Interest in the Oscars and the books that many were based on garnered lots of buzz on social media in February, but it was the murder of Chris Kyle, author of American Sniper, that put that title atop CoverCake’s most-talked-about books in social media last month. CoverCake’s v-p of client services Jeff Costello noted that a large percentage of comments on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere about the death of Kyle mentioned Sniper, which drove the title to the top of the list.

Still, there were plenty of Oscar-related books in the top 10 last month, with Life of Pi tying for third place, and Silver Linings Playbook and Les Misérables landing in the sixth and seventh spots, respectively. Joining Life of Pi in third place in February was Beautiful Creatures, which jumped into the top 10 driven by the release of the movie in the middle of the month.

Playbook had by far the greatest percentage of male commentors, with men posting 74% of comments on the book; Sniper and Glenn Beck’s Agenda 21 were the only other titles that had more interest from men than women. And Dan Brown’s newest title didn’t need a movie, or even the book itself, to make a splash in social media in February, as just the announcement that Brown has something new in the works was enough to get Inferno to fifth place on the CoverCake list. Inferno will be published May 14.

CoverCake’s Top 10 Books in Social Media, February 2013

Rank Title Author Scale* Male Female
1 American Sniper Chris Kyle 10 54% 46%
2 Fifty Shades of Grey E.L. James 8 21 79
3 Beautiful Creatures Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl 6 22 78
4 Life of Pi Yann Martel 6 24 76
5 Inferno Dan Brown 4 41 59
6 Silver Linings Playbook Matthew Quick 4 74 26
7 Les Miserables Victor Hugo 3 27 73
8 Agenda 21 Glenn Beck 2 55 45
9 Gone Girl Gillian Flynn 2 22 78
10 Catching Fire Suzanne Collins 2 29 71

*How many conversations took place abou the book in question for every 10 comments about book #1