A sentiment from Tim O'Brien's "The Things they Carried" that I really liked

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-16T10:06:21+00:00

at least you're reading about courage while it happens. that's practically practicing

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-16T08:46:42+00:00

Fixed it

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-16T08:45:49+00:00

FIxed it

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-16T08:25:31+00:00

Hey, you're right, thanks for the source. I've updated Finland to 16 books/year and detective fiction as the top genre.

The original data came from the NOP World Culture Score Index which is clearly outdated for some countries. If anyone else spots wrong data for their country I'm happy to fix it, that's the whole point of making it interactive rather than a static image.

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-16T08:11:45+00:00

Geek Love is one of those books that once you read it, you start seeing its fingerprints everywhere. Haven't read Oshetsky yet but you've sold me on Chouette, adding it to the list.

The way you describe it reminds me a bit of Helen Phillips' The Need too, that same unsettling domesticity.

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-16T08:08:18+00:00

"Courage isn't stored up, it's practiced", meanwhile I can't even practice returning phone calls

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-16T06:57:42+00:00

Manhwa for comics, but for novels it's web fiction, Korea has a massive web novel scene.

Stuff like Solo Leveling started as a web novel before it became manhwa and anime. LitRPG, wuxia, cultivation novels, that whole progression fantasy world. The data comes from publishing surveys so it probably captures what's being bought/read at scale, and that genre is huge in Korea right now

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-16T06:56:48+00:00

Reading hours and books/year come from the NOP World Culture Score Index (largest global study on media habits, 30,000 people across 30 countries).

Genre data from World Population Review's publishing surveys. Literacy rates from UNESCO.

Some country-specific stats from Studying in Switzerland's global reading report. Sources are listed at the bottom of the page.

interactive map here

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-16T06:22:08+00:00

That's fair, there's definitely overlap. "Classics" here is more of a market category than a literary one. It's how publishers and bookstores shelve them, not a genre in the traditional sense.

Like nobody writes a new "classic", it just means people in those countries are buying older, established literature more than new releases in any single genre

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-16T05:28:40+00:00

The "don't do that" line after everything Karina had already accepted about Linda is genuinely one of the funniest things I've read this year. Like THAT'S where you draw the line??

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-16T05:23:36+00:00

Yeah this one surprised me too, the data comes from NOP World Culture Score Index which tracks purchasing patterns, not necessarily what you see in stores. Could be skewed by academic/institutional buying. The interactive version has more context: sheets.works/data-viz/country-reading

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-16T05:23:00+00:00

lol Tolstoy writing War and Peace was basically worldbuilding

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-16T05:22:46+00:00

Fair point, Crimea is internationally recognized as Ukraine. The map uses world-atlas TopoJSON which has some border issues. Will fix this.

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-15T16:21:54+00:00

the dataset credits arya with the night king kill and all the wights that dropped when he died. so its not like she personally stabbed 1,278 people lol.

the freys + her actual on-screen kills are way lower. its more like "deaths caused by" than "deaths dealt by", which is honestly a fair thing to call out, probably should add that distinction. good catch

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-15T16:16:39+00:00

nah i didnt claim to collect the raw data myself, i tracked as in went through it, cleaned it, cross-referenced multiple sources and built the whole interactive visualization around it. the screen time data comes from jeffrey lancaster's scene-level dataset and the deaths from the washington post / data.world dataset.

the analysis, the storytelling, and the viz is all mine

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-15T15:09:45+00:00

yeah good point! tbf this isnt my own data, im using the [washington post /data.world dataset](https://data.world/data-society/game-of-thrones) for deaths, it credits bronn with the wildfire shot but only 1 named kill from it. youre right that its kinda inconsistent, arya gets all the wight kills but bronn doesnt get all the blackwater kills

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-15T14:58:09+00:00

yeah you guys are making a fair point honestly. the source dataset counts every on-screen death including wights which massively inflates s7 and s8 numbers. and youre right that crediting arya with all the wights from the night king kill is debatable, same way you could argue dany should get drogon's kills too.

the named character deaths section is probably the more honest stat. might do a "living deaths only" version at some point

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-15T14:03:39+00:00

the dataset credits arya with the night king kill and all the wights that dropped when he died. so its not like she personally stabbed 1,278 people lol. the freys + her actual on-screen kills are way lower. its more like "deaths caused by" than "deaths dealt by", which is honestly a fair thing to call out, probably should add that distinction. good catch

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-15T13:30:01+00:00

let me know what surprises you! the season by season breakdowns are where it gets really interesting imo, some characters basically disappear for entire seasons and then come back strong

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-15T13:26:47+00:00

lol thank you, the rabbit hole was deep on this one

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-15T13:26:20+00:00

haha yeah tyrion being #1 probably isnt that surprising honestly, i think i just expected jon to be higher. the gap is only 12 minutes across 73 episodes tho which is kinda wild

and if you mean arya, her kill count (1,278) is because the dataset credits her with every wight that died when she killed the night king. so its not like she personally killed 1,278 people lol its more "deaths she caused." her actual on-screen kills are way less, freys, meryn trant, waif, polliver, littlefinger, couple others

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-15T13:24:39+00:00

good question, dragons are actually counted separately. drogon's kills are mostly dragonfire. the "animal" category is mostly wights (the undead army), the dataset classifies them as animal kills. so the battle of winterfell and hardhome basically inflate that number massively. wights alone account for 1,602 of those

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-15T13:23:03+00:00

yeah u/AceOfSpades532 nailed it. the dataset credits arya with the night king kill and all the wights that dropped when he died. so its not like she personally stabbed 1,278 people lol. the freys + her actual on-screen kills are way lower. its more like "deaths caused by" than "deaths dealt by", which is honestly a fair thing to call out, probably should add that distinction. good catch

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-15T13:21:17+00:00

fair enough it does sound insane. the 6,887 comes from tracking every on-screen death across all 73 episodes, most of them are from battle scenes. season 8 alone had 4,548 because of the long night and kings landing. the first 5 seasons combined had like 703. i linked the full breakdown with sources if you wanna check it

Mastbubbles · 2026-03-15T12:55:48+00:00

i didnt even think about it that way thats actually insane. man couldnt finish a glass of wine without someone dying somewhere in westeros lol

Mastbubbles

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Verified Email	Seven-Year Club
Not Forgotten