See here for methodology, though now I am restricting the table to books actually set in the territory of today’s French Republic.
| Title | Author | Goodreads raters | LibraryThing owners |
| A Tale of Two Cities | Charles Dickens | 961,988 | 37,439 |
| All the Light We Cannot See | Anthony Doerr | 1,739,164 | 19,400 |
| The Count of Monte Cristo | Alexandre Dumas | 934,929 | 26,139 |
| Les Misérables | Victor Hugo | 807,660 | 26,774 |
| The Nightingale | Kristin Hannah | 1,489,539 | 10,328 |
| Madame Bovary | Gustave Flaubert | 342,496 | 26,697 |
| Perfume: The Story of a Murderer | Patrick Süskind | 485,932 | 18,443 |
| The Three Musketeers | Alexandre Dumas | 330,385 | 21,755 |
I only had to disqualify three books this time – The Da Vinci Code (more than half of it is set in the UK), The Little Prince (none of it is set in France) and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (on a quick glance, less than half seems to be set in France).
When I did this in 2015, A Tale of Two Cities also topped the poll of books more than half of which were actually set in France (though also beaten by two of the disqualified books).
I am struck that two novels published in the last ten years have soared into the top ranks – All the Light We Cannot See (2014) and The Nightingale (2015). I may give both of them a try.
Next up: Thailand. (Possibly should have been done sooner – I am finding some big discrepancies in different population tables.)