Thanks to a pointer from Yogamum, I came across LibraryThing. This online service allows you to catalogue your personal collection of books, and these then form part of a universal collection (13 million, according to the site). I searched on the tag “yoga,” and came up with the following listing of the term, 2,300 times by 742 users. The top 11 books were:
- Light on yoga : yoga dipika by B.K.S. Iyengar (53)
- Yoga : the poetry of the body by Rodney Yee (17)
- The American Yoga Association beginner’s manual by Alice Christensen (14)
- Anatomy of Hatha Yoga : a manual for students, teachers, and… by H. David Coulter (14)
- Yoga : the path to holistic health by B.K.S. Iyengar (13)
- The heart of yoga : developing a personal practice by T. K. V. Desikachar (12)
- OM yoga : a guide to daily practice by Cyndi Lee (12)
- The complete idiot’s guide to yoga by Joan Budilovsky (12)
- Yoga : the Iyengar way by Silva Mehta (13)
- Yoga for dummies by Georg Feuerstein (13)
- Ashtanga yoga : the practice manual by David Swenson (11)
- Yoga mind, body & spirit : a return to wholeness by Donna Farhi (9)
I am a little surprised by the high ranking of the Christensen and the Budilovsky books. They are kind of generic starter books so I guess it’s what might be expected from a non-specialist, average consumer database. I am ashamed to admit that I do not own a copy of the most popular book, Light on Yoga. I have three of the 12.