World Book Day poll ... winner is Pride and Prejudice
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".
Read entire article at Guardian
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".