So the verdict is in and we really are a nation of Bible-thumping, soap opera-loving nerds.
The results of a Harris Poll on America’s favorite book placed the Bible in the #1 spot, which should please a sizable portion of the religious right, until they realize every other book on the list is fiction. That alone should – should – give them some perspective as they try to submit the Bible as evidence in the ongoing evolution debate (the funniest account of which is a throwaway line in the movie “Strangers with Candy”).
I’m okay with the Bible coming in at #1 – after all, the writing’s good and it’s filled with love, sex, drugs and violence. But as to whether it’s fiction or non, I look at it as the literary version of “The Hills.” Some of it is undoubtedly based on fact, but a good portion has been fucked with by producers.
Two great series of Books for Nerds got lumped in rather unceremoniously as “Lord of the Rings” (#3) and “Harry Potter” (#4), which, regardless of how you feel about both series (hate Rings; love Harry), is a bit of an insult to the prolific and talented J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling. They each wrote a carefully planned series of stories that inspired mass followings, only to have them thrown in as a pile. If you’re doing that, why not just “Stephen King,” instead of “The Stand” (#5)? Because as much as I admire “The Stand” aren’t all his books pretty much good v. evil, with evil often getting the upper hand? Which also takes us back to the Bible.
That the list contains not only “Gone With the Wind” but two books by Dan Brown makes me weep. “Gone With the Wind,” I kind of understand because of the impact it made when published, not to mention it resulting in the only old movie most people have seen that didn’t either get re-run endlessly at Christmas or feature a witch with an aversion of water. But #2 is a bit high. And this is from someone who not only owns a 1936 edition of the book — but both the sequels sanctioned by her heirs. It’s a soap opera. It’s the fanciest romance novel in the history of publishing. It glorifies the Klan, for Pete’s sake. It couldn’t have come in at 11 or 12?
And Dan Brown. I didn’t read “Angels and Demons” because I read “The Da Vinci Code.” Which sucked. I’m by no means a literary snob (see: GWTW sequels confession), but every time I started to get caught up in the plot, I remembered what was at stake and just didn’t care at all.
As for the rest of the list, America got it right with “To Kill a Mockingbird” (#7) and “Catcher in the Rye” (#10), even if there’s a bit of a whiff of last-minute panic to those choices. It’s like this list doesn’t represent America’s favorite books, as much as the only 10 books people could name. After they went with the movie choices (GWTW, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter), Stephen King and crap they read at the beach (Dan Brown), they were left to search their high school memories and came up with the very deserving “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Catcher in the Rye.”
But nothing besides fraud at the Harris poll can possibly explain #9, “Atlas Shrugged.” This is classified by at least hundreds of people as a “favorite” book? Maybe they can sell that at dinner parties, but why lie on some anonymous poll? Plus, I think the point of Ayn Rand is she didn’t want mass acceptance. I’d rather read Dan Brown. I’d rather sit through all 8 billion hours of the “Lord of the Rings” movies.
All in all, I guess I should be happy they’re even polling people about books. Had it been up to me, I would’ve gone with the British choice for #1: “Pride and Prejudice.” It’s a perfect book and you have to hand it to an author who not only beat out the boy wizard, but has her own IMDB page 200 years after her death.
