Kiwis love Jane
Jane Austen did pretty well in the Sunday Star-Times survey of favorite books, though not without some hilarity:
Another transformed Jane Austen into a science fiction writer by voting for Sensor Sensibility.
Love it!
The Lord of the Rings was first on the list–not surprising in the country where the popular film adaptations were made–but guess who came in second?
Pride and Prejudice, which takes second place on our Top 50 list (as it did in the BBC poll), might be described as a tale of grit overcoming adversity too. Not only does the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, get her difficult cuss of a man; she does so on her terms. Working down the list, the Harry Potter books, The Da Vinci Code, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Power of One and, of course, The Bible are also tales of courage and determination.
Though I expected Jane Austen to do well in our survey, I didn’t think she would beat J K Rowling and Dan Brown. I’m delighted to have been proven wrong.
When Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813, Napoleon still dominated world politics. There are nine other 19th-century classics in our Top 50. Dickens appears three times. Sure, Kiwi readers have embraced recent bestsellers as The Da Vinci Code, The Bronze Horseman, The Lovely Bones and The Other Boleyn Girl, but they have not turned their backs on great works from the past.
Not bad considering that they decided to take the Harry Potter series as a whole–with merit, we think.
