The Top 150 Books of the Past 15 Years

USA Today has been publishing its best-selling books list since 1993 and, in order to celebrate this, the paper recently posted the top-selling titles of the past fifteen years. You can view the complete list here, but there are some interesting things to note from the list...

- Books from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series occupies seven of the top nine spots. This is amazing when you think of the thousands of books that get published each year.

- Author John Grisham has fourteen titles on the list.

- There are at least seven books that are written from a Christian vantage point:

1. The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
2. Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen
3. The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson
4. The Shack by William Young
5. Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins
6. 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper
7. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

- There are a number of classic works (e.g. To Kill a Mockingbird, The Cather in the Rye, 1984) that still have substantial sales.

- Hollywood likes to make movies from best-selling books.

- Several books are on this list (e.g. The Da Vinci Code, The Secret, Embraced by the Light) that deal with spiritual issues and are at odds with a Christian worldview.

I would estimate that I've read approximately 20-25% of the books on this list and looking through it reminds of some that I've been meaning to read that I haven't gotten to yet. I don't know what to conclude from looking at which books are popular, but I do know that J.K. Rowling has to be a very, very wealthy woman.