Kevin's Watch

Heard about a survey between men women asking their favorite novel of all time.
This was the result:

The top five books on the women's list were Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Handmaid's Tale, Middlemarch and Pride and Prejudice. The top five men's titles were The Outsider, Heart of Darkness, Crime and Punishment, The Great Gatsby and Brighton Rock.

While listening to a talk radio show, they laughed and asked if those being surveyed were Literary proffesers, or if they answered the survey more like what novels they WISHED were their favorites.

So they did their own, and asked men and women to state their favorite novel, that they actually read...and not in school.
I sent in Lord Foul's bane...but it didn't bakc to final cut..these were their results:

Women
1. A Fine Balance
2. A Prayer for Owen Meaney
3. Poisonwood Bible
4. The Outlander
5. Pride and Prejudice

Men
1. Lord of the Rings
2. Grapes of Wrath
3. DaVinci Code
And then these books all tied
4/5 Kite Runner
4/5 Poisonwood Bible
4/5 The Skystone
4/5 Great Expectations

Just thought it was interesting.

4. The Outlander

heh. diana gabaldon!!! oh yeah!! DEFINITELY in my top five best reads of all time!!! the entire Outlander series!!

yay!! men in kilts!! WOOOO HOOOO!!

Drew, yeah, I suppose the talk show folks had a good laugh at any who reads books (if they're copying their U.S. collegues), presuming you're listening to a Canadian talk show. IME, I doubt many radio talk people would know the difference between fiction and non-fiction.

Regardless, the poll they're talking about had some other interesting points, more than its meaningless list of favorites. For example, the poll showed that statistically men between the ages of 21 and 50 do not read fiction. This is not true for folks here. But the poll considers the population at large, and not the statiscal anomaly one would find here. IME, I think I can support their findings, my old boss, BTW he's two years older than me, would never read any fiction since he'd left HS unless coerced by college instructors. And the husband of a woman I used to work for, two years younger than me, never read fiction as an adult.

The Origonal poll was done, I beleive, in London.
The radio show is on the CBC; it's a mostly talk show-they're not tpical rock DJ's

Still it seems more realistic to have Lord of the Rings rather than Heart of Darkneson the list for men..and the Outlander rather than wuthering heights on the womens list.