Too many letters

Rare readers finish reading “The Goblet of Fire” to the middle

Harry Potter has a beginning, but Harry Potter has no end. It seems that billionaire JK Rowling has gone a little overboard with the volume of her endless series about a boy with a magic wand. The fourth book of the famous multi-volume series “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” turned out to be somewhat difficult for readers. According to a survey by the British company Teletext, 32% of respondents (that is, almost every third!) were unable to read this thick volume to the end.

After surveying 4 thousand people, English sociologists compiled an interesting ranking of “irresistible” books. Each reader probably has his own list of abandoned literature - books abandoned in the middle or after reading a dozen pages. In the British ranking of unreadable masterpieces of literary fiction, “The Goblet of Fire” took an honorable second place. The fourth Potter was second only to the work of Booker laureate DC Pierre's Vernon God Little. I gave in, perhaps quite deservedly - to read from cover to cover this thick volume, written in a colloquial style using teenage slang, requires remarkable patience and enviable endurance. 35% of those surveyed on DBC Pierre did not have enough willpower.

Only in third place is Ulysses by James Joyce - 28% did not finish reading it. The strange thing here is that the great Irishman only got a “bronze” - a thoughtful and oversaturated description of one day in the life of Bloom for many years was considered the uncrowned champion in the category of “super complex reading”. However, new times brought with them new heroes: the multi-letter “Vernon God Little” and “Goblet of Fire” easily pushed the classic to the bottom step of the pedestal.

As expected, Russian classics also made it into the under-read list: Leo Tolstoy with “War and Peace” and Dostoevsky with “Crime and Punishment.” However, they are far from Ulysses - only eighth and tenth place. The classic Russian novel in Britain (and in many other countries) is considered very worthy reading, but this literature is undoubtedly quite complex for the modern mass book consumer.

However, it’s not just the classics that are difficult to read to the end. Most of the texts included in the top ten relate to fashionable contemporary literature. The sixth place ranking of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses is most likely the result of the political uproar that arose at the end of the last century. Then the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini acted as a PR agent for this book, demanding the head of the writer who allegedly insulted Islam. The popularity of Rushdie and his creation soared to unprecedented heights. And those who purchased “Poems”, buying into the scandalous fame, apparently quickly found out that there was nothing particularly provocative in its text. Paulo Coelho is also unlucky - his “Alchemist”, lying on any tray, ended up in seventh place on the list.

At the same time, a dozen under-read books were compiled in the non-fiction category. There is no competition here in the stories of retired politicians about their rise to power. In first place are the memoirs of former British Home Secretary David Blunkett, in second place are the memoirs of Bill Clinton, and in seventh place are Margaret Thatcher’s book “The Downing Street Years.” And third place went to the young memoirist David Beckham: his stories about life in big football were abandoned halfway through by 27% of respondents.

It is very interesting that the Teletext survey appeared less than two weeks after the publication of another book ten - a ranking of the most beloved books, works “with which the British cannot imagine their lives.” According to a World Book Day survey, the most popular literary work in Albion is Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. 20% of surveyed readers voted for him. But J. K. Rowling's not-always-read-through saga came in a respectable fourth place with 12% of the votes. The adventures of Harry Potter are dearly loved by the British people, despite all the difficulties of perception.

Vladimir DZAGUTO