Looking for something new to read that has been read and approved by hundreds of geeks? A few days ago, I asked fans on our Facebook page to list books that they’ve read at least 3 times because they were so good, and they delivered! After getting over 1,200 comments, I compiled the entries into one big list that should point you in the right direction. So without further ado, here is our list of the top 40 books for geeks! Please note that Geeks are Sexy might get a small commission from qualifying purchases done through our posts. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien: 56 mentions
2. Harry Potter Series: 51 mentions
3. Dune by Frank Herbert: 46 mentions
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: 43 mentions
5. The Stand by Stephen King: 40 mentions
6. 1984 by George Orwell: 36 mentions
7. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: 34 mentions
8. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien: 32 mentions
9. American Gods by Neil Gaiman: 30 mentions
10. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton: 30 mentions
11. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett: 29 mentions
12. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card: 28 mentions
13. A Song of Ice and Fire Series (GOT) by George R.R. Martin: 27 mentions
14. Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan: 27 mentions
15. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger: 26 mentions
16. Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov: 26 mentions
17. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis: 24 mentions
18. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss: 24 mentions
19. Watership Down by Richard Adams: 24 mentions
20. The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King: 24 mentions
21. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher: 23 mentions
22. The Witcher Series by Andrzej Sapkowski: 22 mentions
23. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: 21 mentions
24. The Martian by Andy Weir: 20 mentions
25. Red Rising Series by Pierce Brown: 20 mentions
26. Stormlight Archive Series by Brandon Sanderson: 19 mentions
27. Mistborn Series by Brandon Sanderson: 19 mentions
28. The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny: 18 mentions
29. The Expanse Series by James S.A. Corey: 18 mentions
30. Neuromancer by William Gibson: 18 mentions
31. Star Wars Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn: 17 mentions
32. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien: 17 mentions
33. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: 16 mentions
34. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: 16 mentions
35. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: 16 mentions
36. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury: 16 mentions
37. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: 16 mentions
38. Lord of the Flies by William Golding: 16 mentions
39. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein: 16 mentions
40. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: 16 mentions

Think compiling this was tedious? Not at all! It was super easy, barely an inconvenience! I used ChatGPT! Here’s how I did it. I simply copied all comments under the Facebook post in a text file. Since the text file had over 120,000 characters and ChatGPT only accepts prompts of up to 4,096 characters, I divided the list into 30 sections, which I fed into the AI one by one. Once I was done, I asked it to compile the results of all 30 prompts and then give me a list of the top 40 books in order of most mentioned to least mentioned. I also counter-verified some of the results by pasting the names of the books into Word and using the search feature to count the number of occurrences where the books were mentioned.

Curious about the prompts I used? Here they are:

Prompt: Hi ChatGPT, if I feed you the comments from a Facebook post, can you count the number of times various novels were mentioned? There are over 1200 comments on the list.

Counting the number of times novels were mentioned in over 1200 comments on a Facebook post is beyond my capabilities as I can’t access external content like Facebook posts directly.

Prompt: If I separate the comments into 30 different entries and paste them in the ChatGPT prompt field, can you then compile them to make the list?

Sure, if you split the comments into 30 different sets and provide the text of each set, I can help you count the occurrences in each set and then sum up the total count for all sets. You can provide the text of each set in separate messages, and I’ll tally up the counts for you. Let’s start with the first set of comments whenever you’re ready!

ChatGPT proceeds to list a top 30 compilation.

Prompt: Make it a top 40.

Certainly! Here’s the extended list of the top 40 novels ranked by the total number of mentions.

And voilà, here is how you make a top 40 list post using data from an external source. Don’t forget to counter-verify the results for accuracy, though, as ChatGPT can sometimes make errors. If it does, you can ask it to fix them.

Update: the post mentionned earlier now has over 1,700 comments.