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Goodreads is social media for bookworms: a site where 125 million bibliophiles meet to boost slate or ‘meh’ their latest reading project. Bookworms have “shelved” 3.5 billion books globally, which is a lot to sift through to find a read that is not just first-rate but just your taste.
With BookCrossing, your options are narrowed. Some 2 million readers have found or collected over 14,105,640 pass-me-down paper books in public, tracking each particular book object’s story through a special code attached to each one. Serendipity plays a more significant role here. You can chase for a book you know has been left, but more probably, your affinity with it will begin when you stumble upon it on a bus seat or in a British telephone booth.
While Goodreads is a global conversation, BookCrossing’s exchanges are more local — although, with books shared across 132 nations, there’s always a possibility you will pick one up when you or the book are distant from home. Either way, both networks are incredible opportunities to shake up your usual reading practices and find a book in another voice: a social, cultural, or geographic context viewpoint you might not otherwise discover.
The WordFinderX team decided to grab a snapshot of the geographically various books you might encounter on your switched-on bookworm adventure. They used Goodreads data to determine the most highly ranked books by local authors from every nation on Earth.
The highest-rated book globally is Svědectví o životě v KLDR (Witnessing Life in the DPRK) by Czech author Nina Špitálníková, with an average rating of 4.79 on Goodreads.
The top book authored by a man is Argentine cartoonist Quino’s Toda Mafalda collection (4.77).
The highest-rated North American book is the U.S. author Brandon Sanderson’s Words of Radiance (4.76).
Australia’s most famous book is Jess Hill’s See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control, and Domestic Violence (4.68).
Here is the world map of the most popular books by an writer from every country.
World map of the Highest-Rated Book by a Lokal Auther in Every Country
The top-rated book worldwide based on at least 500 Goodreads ratings is Svědectví o životě v KLDR (Witnessing Life in the DPRK). Czech writer Nina Špitálníková’s third publication about North Korea is derived from seven interviews with asylum seekers from the country. Although the book takes a critical position towards the North Korea government, a diverse group of interviewees share their unique experiences to create a captivating and rarely seen portrayal of life in the DPRK.
The Highest-Rated Book by a Local Author in North America
Across North America, top-rated books include children’s titles like Evelyn Del Rey Is Moving Away (rated an average 4.38) by Cuban author Meg Medina and fantasy novels like U.S. writer Brandon Sanderson’s Words of Radiance, boasting the highest average rating (4.76) of any book on continent map. Non-fiction books, including Honduran author Seth M. Holmes’ Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies (rated 4.26), also feature.
The Highest-Rated Book by a Local Author in South America
The highest rating (4.77), according to the map above in South America, belongs to Toda Mafalda, a collection of comics by the beloved Argentinian cartoonist Quino. In Peru, Conversation in the Cathedral takes the top spot (rated 4.35), author Mario Vargas Llosa’s “masterwork,” according to the New York Times.
The Highest-Rated Book by a Local Author in Europe
From east to west, Europe is a continent steeped in rich literary history — but which book written by a local author is the highest-rated on Goodreads? Titles range from autobiographies to thriller novels, but the highest average rating (4.79) on the map belongs to Svědectví o životě v KLDR (Witnessing Life in the DPRK) by Czech author Nina Špitálníková, a book featuring interviews with refugees from North Korea.
The Highest-Rated Book by a Local Author in the Middle East and Central Asia
Top-rated books by local authors in the Middle East and Central Asia include acclaimed novels, memoirs, and essay collections. A Thousand Splendid Suns by author Khaled Hosseini takes the top spot in Afghanistan (with an average rating of 4.42), a novel that spent fifteen weeks at the top of the New York Times bestseller list in 2007. Rated 4.51, the top-rated book in Iran is the ancient Shahnameh by Ferdowsi, one of the world’s longest epic poems.
The Highest-Rated Book by a Local Author in the Rest of Asia and Oceania
Top-rated books in Asia and Oceania, according to the map, include acclaimed memoirs like North Korean defector Yeonmi Park’s In Order To Live (rated 4.49), called a “clear-eyed and devastating autobiography” by the Guardian. In Singapore, the self-help book Destined to Reign by celebrity evangelist Joseph Prince takes the top spot with an average rating of 4.53.
The Highest-Rated Book by a Local Author in Africa
The highest-rated books on the African continent are Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s feminist manifesto Dear Ijeawele and The African Origin of Civilization by Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop.
The Methodology Behind This Study
First, the WordFinderX team collected author and book lists for each country on Goodreads (e.g., books by Indian authors), then isolated the top-rated books for each location based on the “average rating” metric.
Any book with less than 500 reviews was removed from the data.
Finally, the WordFinderX team pulled the genre and cover image for each winning book from their pages.
