OK People.....what's your favorite book?


BY some distance - and no great surprise - Australia's favourite book is JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, its popularity undoubtedly influenced by the movies.Next comes Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, probably driven by television's version. And third is the Bible, possibly a surprise given our relaxed attitude to church attendance.
Our fourth is also somewhat unexpected: To Kill a Mockingbird, the anti-racism novel by American writer Harper Lee -- perhaps a reflection of our school syllabus reading.
The findings, televised last night, are based on a nationwide ABC poll of about 15,000 readers. The top 10 suggests we are a well-read nation with a taste for humour and some substance, even if much of it is middle-class.
Tim Winton's big hit of recent times, Cloudstreet (fifth) and Albert Facey's moving biography A Fortunate Life (10th) are the only Australian titles in the top 10.
Harry Potter's latest adventure, The Order of the Phoenix, made its inevitable entrance at sixth with George Orwell's classic Nineteen Eighty-Four close behind. A classic of popular culture, Douglas Adams's The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, came in at eight.
No surprise at nine - Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. But it had to share the spot with Joseph Heller's anti-war opus Catch-22.
In the voting, the top 10 were well ahead of the rest of the field of 100 titles that led the 5000-plus titles cited.
Several well-known children's books featured in the top 20, including CS Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows, both of which were pipped at 16 by Dave Pilkey's irreverent Captain Underpants and the Invasion of the Incredibly Naughty Cafeteria Ladies from Outer Space.
In his commentary on the list, the project's manager, Mark Macleod, recalled that our reading tastes changed in l998 with a swing to history and the interface of fiction and non-fiction.
Dava Sobel's Longitude was an enormous seller but does not appear among our favourites.
"My guess is that we find them interesting, but we don't love them," Mr Macleod said. "We asked for people's favourite book, one they have an emotional response to, and apparently we don't have an emotional response to information, however fascinating."
Critic and broadcaster Cath Kenneally thought the list reflected an educated and well-read reader but with "not terribly adventurous tastes".
"Several choices show us succumbing to media hype - Harry Potter, Jane Austen, Tolkien - and they also show us to still have a preference for escapism and genteel English culture," she said.
Like Patrick White, Miles Franklin prize-winning novelist Frank Moorhouse did not make the top 100. With no sense of resentment, he said: "Ranking people does disservice to the huge variety of imaginative work. There is no intellectual value in this approach to the arts."

Just for the record, my favorite book is To kill a mockingbird. It was the first adult book i had ever read.....i was 12. In saying this though, i do agree with Frank Moorhouse, you can't rate this kind of stuff. I read sooooooo much and have so many books that in their own right have given me pleasure, its not fair to rate them. We all have different tastes and experiences, how we relate to a book is so individual.