What's Your Top 10?

The British chose their favourite books for World Book Day (1st March in Britain) and now Malaysians will get a chance to do the same.

StarMag announced its Malaysia’s Top 10 Favourite Books survey today. It will soon be available online as well. Keep checking back here to find out when and where to do it that way. BUt if you can't wait, email or snail mail in your list.

What are your favourites?

MOST book-lovers know that April 23 is designated World Book and Copyright Day by Unesco (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation). This day is celebrated in the hope of promoting reading and publishing and the protection of intellectual property through copyright.

The date was chosen by Unesco’s general conference because it happens to be the shared date of death for literary giants Miguel Cervantes, William Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega; as well as the date of birth of, among other respected authors, Maurice Druon and Vladimir Nabokov. 

In Britain, World Book Day is celebrated on March 1 and this year, a survey was conducted to find the 10 books the nation “couldn’t live without” (www.worldbookday10.com/vote). The results (some of which StarMag published in these pages on March 11: Classics catch the heart) revealed that Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is the book most loved by the British reading public. It was followed by The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (in that order). The highest-ranking contemporary work of fiction was Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks, which came 17th in the poll.

What books would Malaysian readers choose? To celebrate World Book Day on April 23, StarMag is holding its own poll. What are your 10 all-time favourite books? Share your list and we’ll tell you what everyone else is reading, too, when we publish the results of this survey in our April Reads Monthly pull-out, on April 29.

Send your list by April 15, 2007, to:

“Malaysia’s Top 10 Favourite Books (StarMag)”

 

• Via e-mail: [email protected]

 

• Via fax: 03-7955 4039

 

• Via post: Menara Star, No. 15, Jalan 16/11, 46350 Petaling Jaya, Selangor

 

Your list should:

• Comprise 10 of your favourite fictional works

 

• Have each author’s name and each book’s full title (please be careful to spell both correctly!)

All entries MUST have the following details or they will not be counted as part of the survey:

 

• Full name

 

• Age

 

• Gender

 

• Occupation

 

• Mailing address  

Go on, start browsing your bookshelves!