Issues@Hand

AFA initiatives, Christian activism, news briefs

November 2014 – The Bible ranks in the top ten most influential books named by respondents in two polls, one based on 130,000 Facebook status updates and one from Harris Interactive. In results from the Facebook poll, the Bible was listed as number 6 out of 20 books. The Harry Potter series was number 1, The Lord of the Rings trilogy number 3 and The Chronicles of Narnia series number 10. In the Harris list of 10 books, the Bible was number 1, followed by the Harry Potter series at number 3 and The Lord of the Rings at number 4. Other books featured on both lists were TheGreat Gatsby,To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, Little Women and Gone with the Wind.

An infograph published by Short List compares the amount of time required to read popular books based on an estimated reading speed of 300 words per minute. In this calculation, The Lord of the Rings trilogy would take 26.28 hours to read, the Bible 43.79 hours, and the Harry Potter series 60.23 hours.

christianitytoday.com, 9/15/14; shortlist.com, 9/15/14