Winner of UK's Big Read Announced : LOTR....

The UK has been having a Big Read contest whereby the public have an opportunity to vote for their favourite book(s). A few weeks back, the list was brought down from the hundreds to the top 21, with LOTR leading the pack.

Last night, the top five were announced, and LOTR (as expected) came first.

Here are the top five:

1. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling

Tolkien's book took over 174, 000 of the votes with it's nearest rival managing just under 135, 000 votes.

Tolkien's grandson, Simon, collected the award.

Rings triumphs in Big Read vote

 

I'm a massive LOTR fan, and I do love the books, however I do not believe it should've won, it only won due to the success of the films.

The LOTR books are highly overrated, but i still love them.

 

Strange that four out of those five books are science fiction/fantasies.

 

As far as the top 21 go, LOTR got my vote simply because there was nothing else in the list that I loved so much.

However, I agree that its victory in the contest is in partly due to the success of the films. I know many people that saw the first two films, and then read the books.

 

It's quite likely that a lot of people who had seen the movies but hadn't read the books voted anyway.

 

It's not a big surprise. LOTR was the 20th century's second biggest selling book, after the Bible.

 

Third, actually, after Quo Vadis. People conveniently forget that book because it's so old, but at the turn of the century it was considered to be in more homes than the Bible, and still ranks as one of the top sellers of all time worldwide.

I find it hard to take seriously any list that has a Harry Potter book in its top five. It's certainly not a very critical list now, is it? I like Harry Potter, but come on...

 

Yes, it isn't all that critical, or fair for that matter.

Celebrities were asked to make short films about their own favourite books and although it seems like an interesting idea on paper, the fact that the short films continually affected the voting was disconcerting. Just because nobody choose to make a short about To Kill A Mockingbird, the book continued to fall in terms of positions on every single show. All books to make the top five were given their own short films.

I found it hard to believe that so many great books weren't even on the top 10.

But over here in the UK it's a first of its kind and so the final results are making news around these parts.