Book vs film results

So a week ago I set up a couple of polls on www.listchallenges.com, to find out the relative popularity of books against their film adaptations. Here are the results, from a sample size of 225 on the book survey and 181 on the film survey (click for a larger, legible version. Books are in blue, films in red):

The most read books were:

1) Harry Potter series: 82%

2) Hunger Games series: 66%

3) Alice in Wonderland: 64%

4) The Diary of Anne Frank: 63%

5) The Hobbit: 61%

=6) The Chronicles of Narnia: 57%

=6) A Christmas Carol: 57%

=6) Mockingjay: 57%

=6) Pride and Prejudice: 57%

10) The Twilight series: 56%

and the most watched films:  

1) Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: 92%

2) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: 81%

3) Alice in Wonderland (2010): 78%

4) The Lord of the Rings trilogy: 77%

5) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996): 70%

=6) The Hunger Games: 69%

=6) Mean Girls: 69%

=6) Jaws: 69%

=9) The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: 63%

=9) Twilight (2008): 63%

The lead read books were:

1) Barry Lyndon: 1%

=2) Queen Bees and Wannabes: 2%

=2) Ross Poldark: 2%

=2) Martin Chuzzlewit: 2%

=2) Barnaby Rudge: 2%

=2) The First Men in the Moon: 2%

=2) Dombey and Son: 2%

=8) Bel-Ami: 3%

=8) Father Brown: 3%

=10) The Prestige: 4%

=10) Starter for Ten: 4%

=10) Little Dorrit: 4%

=10) The Mystery of Edwin Drood: 4%

=10) Rumpole of the Bailey: 4%

and the least watched films were:

=100) Dombey and Son (1919): 0%

=100) Hard Times (1994): 0%

=98) The First Men in the Moon (2010): 1%

=98) Barnaby Rudge: 1%

=98) The Woman in White (1998): 1%

=98) The Thirteenth Tale: 1%

=94) Martin Chuzzlewit (1994): 2%

=94) A Tale of Two Cities (1980): 2%

=92) The Old Curiosity Shop (2007): 3%

=92) The Crimson Petal and the White: 3%

=92) War and Peace (2007): 3%

The largest differences between reading and watching were:

- 67% more watched Mean Girls than read Queen Bees and Wannabes (maybe not surprising as it's a self-help book and a very funny film starring well-known actors)

- 54% more watched Jaws than read the novel

- 52% more watched Disney's animated The Hunchback of Notre Dame than read Hugo's novel (again, not very surprising, given that the film is an easy-access Disney production and the novel is a bit of a dense brick by most peoples' standards)

- 48% more read The Diary of Anne Frank than watched the film. I also discovered that The Diary of Anne Frank is on Goodreads' list of 'worst endings' - a bit of a controversial judgement, surely? It's not as though she ended it that way on purpose.

- 40% more have watched The Princess Bride and The Prestige than have read the novels. Personally I found The Princess Bride to be one of the few books I enjoyed much less than the film, due to the intrusive narrative voice and the fantastic film cast. Non-readers are really missing out on The Prestige, though - it adds a lot that isn't in the film.

I hope that if you're a bit of a statistics nerd, like me, you've found this fairly interesting. Take a look at the graphs for more details!