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.......presumably, if Pride and Prejudice had been released as a 10-hour movie trilogy, that would have won instead.
I love LOTR, but- the greatest work of English fiction?
Shows what polls are worth, I suppose.

This!, of course 'should' have won. Still I,m not bitter.

Yes, you truly have a gift.

Not sure what for, though...........

Well, it is a "Big read". 1193 pages in my 1 Volume India paper edition.

Mart

There isn't such a thing as the best which is why you have your top tens and top one hundreds

cheers
B....OZ

If there is a winner, it's reading since the whole contest has sparked an interest in books that a great many people knew little or nothing about. The fact that Pride And Prejudice finished second, considering a huge amount of the male population think it's pants, is a superb result. The good showing by To Kill A Mockingbird, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Catch-22, Catcher In The Rye at al proves that there is an appetite for a good story, well-written; Winnie The Pooh, the Potter, Wind In The Willows, The Lion etc show that "children's" books can stay with you for life; and the strong anti-Lords, anti-Potter, anti-populist debate (usually instigated and championed by "literary" types who expect applause over the placing of a carefully crafted colon) shows that there are still authors uninterested in giving readers what they want---a story with a beginning, a middle and an end; in that order (or not, in the case of Catch-22). The AS Byatt's of this world can gripe all they want, but they are not encouraging the readers of the future.

Oh, and LOTR was always going to win---in spite of what you or I might vote for. The best? No. But it'd be a boring old world if we all agreed.

Yeah, fair play.
I suppose I was just pleading for less of these 'Top 100' type of things, and recognition that tastes vary too widely for them ever to have any meaning.

We're all like the narrator in Hi Fidelity, constantly compiling lists of our likes and dislikes, and judging other people by what they think of things that mean something to us.

Maybe, but do remember Lord of the Rings won the Waterstones Book of the Millenium award three years ago, way before the films were out or even part of the general public's awareness. Then, as now, it was a one horse race.

--
"Let's do it..."

It wasn't part of my 'awareness' that Waterstone's had even held such a competition...
BTW, I hear Jackson' next effort is entitled 'Saruman: the Lost Years'..........