The most popular book of all-time is not the Bible

Despite claims by Christians that the Bible is the greatest and most popular book of all all-time, readers at the extremely popular Goodreads website are of a different opinion.

According to Pricenomics, which sought answers to important questions like who is the Internet's favorite author as well as which book considered a "classic" is the most popular, Goodread's reviews paint a surprising picture.

Including the Bible sitting in second place.

"Rather than collect the rating for every single book, we chose to collect data on the ten most popular books by each of the 9,000 authors who appear on Goodreads’ Best Books Ever list – a list which is independent of user ratings and voted on by particularly active members," they said by way of explaining how they ranked the books. "We ended up with a dataset of over 23,000 notable books."

Perhaps not so surprising after all was the readers' first choice:

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes.

The massive 14-pound, 1456 page 4-volume collection has been a bestseller on Amazon.com since it was published after creator Bill Waterson pulled the plug in 1995 on the popular comic strip, featuring the adventures and observations of a boy named Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes.

According to the popularity ratings, the cartoon collection is followed by the ESV Study Bible and then Toda Mafalda, another collection of comic strips -- only in Spanish.

Other smaller collections of Calvin & Hobbes cartoons occupy spots eight and nine in the top 10 list.

As might be assumed, Watterson is also the most popular writer based on the numbers -- with the author of the Bible nowhere in sight.

(H/T the Friendly Atheist)