The Book the Most People Have Lied about Reading

Painting: Alice in Wonderland by George Dunlop Leslie
Alice in Wonderland by George Dunlop Leslie, 1879

A BBC survey of the reading habits of 2,000 Britons disclosed that the book most likely to be claimed to have been read, yet wasn’t, was … War and Peace? Lord of the Rings? No, our Alice!

It also found that “one in four bluffed about reading a classic when a TV adaptation of it was shown, with the most popular reasons being not wanting to miss out on the conversation and wanting to appear more intelligent.”

But the good news is that the survey also “found that film and television adaptations actually encourage viewers to pick up the original text, with 44 per cent saying they would be tempted to pick up a book if it had been deemed worthy of an all-star dramatisation.”

Glad tidings, we suppose, although whether the recent (and forthcoming) Disney debacles could be called “adaptations” is somewhat moot.

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