BBC Big Read

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Inevitably Lord of the Rings was the UK's favourite ever book, beating Jane Austen (Pride & Prejudice) into second place. Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials) was third, Douglas Adams (Hitchhikers Guide) fourth and JK Rowling (Harry Potter) fifth.

750,000 people voted apparently.

Assume everyone agrees with this top five!

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Thursday, 18 December 2003 16:10 (twenty-one years ago)

i've only read hitchhiker out of the top five...

― robin (robin), Thursday, 18 December 2003 20:07 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm surprised Pullman did so well. I thought his series was good but not great; I've never understood the mass critical and popular adulation his work enjoys.

― Berkeley Sackett (calstars), Thursday, 18 December 2003 21:27 (twenty-one years ago)

HIS DARK MATERIALS

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 19 December 2003 09:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Five years ago, Jane Austen would have won it hands down. Nearly all the books were either filmed or made into tv mini-series. Then the films of LOTR came along and the result was a foregone conclusion.

Hitchikers is the real surprise in there. Not least in beating Harry Potter.

I voted for Love in the Time of Cholera. Which was placed about 93rd. That's how in tune with popular opinion I am.

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Friday, 19 December 2003 10:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Okay, seriously, what's with this? LOTR is one book? Last time I checked it was three. Okay, yeah I know it's one book in three parts.

Do you think trilogies should count as one book or three? Because in the case of LOTR, okay, I can see it being three parts of one story. In the case of His Dark Materials, it's a fucking triology -- a Series. Especially now that there are new 'adventures' on deck (Lyra's Oxford *cough cash-in cough* and The Book of Dust) after the initial crisis is over.

― Catty (Catty), Friday, 19 December 2003 11:52 (twenty-one years ago)

There was some debate on this in the run-up. Why was the fourth Harry Potter book selected but, as you say, Tolkien and Pullmann get the whole trilogy accepted?

I think LOTR won because it was considered funnier than Pride & Prejudice.

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Friday, 19 December 2003 12:02 (twenty-one years ago)

I've read three of the five (haven't read Pullman or Rowling) but generally, I agree with the high status of those three.

As to the trilogy debate... well, I started to get into it on the other thread. I think three novels that form a cohesive plot arc (and also make no sense upon being read on their own as separate stories) count as one book. However, serialised stories with the same characters - such as the long tradition of mystery novels such as Agatha Christies, which share characters and have common history, but are readable in themselves as complete stories - do not count as one book.

― HRH Queen Kate (kate), Friday, 19 December 2003 12:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Gormenghast is a blurry one. The first two novels are part of a greater story. The third was written years afterwards, bears little resemblance to the other two (wasn't included in the TV adaptation and yet Gormenghast is considered a trilogy.

Not that it made the top 100 even though it wees all over LOTR.

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Friday, 19 December 2003 12:11 (twenty-one years ago)

I admit I haven't read LOTR, and after seeing the films don't really want to. My idea of the book will be too clouded by the films. However, I can tell all three of those books worked towards one purpose, so I would count it as one book.

To a certain extent, I can see His Dark Materials doing the same, but since Pullman is continuing this story, I do not consider HDM to be One Book. Following the exciting adventures of Dust does not mean each entry is another part of one book or even one story.

Harry Potter is also a series of books, not one. It's just his never-ending battles against his evil nemesis.

― Catty (Catty), Friday, 19 December 2003 12:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Just what does it say about us Brits and our response to literature that with the exception of Pride and Prejudice the top 5 was basically a list for kids/adolescents?

the voting demographic. yes ok
still perhaps it would be different if adults didn't feel obliged to read LOTR/Harry Potter/Pullman as they do currently. I am one of those snobs who despairs at that state of affairs, and i feel sure its related to ppl reaching/accepting maturity later. I fear for the future....

― pete s, Saturday, 20 December 2003 02:28 (twenty-one years ago)

haah yeah that's one great exception you got there

― tom west (thomp), Saturday, 20 December 2003 07:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Just what does it say about us Brits and our response to literature that with the exception of Pride and Prejudice the top 5 was basically a list for kids/adolescents?

maybe it says that we can recognise that a book is good no matter who the original target audience is.
well, some of us anyway.

― zappi (joni), Sunday, 21 December 2003 14:00 (twenty-one years ago)

well okay zappi, but then why wasn't it some other good books aimed at kids? why not alice/wind in the willows/pooh/oz/secret garden/stig/peter pan/earthsea/pinnochio/narnia/treasure island/kidnapped/peter rabbit/dark is rising/english roses?
(nearly all of) these are deeply beloved by the reading public, young and old. my point being that it would be nice to think that what you say zappi is true, but i tend to think it demonstrates that our response to lit is 'well, what have we been swamped in for the last few years/had hyped to the max in our faces? lets go for that then, yeah that's my favourite book! and if it's a kid's book all the better 'cos thinking's bad! and anyway i've got it on playstation and dvd aswell!'

― pete s, Sunday, 21 December 2003 23:30 (twenty-one years ago)

which, to grind the point into the dust, is no response to literature at all.

― pete s, Sunday, 21 December 2003 23:31 (twenty-one years ago)

The opposition you make between kids lit and 'thinking' doesn't suggest too big a dose of the latter Pete.

I think it's simply a demographic thing - what books have the happiest memories associated? That skews the list to childhood-read books for a lot of people (and some of the ppl voting for Potter etc. will be PARENTS who are grateful to be reading their kids something that isn't didactic and has some narrative drive!). The criteria for the Big Read wasn't "best ever books" after all, it was "best-loved".

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Sunday, 21 December 2003 23:46 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah i know that and i'm a grumpy old sod, i'll concede that to anyone. plus i have no kids of my own. but i did pause before i wrote my last but one sentence, and then said to myself no do it because it does convey part of what i think: kids lit, to me, is primarily imaginitive entertainment - of different orders of course - and will not test the old grey matter unless you are want it to eg looking for various sociological/political/psychological meanings which may or may not be there. a good example is alice (one of the best books ever written for me) which you can treat as a surrealist/freudian text if you so choose, but it doesn't ask you to do so. however sit down and read portrait of the artist as a young man and you're not going to get through it without being confronted with all sorts of questions about the nature of being human, about social politics, views of history, even literature itself. in other words you are forced to think. noone's going to tell me that's the case with harry potter. all of this is only in answer to your first sentence, i agree with the rest of what you've written.

― pete s, Monday, 22 December 2003 00:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Pete it will make you think IF YOU ARE A KID! Possibly even if you are an adult, it depends how used/rusty you are at the kind of cognitive processes reading fiction sparks. It might be the memory of thinking in those ways that made people vote the way they did.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Monday, 22 December 2003 10:45 (twenty-one years ago)

didnt realise how snarky my posted sounded. oops.
anyway i think your original post pete was saying you feared for the future, but 2 of the 5 books are v. modern childrens books that have got more kids today reading than anything else, surely thats a good thing for the future? i mean it sounds like a whole load of kids voted for this thing, and there is no way that would have happened ten years ago!

― zappi (joni), Monday, 22 December 2003 11:39 (twenty-one years ago)

I think I am right in saying that about ten years ago (It may have been slightly less) the Times had a readers Poll about the most popular book, and the winner then was Lord of the rings.

― Davel (Davel), Monday, 22 December 2003 12:05 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah i agree zappi, it is great that kids should get get so excited about reading, and harry potter and his dark materials are both good things for them to focus their energy on. hopefully they won't stop there.
davel, for me LOTR is the sgt peppers of the book world. its so oppressively tedious how it keeps coming top.

― pete s, Monday, 22 December 2003 13:13 (twenty-one years ago)

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