Harry Potter is too boring to reach the end?
Virgil:
March 13th, 2007
In a recent Teletext survey of 4,000 Britons, it was found that the book Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire came second out of the top ten unfinished books. What a surprising result! Although The Goblet of Fire is the first of the two-inch-thick Harry Potter novels, like the others I found it very exciting to read, and finished it within 3 days - many times less than it takes me to complete a much thinner volume! But perhaps it was the sheer thickness - or the sheer divided opinion - that placed this book in second place for being that boring. It was beaten only by Vernon God Little, a story about a US high school massacre. Close runners were James Joyce’s Ulysses, and unsurprisingly (though very unfortunately) David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. David Beckham’s autobiography topped the list for non-fiction.
March 13th, 2007 at 11:55 am
I would not read too much into this survey. Teletext surveys are notoriously unreliable and the participants are self selecting - usually young and bored and sat in front of the television - all couch potatoes and apathy - just the sort of people who would give up half way through a book. Thisd was not a scientifically prepared survey using a cross section of social groups, as proper surveys do. I think the result is skewed to the lazy type of person…