Exclusive: The Most Popular Books Among College-Aged Students

Harry Potter’s popularity plummeted among college-aged readers this year, but the boy wizard still rules as the favorite book of this coveted demographic.

Anderson Analytics shared the literary results of their annual open-ended “U.S. College Student Report” with GalleyCat, reporting that J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is still the most popular book overall, followed closely by Stephenie Meyer’s vampire series, Twilight. Last year, Harry Potter ruled the popularity index with 20 percent of the vote, but this year, the fantasy series could only muster the support of 4.5 percent of respondents.

The results were also analyzed by gender. Among male readers, the most popular books were the Harry Potter series, followed by Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner. Among female readers, the Twilight series was most popular, followed by the Harry Potter series.

According to Tom Anderson, managing partner at Anderson Analytics, the research firm asked “unaided, fill-in-the-blanks” questions of college students around the country. This year, one thousand students were consulted.

While Anderson thought the movie probably generated plenty of literary enthusiasm for Twilight, he predicted that the film would also spur a much larger kind of purchase. “Girls from 16-to-21-years-old are going to be seeing this movie in droves, and the one product that was featured in the movie over and over was a small sporty Volvo,” he concluded.

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