Is everybody on the same page?...
Top 10 fatigue - a common plaint in the books world these days, if the wave of exhaustion that rippled round the arts desk this morning when the latest specimen was heralded is anything to go by. This one comes courtesy of the World Book Day website: the event celebrates its 10th anniversary tomorrow (happy birthday!), and is marking the occasion with an online survey in which it asks the nation to vote for the 10 books it can't live without.
Now, I'm a big fan of WBD: the organisation does fantastic work promoting literacy and the enjoyment of reading among children and young people (read more about it here) and the more people who know about and support it, the better. But here's the thing: when the results of their survey dropped into my inbox this morning, it was déjà vu all over again. The books that made the list were the same books - give or take the odd volume - in roughly the same order, that appear on every top-10-books-as-voted-for-by-the-public list I've seen, no matter what the ostensible criteria.
The list itself is embargoed until a minute past midnight, so in the meantime, how about this: we'll send the first person to correctly guess the 10 books that made the cut a parcel of all 10 of them. Obviously we won't be able to tell you whether you're right until the embargo's lifted, but check back in tomorrow morning and we'll name the winner. Don't worry about getting them in the right order - just the titles will do. The search for the ur-top 10 books list is on ...
