World Book Day: Survey shows it's a good occasion to stand around and lie about what you read

A survey carried out by the people behind World Book Day “has found that two thirds of people have claimed to have read a book they haven’t,” and, according to a story at The Bookseller by Victoria Gallagher and Katie Allen, the “most popular book to have lied about reading is 1984 by George Orwell.” The runner-up was Leo Tolstoy‘s War and Peace, followed by James Joyce‘s Ulysess. Number four was, interestingly enough, the Bible. (See a list of the top ten lied about books here.) The main reason people lied about their reading (or lack thereof) was “to impress the person they were speaking to.”

The survey also came up with some other interesting reading-related observations, such as that “people can’t bear to throw their books away, with 77% of respondents saying they buy extra bookshelves when they fill up.”

Also, a statistic that most publishers would put at somewhere closer to 90%: “11% of those asked also revealed that they have written a book but not yet had it published.”