I nearly fell off my chair when I read this morning’s report in Stylist magazine about the UK’s favourite books. My friend Constance clearly did too. “If The Da Vinci Code is really one of the UK’s best-loved books then I’m emigrating,” she tweeted. Her reaction reminded me of Salman Rushdie, who in 2005 described it as "a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name."
But sure enough, Dan Brown’s cryptic thriller was top of the list, followed by The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis, 1984 by George Orwell, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and then JRR Tolkein’s The Fellowship of the Ring.
Following hot on their heels came another classic from Tolkein, The Hobbit, then The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Charotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and in tenth place, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but apart from Jane Eyre, none of the others would make my top ten. Off the top of my head, I started compiling my favourite books. Let me know your most-loved novels, but here's my current list:
1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
2. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
3. Germinal by Emile Zola
4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
5. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
6. A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow
7. How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
8. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
9. Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie
10. Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
PS. The survey, carried out by eye health supplement company ICaps, polled more than 1,000 adults across the UK.
