27 Jul
Sometimes it feels like translators love reading like nobody else. Some translators prefer longer books, and some of them shorter. Book word count matters, don’t you think so? It’s easier to read or re-read short books since you spend less time. They contain an increased concentration of emotion. The plot is more dynamic because of fewer pages. However, with longer books, you go deeper into a story.
Here are the top 100 popular books from the longest to the shorter with their word count results.
Word count of top 100
popular books
| Books | Word Count | |
| 1 | Les Miserables by Victor Hugo | 568 751 |
| 2 | War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy | 567 246 |
| 3 | The Lord of the Rings, the novel written by J. R. R. Tolkien | 564 187 |
| 4 | The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas | 464 162 |
| 5 | Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra | 430 269 |
| 6 | David Copperfield by Charles Dickens | 360 231 |
| 7 | The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky | 354 098 |
| 8 | Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy | 353 250 |
| 9 | The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio | 311 155 |
| 10 | Ulysses by James Joyce | 268 170 |
| 11 | The Republic by Plato | 220 117 |
| 12 | Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes | 216 349 |
| 13 | Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville | 215 839 |
| 14 | Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky | 208 016 |
| 15 | The Iliad by Homer | 193 536 |
| 16 | Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte | 190 339 |
| 17 | Little Women by Louisa May Alcott | 189 290 |
| 18 | Great Expectations by Charles Dickens | 187 596 |
| 19 | The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson | 184 635 |
| 20 | Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe | 184 055 |
| 21 | Dracula by Bram Stoker | 165 453 |
| 22 | Emma by Jane Austen | 163 514 |
| 23 | Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens | 161 712 |
| 24 | On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin | 158 747 |
| 25 | The Da Vinci Code, novel by Dan Brown | 144 330 |
| 26 | A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens | 139 605 |
| 27 | The Odyssey by Homer | 132 694 |
| 28 | Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen | 124 713 |
| 29 | The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe | 123 936 |
| 30 | Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen | 122 646 |
| 31 | The Twilight by Stephenie Meyer | 120 238 |
| 32 | Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte | 119 572 |
| 33 | Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau | 118 922 |
| 34 | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain | 118 804 |
| 35 | Thus Spake Zarathustra – A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche | 115 632 |
| 36 | The Confessions of St. Augustine by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine | 114 915 |
| 37 | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle | 107 605 |
| 38 | Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift | 107 293 |
| 39 | Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery | 106 294 |
| 40 | Grimms’ Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm | 104 228 |
| 41 | A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe | 98 034 |
| 42 | The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne | 86 897 |
| 43 | The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett | 83 705 |
| 44 | The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde | 82 222 |
| 45 | Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley | 78 100 |
| 46 | Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling | 77 423 |
| 47 | Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius | 75 055 |
| 48 | The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain | 74 772 |
| 49 | The Catcher in the Rye, a novel by J. D. Salinger | 74 144 |
| 50 | Josefine Mutzenbacher by Felix Salten | 73 567 |
| 51 | Baron Trump’s Marvellous Underground Journey by Ingersoll Lockwood | 72 424 |
| 52 | Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson | 72 036 |
| 53 | The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois | 71 747 |
| 54 | Dubliners by James Joyce | 70 693 |
| 55 | The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin | 70 229 |
| 56 | The Ontario Readers – Third Book by Ontario. Department of Education | 67 967 |
| 57 | The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin | 67 286 |
| 58 | Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche | 66 835 |
| 59 | The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce | 63 397 |
| 60 | The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells | 63 194 |
| 61 | The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle | 62 297 |
| 62 | The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana | 62 155 |
| 63 | Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson | 60 893 |
| 64 | The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie | 59 608 |
| 65 | And Then There Were None, a mystery novel by Agatha Christie | 54 324 |
| 66 | The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling | 54 178 |
| 67 | The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli | 52 677 |
| 68 | Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein | 51 005 |
| 69 | Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie | 50 844 |
| 70 | A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle | 47 015 |
| 71 | The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle | 46 164 |
| 72 | Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Douglass | 44 008 |
| 73 | Beowulf – An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem by J. Lesslie Hall | 43 092 |
| 74 | Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry M. Robert | 42 821 |
| 75 | The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum | 42 636 |
| 76 | Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse | 42 216 |
| 77 | Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad | 41 597 |
| 78 | The Alchemist, novel by Paulo Coelho | 38 871 |
| 79 | Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw | 36 718 |
| 80 | The Time Machine by H. G. Wells | 35 530 |
| 81 | The Call of the Wild by Jack London | 34 964 |
| 82 | A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens | 31 650 |
| 83 | A Doll’s House, a play by Henrik Ibsen | 29 843 |
| 84 | Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll | 29 610 |
| 85 | The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson | 28 668 |
| 86 | Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka | 25 189 |
| 87 | Common Sense by Thomas Paine | 25 033 |
| 88 | The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People by Oscar Wilde | 23 760 |
| 89 | Anthem by Ayn Rand | 22 239 |
| 90 | The Happy Prince, and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde | 19 489 |
| 91 | The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery | 17 121 |
| 92 | A Pickle for the Knowing Ones by Timothy Dexter | 17 101 |
| 93 | The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran | 15 800 |
| 94 | Southern Horrors – Lynch Law in All Its Phases by Ida B. Wells-Barnett | 12 709 |
| 95 | As a Man Thinketh by James Allen | 10 610 |
| 96 | Ion by Plato | 9 555 |
| 97 | The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman | 9 105 |
| 98 | A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift | 6 535 |
| 99 | The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter | 4 058 |
| 100 | The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe | 3 971 |
Thanks to Anycount, we did a word count of books with a couple of clicks. Try Anycount free here.
It took Anycount just a few minutes to count words in 100 books. Word count of these books amounted to more than 13 million words. Impressive, right?
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