Harris Poll - America's Favourite book...
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/s...48&newsLang=en
LotR at number 3, but apparently most popular with male college grads from the east... |
Bah, I am moving.
Actually, the bible is most likely number one because it is the only book those folks have read. I am sure if Harris required perhaps five books to have been read in order to participate in the survey, one would have a different outcome. But then again there would have been far fewer respondents. |
Was this an exit poll after Sunday Church attendance? And were any of these respondants able to recite a favoured chapter and verse? Could they identify the main characters?
And did any of them mention the Ring Bearer's tribulation after Palm Sunday? I'd be really suspicious of those ones. |
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What are you all complaining about?:confused: I couldn't think of two better books to outdo the Lord of the Rings. The Bible is an awsome book, if one takes the time to read it, it has all the answers.;) The greatest lessons that anyone could learn is all wrapped up in that book.
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Then there is the question of which Bible were these people voting for? The King James Bible certainly is the standard bearer for biblical excellence (although the Wycliffe version is handsomely worded), but the revised Catholic version (with thoroughly modernized verbiage) bears little resemblance to the King James, and the Jewish voter certainly would only choose the Torah (without, of course, any mention of the New Testament). Then there are the Apocrypha (books lacking canonicity among certain Christian faiths) which do not appear in every bible currently. I'm not interested in any religious furor, or debating the precepts of any religion (as that tends to get ugly), I am speaking stictly of the Bible as literature. |
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The Lord of the Rings is #3 Top Book in the U.S.!
It's true! Tolkien's masterpiece (and the best book ever written) LotR, is #3 on America's Favorite Books list! The Bible was overwhelmingly first, and "Gone with the Wind" took 2nd place.
Check it out here- http://news.aol.com/story/_a/america...09093509990001 TOLKIEN WILL ALWAYS PREVAIL IN THE UNITED STATES! |
I can see The Stand being on the list, since if to find out someone I've met has read anything over the past fifteen years, for some reason its usually mentioned. Which is odd (its sheer size aside), but the way everything twist and winds this way and that with really, no direction, and how some of the characters are stubborn to no end (you end up wishing you could strangle them for being so niave and more, after putting you through nearly 1,000 pages of it). Umph.
I tried reading Mr. King's magnum opus all the way through when I was younger, but after 3/4ths of the way through it never stuck with interest. Then I found The Hobbit again, and restored to a pleasant mood. :) What I'm really curious about though, considering the vast amount of book sales over the years of The Hobbit (which, commercially should make it apparent on such a poll), how it isn't mentioned at all. Unless, as with most polls, something obvious is always amiss, or how the poll was comprised wasn't big enough in demographics of diversified interest, etc. Quote:
Well, no more on this, the overall development of a text vs. how it is culturally used is a study in itself which would take too long to even think about here. I dunno, I'm at least glad that people are still reading books (despite what, no surprise:rolleyes:, other polls may say of the decline of reading them in the US), and more so Tolkien! ~ Meandering Ka |
When do they do polls like this? Who actually do they send these to?
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And just as a note for your interest, the horn thing can still be argued. Because actually, horns were taken by many cultures simply as an attribute of divine power. So there are scholars even today speculating that the horns may be there rightfully after all. |
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The Apostle Paul, in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, is quite clear about the proper definition being Moses' face shone: Quote:
http://www.wga.hu/art/m/michelan/1sc...o_2/moses1.jpg P.S. Please note the remarkable resemblance Moses has with Charlton Heston. |
Thanks, Davem. Kind of interesting that I match up fairly well with the "post grad" crowd, since LotR and Mockingbird are two books that do mean a lot to me.
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It's also interesting and not surprising how many of the authors in this list are "Americans". To me, the critical question is this. How many of the people who cited the Bible as their first choice actually read and/or studied it in any depth? Or did they list it because they "feel" it should be their first choice, even if their particular exposure to the scriptures (whatever version they prefer) is more limited? Undoubtedly, some respondents fall in the first group and some in the latter, and I would hesitate to put numbers or percentages on either subset. Perhaps a more interesting angle is how JRRT would have responded to a question of this type. Most likely, he would have growled at the asker and asked him to take a hike, pointing out that any query framed in such vague terms was clearly of dubious value. First, exactly what is a "book"? Would JRRT's beloved medieval texts be excluded or included in such a framework? Would the author have listed the Bible as his first choice, given the fact that he was a devout Catholic? Then again, as a Catholic, he surely would want to consider the Bible not as an isolated piece but in the context of other important Catholic works and annals of church history. Or would JRRT have made a neat list of favorite novels that were relatively current and just left it at that? Somehow, I do not think that these particular titles would have been on his list. ;) |
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Actually, my post hearkens back to earlier comments by myself and others regarding the mistranslation and misinterpretation of the bible (which I guess could be construed as out-of-context as well, strictly speaking). Quote:
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Just to update everyone - I think one group was missed out of the survey http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2008/04...uantanamo.html
Oh & speaking of Charlton Heston - can we assume they've got his guns now? |
:(
Too soon. |
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