Pride and Prejudice Australia's favourite book

Article from: AAP

JANE Austen's timeless romance Pride and Prejudice has topped the list of the 101 best books ever written, according to Australian readers.

The survey of more than 15,000 members of bookseller Dymocks' booklover program put JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy second followed by Harper Lee's 1960 classic To Kill a Mockingbird in third place and The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown fourth.

Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, Tolkien's The Hobbit, The Harry Potter series, Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One, Magician by Raymond E Feist and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre rounded out the top 10.

Dymocks buying manager Meredith Drake said most of the books included in the top 101 were predictable, although there were some surprises, including Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, released just a year ago.
But she described them all as "great reads" that reflected the diverse tastes of Australian readers.

Contemporary novels (The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini, 15th on the list) mixed it with classics (Great Expectations, Charles Dickens, 34); highbrow (The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje, 81) with popular (It, Stephen King, 86) and fact (The Diary of Anne Frank, 88) with children's fiction (The Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis, 46).

Catch 22 (20), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (26), The God of Small Things (31), Nineteen Eighty-Four (54), The Wind in the Willows (60), Bridget Jones's Diary (67), Atonement (94) and The Godfather (98) also feature in the list.

Australian readers were big fans of homegrown writing, the survey showed.
Bryce Courtenay and Tim Winton were both popular with two (The Power of One, April Fool's Day, 42) and three (Cloudstreet, 12; Dirt Music, 76, and The Riders, 91) books, respectively, on the list.
Other Aussies to feature in the top 101 included Marcus Zusak for The Book Thief (27), John Marsden's Tomorrow When the War Began (28) and Ice Station by Matthew Reilly (29). Melina Marchetta's Looking for Alibrandi (77) and Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career also made the list.
The Bible came in as 23rd best book.