The Open Syllabus Project lists all the college textbooks students are dutifully ignoring.

Reading! I meant reading. Excuse me. Silly mistake. The Open Syllabus Project is trying to document all the college textbooks students are reading and studying with a fervent passion, no doubt.

Specifically, the Open Syllabus Project (OSP) hopes to comb over the world's college syllabi and document which books students are assigned most, regardless of subject area. The list is ever-changing, as the OSP gathers more syllabi, texts gain and lose favor.

For example, the top ten most-assigned books covering all syllabi (so far) and subject areas in parts of the western hemisphere are:

1.  The Elements of Style,
     by Strunk, William, 1869-1946
2.  Republic,
     by Plato
3.  The Communist Manifesto,
     by Marx, Karl, 1818-1883
4.  Biology,
     by Campbell, Neil A., 1946
5.  Frankenstein,
     by Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851
6.  Ethics,
     by Aristotle
7.  Leviathan,
     by Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679
8.  The Prince,
     by Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527
9.  Oedipus,
     by Sophocles
10.  Hamlet,
     by Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616

The Elements of Style is hopelessly assigned by every desperate English professor in hopes that someone, anyone--you maybe--might be able to write a coherent sentence in a paper. It's fruitless, as every student leaves Elements in a desk drawer or closet, where it'll only be rediscovered when they graduate, clear out those closets, and donate a stack of books to the Goodwill.

The rest of the top ten is fairly explanatory. A basic biology book, some philosophical musings you won't remember, a dash of Shakespeare...and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? The same desperate English professor who cries to sleep each night over your writing inability also hopes you'll read a little, and assigned a relatively short book with a famous name, dreaming you'll give it a shot. You won't though. That's why God made Wikipedia.

Curiosities really don't appear until you break down the syllabi by county, state, school, or subject area. Take Canada, for instance. Our neighbors to the north's top ten includes the usual--your Leviathans and Ethics--but has Frankenstein number one. Further raising eyebrows is Michel Foucault's Power at number two, while Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness shows up at number ten. Is the collective subconscious of Canada suggesting they want to control and dominate the world? Damn right. I, for one, welcome our new Canadian overlords, and bid them well.

Another mystery is the state of Alabama--and not just because it's the state of Alabama. A look at that state's top ten textbooks starts with the first seven being related to physics, with an eighth book related to astronomy. Did Alabama just discover the existence of science and the cosmos? No. That's silly. Because Alabama realized science existed all the way back in 2012, and there's been rumors of a moon in the sky being reported in Mobile all the way since the 1960s. It's just that Alabama is buying the books now to burn them.

I'm not sure if that's better than ignoring them though.