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Subject: Most Britons have lied about the books they read
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Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:25:45 -0600
Xref: news.nzbot.com alt.fan.rolex:7989
Most Britons have lied about the books they read
Thu Mar 5, 11:44 am ET
books they have not, and George Orwell's "1984" tops the literary fib
list, according to a survey published Thursday.
Commissioned by organizers of World Book Day, an annual celebration of
reading in Britain, the study also shows that the author people really
enjoy reading is J.K. Rowling, creator of the bestselling Harry Potter
wizard series.
According to the survey, 65 percent of people have pretended to have
read books, and of those, 42 percent singled out "1984." Next on the
list came "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy and in third place was James
Joyce's "Ulysses."
The Bible was in fourth position, and newly elected President Barack
Obama's autobiography "Dreams from My Father" came ninth.
Aside from a list of ten titles which respondents were asked to tick
or leave blank, many admitted wrongly claiming they had read other
"classics" including Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens,
Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Herman Melville.
Asked why they had lied about reading a book, the main reason was to
impress the person they were speaking to.
The study, carried out on the World Book Day website in January and
February, surveyed 1,342 members of the public.
Those who lied have claimed to have read:
1. 1984 - George Orwell (42 percent)
2. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (31)
3. Ulysses - James Joyce (25)
4. The Bible (24)
5. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (16)
6. A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking (15)
7. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (14)
8. In Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust (9)
9. Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama (6)
10. The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins (6)
(Reporting by Mike Collett-White)
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