Britain's dilemma: Read the book or watch the movie?
It was billed as an eight-month-long national "read-athon." But the "Big Read," a quest to find the favorite novel (and encourage reading) in the land of Shakespeare, had a somewhat counterproductive effect.
Yes, copious quantities of the shortlisted classics will be lying gift-wrapped under Christmas trees in Britain this year. The catch is that the majority will be DVD film versions of the novels, not the books themselves.
The BBC-sponsored event definitely spurred book sales. But in this visual age, it also generated a huge spike in purchases of DVD film and television versions of the favorites.
Take Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" (No. 2 behind the winner: J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings"). The 19th-century tale of courtship and conceit saw a 73 percent jump in book sales over the period - and a 977 percent rise in DVD sales of a television series based on the book, according to data from Amazon.com, the online vendor.
"In today's busy society, it is very difficult to find the time to sit down and read a book," says Ray Johnson, professor of film heritage at Staffordshire University. "People with jobs and children often find themselves dipping in and out of books and it takes them weeks to reach the end."
The film-to-book purchase ratio was mirrored across most of the top vote-getters, which included J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (No. 5), Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird (No. 6), A.A. Milne's Winnie The Pooh (No. 7), George Orwell's 1984 (No. 8).
Britain's list of favorite novels was based on more than 750,000 votes cast. The top 100 were selected in April through the nominations of 140,000 members of the public. Participation built, and further balloting produced the final 21 in October.
Of the yarns on that short list, film sales rose 1,500 percent - more than three times the uplift in book sales.
The final vote was conducted by text message, e-mail, telephone, and other voting methods, with the top 10 picked earlier this month.
Official data shows that illiteracy in Britain hovers around the 15 percent mark, depending on the precise definition. More than 1 in 10 were unable in a test to understand instructions on a packet of seeds, according to the National Literacy Trust.
Given such data, publishing executives, critics, and experts say that the Big Read, which was orchestrated by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and widely followed around the country, was a worthwhile endeavor.
Schools set up special reading groups and events. Book clubs - a growing phenomenon here - took up the challenge, incorporating works from the top 100 into their reading schedule. More than 2,000 new groups registered with the Big Read database.
"The good thing was it got lot of people into shops, talking about books they wouldn't have talked about," says Robert McCrum, literary editor of The Observer newspaper. "It raised the whole debate. That's a good thing."
He took issue with some of the choices, which were heavily biased towards the 20th century, and found no room for some of the forefathers of the modern novel genre such as Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Daniel Defoe.
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