Fiction

Who Rates 50 SHADES Higher: Obama or Romney Supporters?

Amanda Nelson

Staff Writer

Amanda Nelson is an Executive Director of Book Riot. She lives in Richmond, VA.

We’d love to know, but Goodreads didn’t ask.

The social reading site recently polled their members to see whether they would be voting for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. They then took lame partisan cliches about those polled and turned them into an infographic. OK, not really. They actually compared the bookshelves of those polled to find the differences and similarities. They then turned the information into an infographic that reads like…lame partisan cliches:

While I think the concept is fascinating, do we really need a charty-thing to tell us that Romney supporters are more likely to read an ultra-conservative novelist, or that they’re more likely to read a book about heaven? Or that Obama supporters are more likely to read a book about a liberal journalist living in experimental poverty, or a novel by a Brooklyn-based pet of the New York Times?

I’d be more interested in the differences or similarities that aren’t totally, completely obvious. For example, does one political party or the other read more romances? What about The Hunger Games? What side rated Fifty Shades higher?

What do you make of the infographic? Does anything surprise you? What stats do you wish Goodreads had included?