don’t think those calculations amount to much :). You question the _calculations?_ One population assumption _times_ one attendance estimation _times_ one Gospel-reading rate wild-ass guess _times_ one time assumption _equals_ one accurate statement of certainty! ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/68 "2010-04-30T11:09:35Z")
Total guess here but could it be one of the Sherlock Holmes books or maybe something by Dickens ? My other guess would be the prologue to the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer as it was part of the English Lit requirments when I was at school, and read and reread by a good many unwilling children. (Including a very reluctant L4L) ---
**Author:** ![kfraser34](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/57b2e6/32.png) [@kfraser34](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kfraser34)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/69 "2010-04-30T17:52:42Z")
If the question is what is the most read book cover to cover or what not in all of history… the bible is the winner hands down… Everyone here who talks about bible owners not making much use of it are taking into consideration current reading habits… the bible was a lot more important to generations previous to X… You know when there were no TVs and people did a lot more reading… After all the Bible was the first book printed… ---
**Author:** ![Billdo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/billdo/32/315_2.png) [@Billdo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billdo)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/70 "2010-04-30T18:43:09Z")
I would put in a bid for the Torah, the five books of Moses, first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Each year many Jewish congregations (pretty much all Orthodox and many of the other branches) read the entire Torah, in Hebrew, in weekly portions over the course of a year. Given the aggregate number of Jewish congregations which have for the past thousands of years have read the Torah through, I would say that would knock even Goodnight Moon off the top ranking. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/71 "2010-04-30T18:46:04Z")
I’ve read the Bible cover to cover. I don’t recommend it. ---
**Author:** ![tim-n-va](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim-n-va/32/3001_2.png) [@tim-n-va](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim-n-va)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/72 "2010-04-30T18:54:45Z")
> [@kfraser34](#): > > If the question is what is the most read book cover to cover or what not in all of history… the bible is the winner hands down… Everyone here who talks about bible owners not making much use of it are taking into consideration current reading habits… the bible was a lot more important to generations previous to X… You know when there were no TVs and people did a lot more reading… > > After all the Bible was the first book printed… Part of that depends on how you interpret the question. I had a Bible that had several “plans” for reading it in one year. One of those took it from cover to cover and one selected relevent passages for each date. If you interpret it as reading from cover to cover I’m really skeptical that many people have read the Bible that way. Excluding children’s books, what are the fiction candidates? ---
**Author:** ![palindromemordnilap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/db5fbb/32.png) [@palindromemordnilap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/palindromemordnilap)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/73 "2010-04-30T19:50:04Z")
I think the OP overestimates the number of people who read the same book every night. 10 million people have read it 500 times each? The book has only sold 18 million copies. Growing up I babysat at least once for about 20 different families, and none of them had a bedtime story ritual at all, let alone the same book night after night. None of my friends have such a ritual with their kids, nor have they mentioned it growing up. My few encounters with the bedtime story phenomenon have always involved a variety of books rather than one. I ride the train every day and can tell you there are plenty of people spending an hour or more, five days a week, re-reading the Bible. If you can accept that the Bible is a collection of books starting with the Book of Genesis, the number of people who have read that particular book (or Matthew) is much higher than the entire Bible. Given that the Bible has such a big headstart over modern children’s books, and that people who read it regularly do so their entire lives, I think it’s fair to say that one or more books of the Bible, if not the entire thing, has been read through more times than any one children’s book. ---
**Author:** ![ajdebosco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@ajdebosco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ajdebosco)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/74 "2010-04-30T20:17:40Z")
Children’s books are likely read more often cover to cover, and more repeatedly due to the bedtime ritual repetition that accompanies many parents (and big sis & bro) uncles, aunts, grandparents, habits. I was reading well before I turned five, so I found lots of thin, illustrated books I could devour at bedtime or before, often sticking to one until I found a new favorite. _Where the Wild Things Are_ mesmerized me so much that I had it memorized at almost the same time I could truly read. I still think I read to myself and my little siblings more than my folks did, and of all the Dr. Seuss works, I believe his first kids book: _And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street_ was by far his best. It is a cautionary tale for critters whose imaginations sometime get the better of their good senses, so it worked well for me. Other than childrens books, I would have to guess the most re read books are probably _The Catcher in the Rye_ since the older we get, the more it speaks to us about our youth. JRR Tolkien’s _Rings_ trilogy is very frequently a five or six timer for many who have manged to enjoy it after the second time through. Others I have re read include \*To Kill A Mockingbird, The Old Man and the Sea, In Cold Blood, \* as wel as assorted Shakespeare works. I have become partial to Martin Cruz Smith’s body of works, and have re read every one of his Arkady Renko novels beginning with _Gorky Park_. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/75 "2010-04-30T20:37:48Z")
> [@palindromemordnilap](#): > > I think the OP overestimates the number of people who read the same book every night. 10 million people have read it 500 times each? The book has only sold 18 million copies. You’re absolutely right; when I made that statement I had no idea that the sales of the book are as low as they are. I’d revise it downward to say, half a million people. But still, many people I know have this as a nightly read, and I had friends of my generation (babies in the late '70s) who had the same nightly ritual. I think plenty of folks have the nightly bedtime read-aloud ritual, although I have no idea how to estimate the numbers. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/76 "2010-04-30T21:57:59Z")
I just want to point out that the first book I “read” was Good Night Moon. I had it memorized. But I’m pretty sure I only read it maybe 100 times. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/77 "2010-04-30T22:26:54Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I just want to point out that the first book I “read” was Good Night Moon. I had it memorized. But I’m pretty sure I only read it maybe 100 times. This points to something I hadn’t really thought about: those books may be read repeatedly by more than one person. The parent reads them; then the kid reads them when the kid is old enough to do so. Then the next kid in line reads them. It wouldn’t surprise me if some copies of GNM have been read 2,000 times, over the course of (say) four kids. I very seriously doubt there’s any bible in existence that has been read cover-to-cover that many times. ---
**Author:** ![kfraser34](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/57b2e6/32.png) [@kfraser34](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kfraser34)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2010, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/78 "2010-05-01T00:52:54Z")
Didn’t have very much time to post the first time… will do a better job of defending the bible now… You have to put some historical context on this… The Bible has been in print since 1454… its got a pretty decent head start on pretty much everything… Granted, current reading habits don’t see the Bible read in its entirety all too often but that is not the way it has been for 500 of the 550 years that it has been in print… If I take my own family into consideration… I know for sure that 3 out of my 4 Grandparents read the bible, cover to cover, multiple times… I can vividly remember my mother’s mother’s bookmark making its way repeatedly through the entire book… That is how she read the bible from cover to cover and repeat… Those couples produced 4 offspring and of those only 1 has read the Bible… and of the next generation zero have read the bible cover to cover… I’m not arguing that people don’t read the bible anymore… but it was quite common even a few generations back… Now if you think about the people that lived in the world previous to the 20th century… You got Monks and Puritans and Calvinists and all kinds of other people who took the bible pretty seriously… Good Night Moon seems to be a book that has been mentioned a lot in this thread… It was published in 1947… the bible has a 500 year head start with lots of people previous to 1947 that were quite religious about how they read it… If there was a way to quantify it I would wager that the Bible was read more times cover to cover before Good Night Moon was published than Good Night Moon ever will be… I’ll even go further and say that the Bible has already taught many many many more people to read than Good Night Moon ever will… And I myself have read Good Night Moon multiple times and never once even attempted the bible cover to cover… but ya gotta put some historical perspective on it… If anything could challenge the Bible it would be another religious text like the Koran or Torah… As for a specific book of the bible that has been read the most… I would say the Book of Revelations… I think there are a lot of people who have read that book, but are not regular bible reader… ---
**Author:** ![BestWifeEver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/838e76/32.png) [@BestWifeEver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BestWifeEver)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2010, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/79 "2010-05-01T01:12:41Z")
My hubby’s guess is Cat in the Hat. I think the key to this thread is “read the most times”. I would think the Bible would be read by the most\* people\* but probably isn’t read the most times all the way through. (I know I haven’t. Couldn’t get through all that OT genealogy and laws :)) The book I have personally read through the most times cover to cover is _A Wrinkle in Time_ by Madeline L’Engle. I’ve read that at least once a year since I was eight and I’m past 30 now… ---
**Author:** ![kfraser34](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/57b2e6/32.png) [@kfraser34](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kfraser34)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2010, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148/80 "2010-05-01T01:30:07Z")
As for the Torah vs The Bible… I just don’t think that the global population of Orthodox Jews has ever rivaled the number of dejected that, each day, reach for the bible for salvation… You gotta remember, one thing the bible has going for it is a lot of desperate people who pick it up and somewhere in between “In the beginning…” and “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen” they are saved… 😕 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-book-is-read-the-most/536148.md?page=5)