Literary fibs

TWO out of three Britons have lied about reading books they have not, and George Orwell’s 1984 tops the literary fib list, according to a survey. Commissioned by organisers of World Book Day, an annual celebration of reading in Britain, the study also shows that the author people really enjoy reading is J.K. Rowling, creator of the bestselling Harry Potter wizard series.

According to the survey, 65 per cent of people have pretended to have read books, and of those, 42 per cent singled out 1984. Next on the list came War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and in third place was James Joyce’s Ulysses.

The Bible was in fourth position, and newly elected US President Barack Obama’s autobiography Dreams from My Father came ninth.

Aside from a list of 10 titles which respondents were asked to tick or leave blank, many admitted wrongly claiming they had read other "classics", including Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Herman Melville.

Those who lied have claimed to have read:

n 1984 — George Orwell (42 per cent)

n War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy (31)

n Ulysses — James Joyce (25)

n The Bible (24)

n Madame Bovary — Gustave Flaubert (16)

n A Brief History of Time — Stephen Hawking (15)

n Midnight’s Children — Salman Rushdie (14)

n In Remembrance of Things Past —Marcel Proust (9)

n Dreams from My Father — Barack Obama (6)

n The Selfish Gene — Richard Dawkins (6)

— Reuters

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