Borders UK's Top Ten Books and a glaring omission from its readers...

I received an email last week from Borders UK.  They'd recently asked their customers to vote for their all time favourite top ten books (CDs and DVDs), with more than 20,000 taking up the baton online.  The glaring omission in my mind is that, considering crime and thriller fiction regularly appears in the top ten bestsellers (usually at least 50% of it, the last time I reviewed the lists), there's nothing you could call classic crime or thriller fiction on the list of top ten books for Borders readers.  I wonder why?  Perhaps the crime and thriller aficionados were too busy readng their next fast paced, densely plotted and wonderfully character-driven novel to notice the vote?

Anyway, the top ten is currently on offer in store at "buy one get one half price" and here they are:

1. Bill Bryson A Short History of Nearly Everything.  Here the Borders customers put an American author at number one, but it's not a surprise, really.  When Bryson held a very humerous mirror up to the UK with his Notes from a Small Island, back in the 1990s, UK readers took him into their hearts and the man will forever provide another view on everything.
2. William Golding Lord of the Flies.  Pretty much a classic and one that is read at school.
3. Gerald Durrell My Family and other Animals.  Again, another classic and one that features with the young.
4. Frank McCourt Angela's Ashes.  He wrote "Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."  His started in the 1930s.  This was a book that took the UK by storm when it came out originally.
5. Alice Walker The Color Purple.  I saw the movie back in the 1980s, so I've never read the novel, alas.  (Screen and book don't work for me.  It has to be one or the other for one story; my only exclusion being that I'll watch a screen version of a book I've read, to see what the production did to it.  Hopefully "justice", but as we know, this isn't always the case...)
6. Jung Chang Wild Swans.   Another book that took the UK by storm.
7. Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tail.  Alas, as for The Color Purple, I saw the movie and never the twain shall meet...
8. Ian McEwan Atonement.  I loved Saturday, but I've not read this yet.  The movie is out now, so if I'm tempted, and publicity is rife right now, my chances of reading the novel will be down the drain before you can utter the two syllable word "plumber".
9. Nigel Slater Toast.  "Toast: the story of a boy's hunger" is Slater's memoirs of his life with food as a youngster before he grew up to become a food writer and author of many cook books.  I'm surprised at this entry in the top ten, but very pleased to see it.  Life has moved on so much in the last 50 years and we now have a far greater opportunity and span when it comes to ingredients and making up a meal.  In the 1960s we were still just emerging from the constraints of WWII and starting to discover new delicacies, as could be imported from foreign lands, reliably and regularly, to enable them to become foods of choice every week or month.  If you're 40 plus, you'll appreciate the memories in this memoir.  (What might have been "posh nosh" then, is to be derided now; but all achieve a retro comeback at some point.  Prawn cocktail anyone?  Even "Abigail's Party" is to get the retro revisit treatment in our new millennium.)  The reminder of the "then" (the 1960s) in Toast and the comparison to now is staggering.  Having read Toast, then get yourself a copy of Slater's "The Kitchen Diaries", in hardback if you can as the heavy tome is beautifully produced, in quality paper, pictures and binding, with a ribbon bookmark.  Where Slater once ate canned peaches, in The Kitchen Diaries he muses, by month on month what's in season (back to British basics) and then provides recipes for what he does to these splendidly fresh and available ingredients.  Slater knows his food and its history.  And Toast is quite a unique memoir.
10. Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  Again, I saw this movie first, so it does not augur well for a reading on my part.  Neither did I manage to watch the movie to the end; I became bored.

The biggest surprise for me on that list is Nigel Slater's Toast, but it's excellent to see it there.  I had thought his wonderful memoirs had received a somewhat quiet attention and reception.  Good to see otherwise!

As for the CDs' and DVDs' top ten, I'll leave it up to you. You can find them on the Borders home page, at the moment. 

But why the lack of crime and thriller fiction in that top ten on books?  It seems odd, even if I lay the excuse that we are all reading our next tome of delight...

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Personally, I have a quiet admiration for Borders in the UK as they a have a different approach to bookselling.  In their newer branches, which I have experienced, I find the staff enthusiastically engaged in making things work and organising author events.  Local author featured book collections seem to be more widely thought through than those of their main competitors (if they have them).

I'm not sure where the future ownership of Borders is going - the last time I looked a possible management buy-out was on the table, and I hope this is the successful case.  Sucked further into the generic and repetitive high street and supermarket offerings will not service the buying public well.  Less variety of sellers leads to less choice and the same on the shelves at the same price, depending on how far you are prepared to walk and/or drive.

Any updates on Borders, anyone?

We need less generic High Street repitition of "same old, same old," being pushed under the same banner, across the same origins.  We need more promotion of the new to this world and the genre.  It's time to give the newbies a better chance, surely?

Comments

[crimeficreader]

A success not to lose or ignore, Clare.

[Clare]

We have a lovely big Borders near Chester on the Wirral - I think it is the biggest single storey bookshop in europe and the staff are great. I really like the American flavour of the store - they stock all sorts of American magazines and certainly seem to have a wider selection of books than our local Waterstones (maybe being bigger helps!). The place is always full of people and it has a great buzzy sort of atmosphere - I can't believe that it is not a big success.

[crimeficreader]

Grant, good point but I still find it a glaring omission.

Maxine, perhaps we ought to try a poll amongst the crime fic readers by early December so that we can make our enthusiasms known...

Scott, thanks for the heads up! I do hope the management buy-out is successful as we need more variety in approach and stocks. Personally, I have found Borders far more eclectic in its offerings than others on the high street; and that's what we want!

[Scott Pack]

Rumours are that it will be a management buyout at Borders which is probably the best news as that keeps their creative team in place, at least for a while anyway.

I think the list that you have to vote from is based on actual sales in Borders and the views of their booksellers. Borders isn't really seen as a big crime destination, at least I don't think it is, so it doesn't surprise me that there isn't any crime in the vote.

[Maxine]

I think Atonement is McEwan's masterpiece. I loved the book of the Color Purple, it is so much better than the film, though that was good too, but sentimentalised and Spielbergised. The book was much bleaker and more telling.
I'm the opposite of you with Handmaid's Tale, I read the book and was put off by it so did not see the film. Maybe one reason it is there is because (as you point out with LOTF), it is a school textbook nowadays, amazingly.
I suppose that if you get a "readers' poll" you aren't going to get too much of what is "ghettoised" by the shops into specialist sections. I think all the books chosen would have been on "general fiction" shelves.
Anyway, we could all have fun nominating our favourite crime fics for such a list. I've read so many excellent titles this year that I don't think I could possibly nominate a "best".

[Grant]

Perhaps crime fiction is a victim of its own success when it comes to polls such as these? Rankin's Rebus consists of 17 novels at the last count, so any votes are going to be fragmented across the entire works making it unlikely that any one book would feature in the top 10.

[Jim Bashkin]

One of the problems with the big chain bookstores is that they will often keep only one book by a given author, so browsing can be frustrating- if one suddenly remembers the name of that forgotten book "on the wish list", the chances of finding it are slim. It is harder to fault them for variety, but there are problems in this area also: many smaller publishers (SOHO press) are either ignored or given very little space by the big chain shops. That is how I see it in the US. The "meet the author" sessions can also be problematic- we've had cases where, as I understand it, deals between publishers and bookstores have prevented local, independent shops from hosting authors. In the U.S., booksense.com provides a way of using zip codes (post codes) to link you to nearby, independent shops that have what you want. I don't know if there is a U.K. equivalent. It seems that every country should have book sense!