The Most Soul-Stirring Books – A Ranking of Over a Thousand Bulgarian Readers

During the pandemic, everyone involved in one form or another with reading and its promotion gambled that the forced lockdown would increase the number of people reading. In the context of this presumption, a plethora of surveys, Facebook groups to exchange book ideas, and other reading clubs were born. The project ‘Exploring attitudes towards the therapeutic potential of reading in atypical situations for the individual‘, led by Asst. Prof. Dr. Sabina Eftimova-Ilieva, of which the author of the present article is a member, is focused on this period. The healing power of books, particularly bibliotherapy, is the subject of 90 publications by the team of the above-mentioned project. Books that can be described as ‘heavy’ have been the subject of extensive research by the author, resulting in three publications. The subject of this article is again the so-called ‘heavy’ books, but in the context of post-pandemic times. Curiously, readers continue to consult reading groups on social media for books that will shake them up and that will heal their wounded souls. This leads to two conclusions. First, that bibliotherapy is an important component of coping. Secondly, although the pandemic has passed, the need for immersion in serious and engaging subject matter has not. There is definitely a readership interested in ‘books to break the heart – heavy and heartbreaking’ (paraphrasing the request of an anonymous participant in the What You’re Reading Facebook group on March 3, 2024). The search for categorically ‘heavy’ books – those that are cited as such by more people in several surveys – is posed as a research problem. The results are after processing our own online survey in 2021, and analysing responses from two polls in the ‘What Are You Reading’ Facebook group, prompted by members of the group, with 329 comments on 3 March 2024 and 620 comments on 15 April 2024.