Is anyone else ashamed to have Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as the most read book on visual bookshelf? I get that some people find this kind of pap fantasy useful as a way to mindlessly de-stress, but the most read book?

Take a look at the world we live in: What's most popular is rarely, if ever, what's best. There's no direct correlation between a work of literature being palatable to a large number of people and the quality of said work. Personally, I quite like the Harry Potter series, but I also realize that it's nothing that's dramatically shaped the course of human consciousness and dialogues of higher philosophy. Very few people desire to be constantly immersed in intense, existentially-challenging states of mind—humans simply lack the energy to endure that experience for protracted periods of time. Sometimes, it's okay to use literature as a means of unwinding. "Ashamed" is far too strong a word.

i read for pleasure. whats there to be ashamed of?

Well sure, but don’t you agree that there are a huge range of books in-between intense, existentially-challenging masterpieces like Malone Dies and Harry Potter?

Fair enough.

I have mixed feelings about it. One of my main interests with Visual Bookshelf is to build something with 'mass appeal' to get folks who don't read or haven't read in a long time to start reading again. The best way to avoid this is to keep it fun/casual and less 'bibliographic' on its face.

I plan to solve the issue by introducing 'category' filters on the leaderboard eventually. Harry will still rule the overall leaderboard, but if you click down into 'classics', etc. the list will be a bit different.

i'm not ashamed or suprised at all. only certain groups of people read most books but harry potter spans every age and many many cultures. it doesn't make it the best book ever written, but it's not like harry potter is trash either.

I think we should be proud, not ashamed. This is a fantastic piece of literature and I think most people just sort of shrug it off because it was intended for children from the start. We would do well not to dismiss something because of its intended audience. After all, children's literature is still literature!!

It is true that we should be proud that this series of books is amazing, but not only for the reason that it may have inspired millions of readers to try newbooks but that this is one more reason that other countries around the world can prove they are better than the U.S.A. Our country says that we are best and why? Because we have a strong economy? Because of our cultural mixture? No, we are supposedly greatest because of our power, Foriegn literature is a way to show America that we need to become more cultured and less obssessed with celebrities and we should try to expand our literature. And as someone on this post said "Harry Potter wont influence philosophical talk" that is true, most of the books that do this are foreign, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, and even great works of the political genre like The Republic are all foreign. This literature issue is a slap in the face to the U.S.A. so we might be seeing some more culture soon.

It's a media-hyped serial, and the public loves serials. At least they're addicted to a written one as well as all those rotten ones on television.