Book Meme

On World Book Night 2011 in the UK the BBC showed a program called The Books We Really Read presented by Sue Perkins. The BBC’s decision to focus their programming purely on the ‘literary fiction’ genre was in many people’s opinion flawed.

Science Fiction author Stephen Hunt (@SFCrowsnest) started the ball rolling with his vitriolic response to the coverage. Subsequently he has put together a petition of as many of the UK’s Science fiction authors as possible. Naturally the BBC is defending itself over the programme and subsequent discussion. There’s a good Guardian piece here with a bit more background.

So what do I think?

I reckon that Stephen Hunt is right to criticise the BBC. At present they are coming across as having a somewhat elitist view of what constitutes a good read without, it appears, having done any research. Hunt’s observation that the BBC was limited in outlook certainly stands. If there had been any evidence of joined-up thinking someone would have pointed out to the editors of The Books We Really Read and subsequent discussion programme that the BBC has a big SciFi output. Dr Who or Torchwood anyone?

In that case What Do People Really, Really Read?

I compile the Most Read list for FridayReads every week and there are always a few surprises but what always delights and amazes me is the sheer variety of books that people read. Only a small part of it fits in to that odd category of Literary Fiction. In fact I’d go so far as to say that Literary Fiction is the exception rather than the rule when readers make their choice.

Here is the most read list from FridayReads on 8th April 2011. I’ve added the Genre classifications, you can tell me if you disagree.

The top three are heavily promoted but do include real reading data so I’ve left them there for this list. If you have never joined in FridayReads before then you also need to know that the list changes every week. This is real reading data and is not based on sales data (eg Amazon).

The data is gathered from participants World Wide! It’s a global thing (thanks to @ibc4 for the prompt).