Tuesday 30 August 2011

Have you voted for your top ten books for World Book Night 2012?

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Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Today I had an email from World Book Night, thanking me for voting for my top ten books.  It also suggests to forward the email on to anyone who might still wish to vote ... so instead I've copied the text of the email into this post below.  But be quick - there are only 2 days left to vote ...

Thousands of people have nominated almost 7000 different titles so far but we want as many people as possible to tell us their favourite books, so if there's anyone you know who you think might like to share their favourite books and be a small part of World Book Night then please forward them this email.

Submitting books is easy (though we know how hard it is to actually pick your favourites - sorry!)

1. Go to www.worldbooknight.org
2. Register or sign in (and you can also sign in with your Facebook profile if you'd rather)
3. Search for your favourite books and add them to your list (you don't have to choose 10, you can just choose a few)


We'll be releasing the top 100 at the beginning of September and they'll be informing the choice of our editorial selection committee, chaired by bestselling novelist Tracy Chevalier, who will be picking the books next week. We'll be announcing the WBN 2012 titles in mid October and opening the giver application process.

Spriteby asked me what books I chose, so I am listing these below.  If you have read any of my posts on choosing my forty books, you probably won't find any surprises.  These are in no particular order.

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams
"Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier
"The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
"The Eyre Affair" by Jasper Fforde
"The Things they Carried" by Tim O'Brien
"Ulysses" by James Joyce
"Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte
"The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje
"The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova
"Our Man in Havana" by Graham Greene

If I could convince you all just to read one of these books, it would be Tim O'Brien's "The Things they Carried" - it's a collection of short stories focusing on the Vietnam War.  I don't normally like war novels or films, but this is an incredible book.

4 comments:

  1. Gosh, that was hard! I seem to have managed 10, and it was a good discipline. Thanks for the reminder :)

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  2. Okay, my 'favourites', rather rapidly and randomly chosen:

    'Robert Donat, Biography' by JC Trewin (I'm on a mini-mission with this book right now!)

    'To the Lighthouse' Virginia Woolf

    'Jane Eyre' Charlotte Bronte

    'Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers' Henry James

    'Across the Plains' Robert Louis Stevenson

    'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' Robert Louis Stevenson

    'Dracula' Bram Stoker

    'Great Meadow' Dirk Bogarde

    'I, Claudius' Robert Graves

    'Credo' Melyvn Bragg

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  3. I managed five. I'm sure I've blogged about my favourite books, so I'll have to look back at that. How shameful not to have 10/20/30 favourite books - I must read more!!

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  4. I am ashamed to say that I haven't read quite a few of the books you mention, Gill. I do notice that we have both chosen something that is read on audiobook by Jeremy Northam - odd, that.

    Annalisa, I would love to know what books you choose too...

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