Zeitgeist Authors

Favorite stars25 top-favorited authors

50 top-rated authors

Authors with at least 20 ratings and 10 raters (average/ratings/raters).
Trish New (4.88/41/32), Ludwig van Beethoven (4.8/44/21), Vardis Fisher (4.79/26/10), Brian Selznick (4.78/30/30), Walt Kelly (4.75/195/39), Janet Arnold (4.75/89/43), Toni Weschler (4.73/32/32), Masaaki Hatsumi (4.73/28/12), Margaret Edson (4.7/27/26), Quino (4.7/43/23), Walter Bauer (4.69/24/23), Taro Gomi (4.65/23/21), Alexander Schmemann (4.65/30/22), Harpo Marx (4.65/20/20), Immaculee Ilibagiza (4.65/24/24), Elizabeth Shown Mills (4.64/38/31), Luis Royo (4.63/44/14), Frank H. Netter (4.63/20/12), Bill Watterson (4.62/2134/653), Harold Abelson (4.62/58/52), Aryeh Kaplan (4.62/21/13), David Allen Sibley (4.62/116/72), Scott Rice (4.6/24/11), Mark Steyn (4.6/30/26), Akira Kurosawa (4.6/21/16), Thomas A. Limoncelli (4.6/21/18), Michael Light (4.59/32/29), N. A. M. Rodger (4.59/33/26), Patrick Johnstone (4.58/30/27), Heinrich Heine (4.58/43/26), Harold McGee (4.58/78/69), Stanley Kunitz (4.58/20/15), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (4.57/47/15), Robert Bringhurst (4.57/79/75), Alison Croggon (4.56/63/33), Jorge Cham (4.56/24/16), George Herriman (4.55/120/33), Laurence Rees (4.55/21/20), Peter Menzel (4.55/44/40), Yoshitaka Amano (4.55/22/20), Martin Luther King (4.55/22/21), Eiichiro Oda (4.54/71/11), Naoki Urasawa (4.54/49/15), Edward Whittemore (4.54/26/14), Douglas J. Moo (4.53/31/26), Kate Walker (4.53/32/10), Jim Borgman (4.53/32/14), Stephen Cosgrove (4.53/173/36), Jane Hirshfield (4.53/20/11), John Aubrey (4.52/21/13) — show more

50 lowest-rated authors

Erich von Daniken (1.96/50/37), Kathy Lette (2.28/41/24), Mel Gilden (2.3/35/23), Sharon Green (2.33/87/33), Herbert Spencer Zim (2.5/22/14), Rose Estes (2.53/36/14), Emma Tennant (2.55/32/30), R.A. Montgomery (2.59/22/14), Frédéric Beigbeder (2.6/55/29), Kaavya Viswanathan (2.6/24/24), Edward Packard (2.61/23/13), Harold Robbins (2.64/43/24), Bonnie Bryant (2.68/28/13), Bill Gates (2.68/46/44), Stewart Home (2.69/24/18), Rob Macgregor (2.69/24/15), John Norman (2.69/77/30), Jan Wolkers (2.7/25/11), Laura Lee Hope (2.7/152/23), Brad Strickland (2.72/29/13), Candace Bushnell (2.72/247/177), Catherine Millet (2.73/43/43), Jean Rabe (2.75/50/30), Simon (2.75/30/28), Mark Winegardner (2.75/22/22), Andrew J. Offutt (2.76/21/15), Rexanne Becnel (2.77/32/15), Isobel Bird (2.77/39/12), Guy N. Smith (2.77/39/14), Arnon Grunberg (2.78/29/23), Kitty Kelley (2.78/45/37), Karen Wallace (2.78/25/15), Anton Szandor Lavey (2.78/58/44), William A. Katz (2.79/24/18), John Whitman (2.79/29/12), Gary Troup (2.8/32/32), Ronald Kessler (2.8/23/22), Nigel Robinson (2.81/24/12), Rosemary Rogers (2.83/62/21), G. P. Taylor (2.83/39/30), Tina Daniell (2.83/24/16), Hikaru Hayashi (2.83/21/12), Glen A. Larson (2.85/23/14), Ian Sansom (2.85/30/28), Hitomi Kanehara (2.85/20/19), Tamara Thorne (2.85/34/11), Joseph Smith (2.86/35/29), Barbara Cartland (2.86/54/16), Immanuel Velikovsky (2.86/29/19), Chetan Bhagat (2.86/44/37) — show more

50 authors people can't agree on

Must have 50 raters. The numbers are the standard deviation of rating—how much they differ from the average.

50 uncontroversial authors

The least divergent star ratings. Must have 50 raters.

Authors who LibraryThing (complete list)

Diana Gabaldon (diana.gabaldon), David Mitchell (davidmitchell), Naomi Novik (naominovik), Katie MacAlister (katiemacalister), Lisa See (lisasee), John Green (sparksflyup), Jean Marzollo (JeanMarzollo), Sharon Kay Penman (Sharonkay), Jo Beverley (creed), Susan Wittig Albert (susanalbert), Matthew Pearl (matthewpearl), Adriana Trigiani (bigcherryholler), Sharon Lee (rolanni), Brandon Sanderson (BrandonSanderson), Alan Furst (afurst), Randy Alcorn (RandyAlcorn), Janny Wurts (JannyWurts), Susan Wiggs (susanmwiggs), Melissa Marr (MelissaMarr), Elizabeth Bear (matociquala), Chitra Divakaruni (chitradivakaruni), David Liss (davidliss), Joe Hill (joehill), Sabrina Jeffries (SabrinaJeffries), Sara Donati (rosinalippi) — see the full list.

top 75 authors (author cloud)

By number of copies
J. K. Rowling (87,384), Stephen King (68,716), Terry Pratchett (67,644), Neil Gaiman (56,456), J. R. R. Tolkien (50,700), C. S. Lewis (49,535), William Shakespeare (36,663), Anne McCaffrey (28,256), Orson Scott Card (27,691), Agatha Christie (25,244), Charles Dickens (24,833), Anne Rice (24,161), Robert A. Heinlein (23,837), Dan Brown (23,656), Kurt Vonnegut (23,005), Mercedes Lackey (22,792), George Orwell (22,238), John Grisham (20,808), Nora Roberts (19,449), Robert Jordan (18,845), John Steinbeck (18,460), Laurell K. Hamilton (18,130), Neal Stephenson (17,841), Lemony Snicket (17,367), David Eddings (17,166), Michael Crichton (17,058), Ray Bradbury (16,502), Ernest Hemingway (16,408), Roald Dahl (16,012), Frank Herbert (15,752), Philip Pullman (15,699), Janet Evanovich (15,574), Philip K. Dick (15,548), J. D. Salinger (15,422), Mark Twain (14,974), Bill Bryson (14,794), James Patterson (14,724), William Gibson (14,664), Lucy Maud Montgomery (14,563), Dean Koontz (14,386), Madeleine L'Engle (14,366), Haruki Murakami (14,018), John Irving (13,949), Tom Clancy (13,890), Umberto Eco (13,771), Gabriel García Márquez (13,746), Marion Zimmer Bradley (13,656), Virginia Woolf (13,480), Chuck Palahniuk (13,264), F. Scott Fitzgerald (13,185), Tamora Pierce (13,046), David Sedaris (12,849), James Joyce (12,521), Arthur C. Clarke (12,210), Various (12,006), Larry Niven (11,783), William Faulkner (11,642), Albert Camus (11,468), Nick Hornby (11,346), Vladimir Nabokov (11,111), Bill Watterson (10,999), George R. R. Martin (10,962), Aldous Huxley (10,945), Alan Moore (10,586), Homer (10,413), Patricia Cornwell (10,314), Ayn Rand (10,029), C. J. Cherryh (9,849), Franz Kafka (9,849), Patrick O'Brian (9,812), Ursula K. Le Guin (9,781), Diana Wynne Jones (9,734), Jack Kerouac (9,724), Margaret Weis (9,548), Jasper Fforde (9,543) — show more

50 "completist" authors

Average number of books in a collection, if there's one.
Kenneth Robeson (22.85), Elinor M. Brent-Dyer (15.79), Clamp (12.73), Nick Carter (12.59), Maxwell Grant (12.25), Don Pendleton (11.64), Francine Pascal (11.52), Dana Fuller Ross (11.46), Yoko Kamio (11.08), Nobuhiro Watsuki (10.65), Mercedes Lackey (10.37), Ann M. Martin (10.18), Terry Pratchett (10.06), Rex Stout (10.06), Nora Roberts (10.05), Yumi Tamura (9.91), Louis L'Amour (9.78), Radclyffe (9.7), Georgette Heyer (9.52), Takeshi Konomi (9.27), Saki Hiwatari (9.22), Terrance Dicks (9.21), Anne McCaffrey (9.15), Rumiko Takahashi (9.02), Fuyumi Soryo (8.98), Warren Murphy (8.96), Diana Palmer (8.7), Masami Tsuda (8.65), Tamora Pierce (8.61), Christine Feehan (8.55), Karin Kallmaker (8.45), Cate Tiernan (8.42), Naoko Takeuchi (8.38), Harold Foster (8.33), J. D. Robb (8.31), Kathryn Kenny (8.28), D. E. Stevenson (8.24), Kazuo Koike (8.22), Ordnance Survey (8.22), David Eddings (8.15), Laurell K. Hamilton (8.06), Tohru Fujisawa (8), Judal (7.96), Alexander Kent (7.89), Franklin W. Dixon (7.88), Kaori Yuki (7.85), L.J. Smith (7.85), Natsuki Takaya (7.84), Lois Gladys Leppard (7.83), David Weber (7.8) — show more

Random authors

Recent added (show more)

Notes: See standard deviation for more on this concept. Basically, if everyone basically agrees that an author's books are good or bad, the standard deviation is low. If opinions differ a lot, the standard deviation of ratings is high. All statistics are updated daily, if possible, or more frequently.

 

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