Press Release: Miscellaneous Announcements
Biography Of VS Naipaul Is This Year's Most Popular Summer Read
Posted at 8:27AM Tuesday 05 Aug 2008
A study conducted by the independent reading charity Booktrust has revealed that The World is What It Is, Patrick French's biography of the writer VS Naipaul, is the most popular choice for critics' summer reading recommendations. Published by Picador, The World Is What It Is was pipped to the post for this year's Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. French's book, with its candid depiction of Naipaul's relationships with women and his acerbic opinions, raised eyebrows when it was published, but it has also been much praised by reviewers as a fine work of biography. Moreover, four of Naipaul's titles were also chosen as classics worth reading – or re-reading – on holiday. Booktrust's survey gathered together more than 600 recommendations from 11 publications. Another feature of this year's list is the number of backlist titles that were recommended. Multiple mentions of Sebastian Faulk's Birdsong and Engleby (both Vintage) as well as his new James Bond novel Devil May Care (Penguin) made him the most-chosen author. Among the books receiving one fewer mention than The World Is What Is, three were published by Bloomsbury: Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, Kate Summerscale's Samuel Johnson Prize-winning The Suspicions of Mr Whicher and Ferdinand Mount's autobiography Cold Cream. There were nods to the judges of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction – with several mentions for the shortlisted When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson (Picador) and The Outcast by Sadie Jones (Vintage) – and to those of the Man Booker Prize for the longlisted Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (John Murray), Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (Simon & Schuster) and The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretzer (Chatto & Windus). "The editors of the literary pages are to be congratulated for choosing old favourites as well as new titles this year," said James Smith, who compiled the list for Booktrust. "Not everyone has the money in their pocket, or space in their luggage, for a hardback these days." Books published by Penguin were recommended more than those of any other publisher. ***For the full list please contact Katherine Solomon on katherine@booktrust.org.uk or on 020 8875 4583
www.booktrust.org.uk
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