The Places You Will Go

Middle Earth Triumphs

StarMag, 29th April 2007

Classic fantasy is the clear winner

Here it is, folks, Malaysia’s top 10 favourite fiction titles!

THE Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic tale of the struggle between good and evil, is a clear favourite with Malaysian readers.

It topped StarMag’s poll of Malaysians’ top 10 favourite works of fiction by a large margin, garnering 25 more votes than the Harry Potter series, which came in second, followed closely by the American classic To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

In Anticipation of Malaysians' Top 10 Books

From StarMag, 21st April 2006.

Books Malaysians Love

THE original plan, when StarMag first decided to run a poll on Malaysians' favourite books, was to ask readers to submit one title each. However, the groans, moans and curses that issued from the mouths of those whom we first ran the idea by prompted an increase to 10 fiction titles.

The grumbling continued, though. As one reader, lawyer Animah Kosai, says, “If not for the deadline, I’d still be vascilating. It was a tough choice – I had to decide, one (book) per author. Otherwise there’d be more Murakami, Kundera and Nabakov.” Asked how long the list should have been? She says, “How long is a piece of string? I bet if I had to submit the list again, it would be slightly different.” The list Kosai did submit includes Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

The content of the list which we asked readers for was also a subject of some discussion among StarMag’s staff. Deciding on a solely fiction list proved slightly problematic as My Family and Other Animals and James Herriot’s books about his life as a vet in the British Yorkshire Dales popped up on several lists.

Should we restrict our readers to just books originally written in English? No, we decided that this would mean leaving out some really important works of literature, like Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, Miguel Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s This Earth of Mankind.

Of course, we fully expected to be inundated with lists featuring The Da Vinci Code, but Dan Brown’s bestseller doesn’t seem to be a favourite of as many Malaysians as evinced from local sales of the book. It might be a case of anonymity not allowing some readers to be as honest as they otherwise might be about their preferences.

“Some people might just want to appear intelligent so they’d probably include a list of classics or maybe some really ‘smart’ books. It could lead to pretty pretentious lists and inaccurate results!” says Julianne Leow, a 20-year-old Universiti Malaya undergraduate whose Top 10, which include Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder, was chosen based on books that made a lasting impression and one or two titles that “influenced my thinking, perception and – dare I say it – life in some way.” 

We received e-mails from the day the poll was announced (April 1) and the overall response has been healthy considering that we are a nation who, supposedly, reads an average of two books per person per year. Look out for the final results in our Reads Monthly pullout next week. 

Leow predicts that J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings will top the charts. Do you agree? You and your book club buddies can start placing bets now on what Malaysians' favourite books are!

 

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.

And Then What Happened?

In The Daily Mail yesterday, "According to a survey, Britons spend an average of £4,000 on books during their lifetime, but fail to finish almost half of them."

The novel that topped the poll of book the British buy but don't read/finish is DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little. (Check out John Crace's hilarious synopses of some of the books, in  The Guardian Unlimited's The Digested Read.)

Have a look at the full lists (fiction and non-fiction) and see if they match yours.

My list includes Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and Diana Wynne Jones's Dalemark Quartet.

I don't think I'll ever read Proust's seven-volume novel. (Actually, I'm on the verge of selling the four volumes I own. I am suddenly unsure if I should though. )

I recently started Cart and Cwidder (the first Dalemark book), again (probably the sixth time in as many years), and would have continued had I not been distracted by Terry Pratchett and Death.

One of my reading resolutions for 2007 is to read it. And The Wizard of Earthsea.

World Book Day

World Book Day was celebrated in the United Kingdom and Ireland yesterday (2 March 2006).

To mark the event, The Guardian Unlimited held an online survey about readers' tastes in endings in novels. The results show that most people prefer to close their books feeling happy, and Pride and Prejudice seems to be a big favourite when it comes to novels with happy endings.

Read more here and here.

Other World Book Day celebrations included children's authors entertaining kids in The Guardian's Newsroom Theatre. You can listen to Malachy Doyle reading his picture book The Dancing Tiger; Ian Whybrow singing songs; and many more. 

How Should Harry Potter Die?

It looks like there are quite a few of you out there who are really into the idea of Harry Potter dying. I've received several emails asking about the poll that appeared and then disappeared. Well, here's the link again. You probably have to join the Yahoo group SO what do YOU think to vote, so if you think that's more bother than it's worth, just post a comment with your suggestion(s) for the best (i.e. worst) way for Harry to pop his cork.

If you want Harry to die but aren't sick enough to think of the way he should go, here are a few ideas:

• Force fed pate til he chokes.
• Tickled to death with the tail feathers of a thousand parrots.
• Baked in a pie like those 4 and 20 blackbirds.
• Turned into a pumpkin and made into soup.

So go on then. Think slow, think painful, think no more bad books! Yayyy!!!

Harry Potter: Death by Playmobil