The average age of those posting was 37. The survey was drawn from Facebook users around the world: 63.7 per cent were in the US, followed by 9.3 per cent in India, and 6.3 per cent in the UK. Women outnumbered men by three to one.

1 Harry Potter series, JK Rowling (named in 21.08 per cent of lists)

2 To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (14.48%)

3 The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien (13.86%)

4 The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien (7.48%)

5 Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (7.28%)

6 The Holy Bible (named in 7.21% of lists)

7 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (5.97%)

8 The Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins (5.82%)

9 The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger (5.7%)

10 The Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis (5.63%)

11 The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald (5.61%)

12 1984, George Orwell (5.37%)

13 Little Women, Louisa May Alcott (5.26%)

14 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (5.23%)

15 The Stand, Stephen King (5.11%)

16 Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell (4.95%)

17 A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle (4.38%)

18 The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (4.27%)

19 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis (4.05%)

20 The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho (4.01%)

21 Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery (3.95%)

22 The Giver, Lois Lowry (3.88%)

23 The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (3.67%)

24 Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card (3.53%)

25 The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (3.39%)

26 Lord of the Flies, William Golding (3.38%)

27 The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan (3.38%)

28 The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (3.32%)

29 Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë (3.26%)

30 Hamlet, William Shakespeare (3.22%)

31 The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery (3.21%)

32 Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (3.15%)

33 Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (3.15%)

34 Animal Farm, George Orwell (3.12%)

35 The Book of Mormon (3.08%)

36 The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank (3.05%)

37 Dune, Frank Herbert (3.02%)

38 One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2.98%)

39 The Autobiography of Malcolm X (2.83%)

40 Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck (2.78%)

41 The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein (2.72%)

42 The Fault in Our Stars, John Green (2.68%)

43 On the Road, Jack Kerouac (2.68%)

44 Lamb, Christopher Moore (2.58%)

45 Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut (2.54%)

46 A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (2.53%)

47 Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (2.52%)

48 The Help, Kathryn Stockett (2.45%)

49 The Outsiders, SE Hinton (2.44%)

50 American Gods, Neil Gaiman (2.42%)

51 Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls (2.41%)

52 Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein (2.39%)

53 The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett (2.38%)

54 Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder (2.35%)

55 The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas (2.31%)

56 Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett (2.31%)

57 The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2.29%)

58 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (2.24%)

59 A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens (2.21%)

60 Les Miserables, Victor Hugo (2.21%)

61 Great Expectations, Charles Dickens (2.16%)

62 Night, Elie Wiesel (2.12%)

63 The Dark Tower Series, Stephen King (2.12%)

64 Outlander, Diana Gabaldon (2.07%)

65 The Color Purple, Alice Walker (1.92%)

66 A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini (1.89%)

67 The Art of War, Sun Tzu (1.88%)

68 Catch 22, Joseph Heller (1.85)

69 The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (1.85%)

70 The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky (1.83%)

71 The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway (1.78%)

72 Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden (1.76%)

73 Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom (1.75%)

74 The Road, Cormac McCarthy (1.73%)

75 Watership Down, Richard Adams (1.72%)

76 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith (1.72%)

77 Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein (1.68%)

78 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson (1.65%)

79 A Song of Ice and Fire, George RR Martin (1.65%)

80 Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Judy Blume (1.65%)

81 Charlotte’s Web, EB White (1.64%)

82 The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger (1.63%)

83 Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (1.62%)

84 Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1.62%)

85 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (1.61%)

86 The Shack, William P Young (1.58%)

87 Watchmen, Alan Moore (1.56%)

88 Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice (1.55%)

89 The Odyssey, Homer (1.54%)

90 The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende (1.54%)

91 The Stranger, Albert Camus (1.53%)

92 Call of the Wild, Jack London (1.52%)

93 The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom (1.51%)

94 Siddhartha, Herman Hesse (1.51%)

95 East of Eden, John Steinbeck (1.50%)

96 Matilda, Roald Dahl (1.50%)

97 The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (1.49%)

98 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig (1.47%)

99 Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Gárcia Márquez (1.45%)

100 Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak (1.45%)