Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings beat Bible in Facebook's 'top 10 books that stayed with you' study

If you've been checking into your Facebook lately there's a good chance you've seen or been tagged into a post by a friend sharing their top 10 books that have stayed with them in some way. 

According to the Facebook meme, the books don't need to be great works of literature, just ones that have affected you in some way. 

Researchers Lada Adamic and Pinkesh Patel have analysed some of the data from over 130,000 anonymised status updates and compiled a list of the top 100 books cited by users. 

It may be seven years since the last instalment of JK Rowling's magical Harry Potter series hit bookstore shelves, but the results of the study reveal it to be as popular as ever, topping the Facebook list. 

Fantasies and tales of other realms clearly resonate with Facebook users as JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit follow in third and fourth place respectively, and further down the list is Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games Trilogy and CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia.  

And the study is further evidence that some books really are timeless classics, with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mocking Bird in second place, and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice predictably making it onto the list, ranking fifth.  Further down the list are Louisa May Alcott's Little Women in 13th place, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte in 14th and Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell in 16th. 

The Bible is just edged out of the top 5, coming in sixth place.  

The study was based on posts from the last two weeks of August even though the meme has been going for over a year.  

The researchers also found that most of the meme posts were by US users (63.4%), followed by India 9.3% and the UK (6.3%), and that women outnumbered men 3.1:1. 

Not surprisingly, the full list of 100 most memorable books includes many children's books.  

"Although these may not normally be considered great works of literature, they tend to stay with us through the decades," the researchers note.  

To see the full list, click here 

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