I'm Feeling Sheepish, I Guess

[taellosse]

The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below.

01. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
02. Italicise those you intend to read
03. Underline the books you LOVE.
04. Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've only read 6 and force books upon them.

001

Comments

[artan_eter]

I think that some factor of the above statistics include querying what "average" means, and also how many public HS people actually do the reading for class, or even could recognize the title to a book they read at that period.

At least 20% of them are comparably recent additions to the list, and half of those will likely be off it in 10 years.

[taellosse]

Yeah, I was noticing the prevalence of recent bestsellers on there. I really don't think something like His Dark Materials belongs on a list like this. I can begin to see an argument for Harry Potter, just because of the sheer volume of its readers, but only barely. I don't think it can be reasonably determined how a book that's been published in the last 10 years stacks up against all other books ever published and still available in print. It simply isn't a fair comparison to make on any objective scale, and subjective scales are useless.

I was operating on the assumption that "average" meant that they surveyed a bunch of people over the age of 18, asked them how many books they've read off the list, took the total number of books read by all of them, divided by the number of survey respondents, and came up with 6. That is what the word "average" is supposed to mean when speaking of statistics. Of course, that doesn't address how random and/or representative their sample of adults was, which is an entirely separate issue.

[gemmintheruff]

I want to know the criteria used for putting books on the list. Some of these are NOT worthy of "classical notice". Sheesh. I know I'm well read, but I can't take the entire list seriously.

[taellosse]

Can't help you, I'm afraid. I agree about some of them. Putting this up here is just me saying, "baaah" however--I know nothing about the origins of the list.