The Top 100 most borrowed authors in Britian...

I wonder how many of these books are completed tho. Normally I'll borrow about 35 books at a time, and get halfway through two of them.

Ma and Pa (librarians)...always led me to believe that Lord of the Rings was the most popular book evah. That list should have included requests and actual loans.

JK Rowling - Adult author???? wtf? bollocks, no way. Bloody awful kids books more like.

(tolkien readers = ppl who BUY and HOARD books surely? library fines on LoTR = more than smaug's hoard

Usual standard of patronisation from ex-Thatcher groupie D J Taylor.

Probable explanation: writers/books appearing on Grauniad bestseller lists (given the probable bias of whichever shops they survey) appear precisely because most of their readers prefer to buy the books rather than just get them out of a library (or because of the year- long waiting lists for some titles). Also, given general Govt/council budget cuts which directly affect library provision and supplies, it is probably figured safest to keep in stock/order in things which are likely to be borrowed frequently and thus "pay their way."

Another way to look at it: I've no idea if anyone's done a survey of the top-selling groups/artists over the '60s (presumably someone must have done it) but if there were a UK calibration from, say, 1964-69, chances are they'd consist of the following: Beatles, Jim Reeves, Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, Val Doonican, the Bachelors, Cliff Richard, the Black and White Minstrels, the Hollies, Ken Dodd, Petula Clark and Des O'Connor (the Stones might just scrape into the top ten if they were lucky). Conclusion: nowt save that public taste and received history are two completely separate minefields.

Though of course the JK Rowling may well be taken out by more adults due to its bizarre popularity in said demographic.

How many of these authors have you actually read. I can probably number 20 of them.

actually read, hmmm...none of them.

Another explaination is that most of these authors are very prolific. Its easy to get a Cookson out because there are so many. Ditto the Higginses etc. Rowling is doing well for someone with only four books to her name.

Oddly my local library (Archway) does seem to get a constant stream of new books at the moment, and the fluoro's which stack up the bookshops and bestseller lists tend to be left on the shelves (for me to examine). But I do feel a touch out of place, I rarely see twenty- thirtysomethings in there.

Eight. Only adult books authors though are Christie and King. Oh yeah and 'adult' author JK Rowling. Pete may I remind you of the Horny Hat incidentally?

Christ, counting properly I can rack up 30 of these authors. Criminey. Maybe this is because I use the library and their books are always there (a number will be due to childhood holiday parents book desperation). Horny hat not forgotten.

ok i haf read six and that includes two not since teen-dom (blyton/christie)

at school in our quite little "house library" there was a copy of Ed McBain's ULTIMATE FISH which no one had read but all tht had the most hilarious title evah. Also for a while THE GODFATHER (confiscated), THE HAPPY HOOKER (confiscated), and a book called THE SURROGATE WIFE (abt a sex thearpist who cured sex probs by er having sex w.her clients: confiscated) and EMMANUELLE (confiscated AND TORN IN HALF!!)

Ed McBain - he does the best police proceedural. Corny as hell, but excellent little one sitting brain workouts. Proper pulp stuff (especially the earlier ones).

And one of Kurosawa's best films, High and Low, is a McBain adaptation.

And under his own name - Evan Hunter - he also wrote the screenplay to 'The Byrds' and the novel 'The Blackboard Jungle', thereby inventing rock and roll hhok...

Funny to see Goscinny in this list - surely he's a writer/artist (with assistants, sssh) rather than an 'author' (he said in a esp. powerful spasm of pedantry...)

hitchcock = gene clark shockah

Wow - now that's some Freudian slip...

Yes Goscinny made me smile, Asterix and the Goths being the name of SinXor's band, obv...

they are called * & the goths = they are hardly going be goths

D'oh! I missed Asterix on that list! So, I have read one of them

At junior school, me, Navraj, Laud and Varinder had some Asterix books we had borrowed from the school library stolen from our desks! (those old fold up desks, they were great!) The teacher was going to make us pay for them! Outrage! Then, one day the books mysteriously turned up in a carrier bag in the cloak room! The prime suspect (who shall remain nameless) had obviouly had their concious catch up with them!

Asterix were the cool books to read. Tintin a definite no-no!

I thought the article rather patronising. Of course, I prefer the earlier, grittier cookson (blah blah) I'm curious about tastes in music amongst some IL*erz - pop Pop POP!!!!! vs taste in lit. Thee equiv of chart pop surely pop romances/shop-fux/aga-saga w gold blox0r print author's name on cover? (NB quite poss I am completely wrong abt this)

aga-saga <=> chris de burgh (what kind of stove does GALE have eh? eh?)

(also hannibal <=> van der graaf generator)

Read about a dozen of them. About half childrens stuff with Andrew other half crime, though no James M Caino nthe list shockingly enough.
McBain def not to be sneered at, tightly plotted little novels, short stories esp. good, follows on neatly from the hardboiled fiction of 40's and 50's.

As for Tintin, never cared for him myself, but whenever we're in Ottakars Andrew (age 7) makes a beeline for them and sits reading it for half an hour, while I wait reading the Kenneth Tynan diaries (£25 are they mad?).

hergé's adventures of tintin!=terrific.

hergé's adventures of tintin != terrific

i'm sorry i'm not going to say it

go on.

"Hânnibâl" <=> T®!cky's "M0th3r" f3r fux/-\k3 mâ®k! @# ! @# !

"T!nt!n" OTOH !s fux!ng fanta§t!c. What is wr0|\|g w/u p30pl3?¿?¿?¿

Hee hee, I went to the library today and borrowed books by two of the authors on the list.

Goscinny = classic. Cowriter of Asterix, Lucky Luke and Le Petit Nicolas? Godlike genius, oh yes. (!! I didn't realise Morris of Lucky Luke fame died last year! Nobody tells me anything! Sigh. And it's most unfair that LL books are really hard to find in English. I have a load of them in French and Portuguese but it'd be nice to read some in a language I actually know well enough to get puns in. (I found out that he'd died from this page, which seems to sell English Lucky Lukes, but there are only 5 titles and I think I have them all in other languages.))

Tintin = not nearly so classic, I found a lot of them a bit boring as a kid, but I still read most of them, bought a couple, and was a bit disappointed that the Tintin shop/museum/thing was shut when I visited Bruges.