Kim has this thing on her blog about the Angus & Robertson top 100 books list, apparently the most popular books as voted for by the generic Australian public. I read a fair bit and I am the proud owner of an Arts degree, so you'd think maybe I had read a few of them, but apparently not. My total has not changed since last time I looked at this list, which was some time last year (in fact I think the last time I read any of them was one afternoon in 2004 when I was at a loose end in Oslo and I read The Five People You Meet In Heaven while standing up and trying to look inconspicuous in a bookshop). I have read 24 of them.
"Well", I thought to myself, "that result is hopeless. Perhaps emigration is the solution", and so I found a list of the top 100 books as voted for by the staff of Waterstones, the well-known UK bookshop (or at least, it's in the UK. I don't know if it's from there, or confined to there, but whatever). As it turns out I have only read 20 of them, so maybe moving there is not the solution I was after (thank god, frankly. I'm not a big fan of the UK)*.
Then, while googling idly to find out if I am American or not, I discovered a list of the 10 books most often borrowed from Scottish libraries, from which I have to assume I am not Scottish either, or if I am I am illiterate because I have only read one of them and it was a kiddy book.
And so the only possible (acceptable) explanations are the following: people that vote for these lists/work in bookshops/borrow library books are all philistines. Or possibly I don't feel like I need to chase after the bestseller lists to decide what to read because I have an eclectic and interesting taste of my own. Or possibly it's that I often read what I find, none of which is particularly new or popular. Or maybe all those lists were hijacked by people with various axes to grind, and in fact they are not representative of the most popular books at all.
After all, it can't possibly be that I haven't read anything. After all, I can almost guarantee I have read everything on my own top 100 list.
* As it turns out I am quite English in terms of the things I haven't finished reading, though, with 6 of their list of 10 books most often abandoned mid-way through unfinished by me (and only one of the remaining 4 successfully started and finished)
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3 comments:
Huh. And all this time I thought I was American. Apparently I was wrong. Although I have never been to Australia, I have read 68 of the 100 books on the list.
Although in all fairness, until recently my job as a public librarian required me to keep abreast of the reading interests of our customers.
My reading has become much more esoteric since as moving to Switzerland caused me to enter "early retirement."
Didn't bother checking the UK or US lists. The most popular books in the English language world tend to be remarkably similar with only a few "local authors" in each.
Actually, I was surprised by how different the Australian and UK lists I linked to here were. A bit of a survey shows that there are only 24 books shared by the two lists. And that I have only read 7 of those 24.
I'm sure there's some deep insight to be gained about the nature of me from all these numbers, but I'm not sure yet what it is...
Only 24? How surprising. I would have thought it to be more.
Perhaps there is also some insight to be gained not only by the numbers, but also by the fact you are counting them up! :-)
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