For some reason, I have some problems imagining enough people in the US sitting down to George Eliot's 900-page Middlemarch, and placing it 20th on this list...it must have quite the fanbase in the UK. Overall, a very populist and typical list.
I can't help but wonder, had they done it two years ago, if Da Vinci Code would have placed in the top five, rather than #42 once the hype has backed off. Another couple of years, and it will only be a footnote literary phenomenon that nobody reads anymore.
World Book Day poll: Top 100 favorite books - Pride & Prejudice tops list
-
Franz Ferdinand
- Adjunct
- Posts: 1457
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 3:22 pm
- Location: Calgary, Alberta
- Contact:
-
OscarGuy
- Site Admin
- Posts: 13668
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 12:22 am
- Location: Springfield, MO
- Contact:
I find it interesting that people cited The Chronicles of Narnia (#33) and then also cited The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (#36)...whomever compiled this poll has no clue...
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
-
Sonic Youth
- Tenured Laureate
- Posts: 8005
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 8:35 pm
- Location: USA
Pride and Prejudice the most precious as modern readers turn over an old leaf
World Book Day poll places enduring quality of classics ahead of recent triumphs
John Ezard
Thursday March 1, 2007
Guardian
In the end, quality tells. People may have bought The Da Vinci Code in its millions but, when asked to name the most precious book they have read, they relegated it to 42nd place and chose Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
In the poll for World Book Day today, the highest-ranking contemporary adult fiction novel is Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong, which came only 17th.
By contrast, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte was third; Wuthering Heights by her sister Emily was seventh; and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 10th.
A modern classic boosted by a film trilogy, JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, came second, the Harry Potter books fourth, the modern US classic To Kill a Mockingbird fifth, and George Orwell's 1984 equal eighth with Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.
The Bible is in sixth place, thanks particularly to over 60-year-olds. However it figures in the top 10 of every age group over 25.
The Complete Works of Shakespeare was in at 14, just before Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and two slots after Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
The most striking feature of the survey, the organisers said, was that "classics are still the most essential reads".
Richard and Judy's television show, legendary for creating bestsellers, appears to have little influence on this list. Virtually none of the chart-topping titles of recent years, except for Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, and no high-grossing celebrity biographies reached the top 100.
Instead, the top 100 bristles with provenly enduring quality, from Joseph Heller, George Eliot, Tolstoy, Kerouac, Lewis Carroll and AA Milne to John Steinbeck, Arthur Ransome, Joseph Conrad, Kazuo Ishiguro (for The Remains of the Day) and Conan Doyle. The last three titles to squeeze in are a characteristic mix: Hamlet, Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.
The 2,000 people who took part in the poll online at worldbookday.com nominated their top 10 titles that they could not live without. Pride and Prejudice...-...now firmly established by Colin Firth's soaked shirt as a love story rather than a comedy of manners as it was once less attractively seen...-...topped the lists in every region apart from Northern Ireland, which favoured To Kill a Mockingbird, which is about the need to understand the unfamiliar.
Sue Horner, principal of English for the qualifications and curriculum authority, which recently prompted controversy by recommending that all secondary school pupils read the classics, said: "All these top 10 have a timeless quality, whenever they were written. It is likely that many of them are lasting favourites, first encountered at school."
The Bible was fourth favourite book for those aged over 60, a generation which would have been compulsorily taught it at school. It only fell out of the top 10 for those aged 18-25 and was still rated 19th by those under 18.
Its performance delighted the Bishop of Durham, the reverend Tom Wright, who said: "We shouldn't be surprised. The Bible offers life and enriches life. If you haven't read it, start today."
1 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
=8 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
=8 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations Charles Dickens
11 Little Women Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy
13 Catch-22 Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare William Shakespeare
15 Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis
34 Emma Jane Austen
35 Persuasion Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin Louis de Bernières
39 Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh AA Milne
41 Animal Farm George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney John Irving
45 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies William Golding
50 Atonement Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi Yann Martel
52 Dune Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
62 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist Charles Dickens
72 Dracula Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory Iain Banks
94 Watership Down Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl
100 Les Misérables Victor Hugo
World Book Day poll places enduring quality of classics ahead of recent triumphs
John Ezard
Thursday March 1, 2007
Guardian
In the end, quality tells. People may have bought The Da Vinci Code in its millions but, when asked to name the most precious book they have read, they relegated it to 42nd place and chose Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
In the poll for World Book Day today, the highest-ranking contemporary adult fiction novel is Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong, which came only 17th.
By contrast, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte was third; Wuthering Heights by her sister Emily was seventh; and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 10th.
A modern classic boosted by a film trilogy, JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, came second, the Harry Potter books fourth, the modern US classic To Kill a Mockingbird fifth, and George Orwell's 1984 equal eighth with Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.
The Bible is in sixth place, thanks particularly to over 60-year-olds. However it figures in the top 10 of every age group over 25.
The Complete Works of Shakespeare was in at 14, just before Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and two slots after Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
The most striking feature of the survey, the organisers said, was that "classics are still the most essential reads".
Richard and Judy's television show, legendary for creating bestsellers, appears to have little influence on this list. Virtually none of the chart-topping titles of recent years, except for Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, and no high-grossing celebrity biographies reached the top 100.
Instead, the top 100 bristles with provenly enduring quality, from Joseph Heller, George Eliot, Tolstoy, Kerouac, Lewis Carroll and AA Milne to John Steinbeck, Arthur Ransome, Joseph Conrad, Kazuo Ishiguro (for The Remains of the Day) and Conan Doyle. The last three titles to squeeze in are a characteristic mix: Hamlet, Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.
The 2,000 people who took part in the poll online at worldbookday.com nominated their top 10 titles that they could not live without. Pride and Prejudice...-...now firmly established by Colin Firth's soaked shirt as a love story rather than a comedy of manners as it was once less attractively seen...-...topped the lists in every region apart from Northern Ireland, which favoured To Kill a Mockingbird, which is about the need to understand the unfamiliar.
Sue Horner, principal of English for the qualifications and curriculum authority, which recently prompted controversy by recommending that all secondary school pupils read the classics, said: "All these top 10 have a timeless quality, whenever they were written. It is likely that many of them are lasting favourites, first encountered at school."
The Bible was fourth favourite book for those aged over 60, a generation which would have been compulsorily taught it at school. It only fell out of the top 10 for those aged 18-25 and was still rated 19th by those under 18.
Its performance delighted the Bishop of Durham, the reverend Tom Wright, who said: "We shouldn't be surprised. The Bible offers life and enriches life. If you haven't read it, start today."
1 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
=8 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
=8 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations Charles Dickens
11 Little Women Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy
13 Catch-22 Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare William Shakespeare
15 Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis
34 Emma Jane Austen
35 Persuasion Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin Louis de Bernières
39 Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh AA Milne
41 Animal Farm George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney John Irving
45 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies William Golding
50 Atonement Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi Yann Martel
52 Dune Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
62 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist Charles Dickens
72 Dracula Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory Iain Banks
94 Watership Down Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl
100 Les Misérables Victor Hugo
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler