1. The Bible - 3.9 billion copies read
The Bible is a collection of 66 books containing God's messages, including the Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
2. Quotations from the Works of Mao Tse-tung (author: Mao Tse-tung) -820 million copies read
Also called Mao Tse-tung's "Little Red Book." This book explained the Chinese Communist Party ideology to the Chinese.
3. Harry Potter (author: J. K. Rowling) - 400 million copies read
J.K. Rowling's beloved seven-part series about the life of Harry Potter, a boy wizard and his friends and their battle with He-who-must-not-be-named a.k.a. Voldemort. This book has cast a spell on both children and adults alike. It has even made into seven movies starring Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley and Emma Watson as Hermione Granger.
4. Lord of the Rings (author: J. R. R. Tolkien) - 103 million copies read
A fantasy story written about Middle Earth, good and evil, dwarves, humans, elves, hobbits, orcs, goblins, wizards and balrogs, not to mention the rings made by Sauron, including the "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them in the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie." Like Harry Potter, this book has also been made into three films by Director Peter Jackson.
5. The Alchemist (author: Paulo Coelho) - 65 million copies read
A novel originally written in Portuguese, it has been translated as of September 2012 into 56 languages. Paulo Coelho, the book's author even tweeted about his book being the top 5 on the list of the top 10 most read books in the world for the past 50 years.
Top 5 most read books