Talk:The Big Read

Missing the Obvious
Am I really the *only* one to notice that this article is a complete fail? The article itself claims that the contest ultimately ended up with a winnowing down to a top 21, yet we are left to buy a Ouija board to figure out which of the 200 won that competition; apparently that list is a top military secret or something. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.212.12.92 (talk) 17:14, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Who cares? This is pop drivel, and if any reasonable standard for what applies as "information" were applied, this list would surely never be considered encyclopaedic. That Alexandre Dumas is not even in the top 10--and the list--including some in the top 10, is so heavily populated with insipid pabulum is a travesty. This list should never have been mentioned again after [or outside of] its publishing--much less enshrined in any kind of encyclopaedia to pollute the minds of the budding literati. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.170.70.57 (talk) 03:07, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Editorial comments in-text
I don't know who did this, and I'm not going to put forth the effort to figure it out, but I removed from the end of the intro paragraph the following:

"Please just delete the parenthetical above if the Wikipedian mania for citations and objectivity is so all-consuming that statement of the obvious requires documentation. (That is not what scholarship is about.)"

I don't have an opinion on what "scholarship is about" in this context, but Wikipedia is definitely NOT about putting editorial comments in the article itself! Felosele (talk) 14:48, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikilinks
I have wikilinked each entry on these lists to improve the look of the page - unfortunately this has created a lot of redlinks in the Hungarian section. If someone knows of a bot which will remove all links beyond the first please direct it at this page and see how it looks - personally I think for list like this each entry should be linked. QmunkE 12:35, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure that the quotation marks (which refer to literal translations of titles of books that haven't been published in English) should be included in the links? Even if the books should appear some time under those specific titles in English, they'll certainly not have the quotation marks! I think we'd better leave the quotation marks outside the link brackets. Adam78 15:54, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I didn't realise what the quotation marks were for until after I'd linked everything - thanks for changing them. QmunkE 18:28, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Links in Results
A mess, links anywhere except the actual book. Skinnyweed 17:27, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I think they're all done now. &mdash; RevRagnarok  Talk Contrib 17:41, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Split Requested
Personally, I think the German and Hungarian versions of The Big Read should have their own articles, to keep the British article small and everything cleaned up and organised. The Australian version (My Favourite Book) has its own article -- why not them? -- azumanga 23:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me. Go for it. &mdash; RevRagnarok  Talk Contrib 16:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Also agree; it would be neater and more consistent. Robina Fox 13:13, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * agree! Erich 23:24, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Category
Does anybody think it would be worth the effort to add a category? It wouldn't be hard with AWB, but I think it would be slicker if we had the category "properly" sorted, e.g. The Lord of the Rings actually sorts to 001 - The Lord of the Rings. I can probably do it with AWB but not sure how people would feel about it. Please discuss. ;) &mdash; RevRagnarok  Talk Contrib 16:25, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh well, no discussion. I just finished (188 of 200 items, some were redlinks, etc) and am now starting . &mdash;  RevRagnarok  Talk Contrib 17:40, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Less than 2 hours later, they're both up for CfD. :( &mdash; RevRagnarok  Talk Contrib 20:15, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, as they said over there, the category was not a good idea. The list is better. Carcharoth 10:13, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Succession boxes for "The Big Read"
Succession boxes for several entries on this list were added by Eldestone. I've invited Eldestone here to discuss this, as I disagree with the idea of having succession boxes for this sort of thing. Carcharoth 10:15, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * And I think that it's a great idea, which hardly is surprising. It would be easier to navigate among the books in the Big Read and the succession boxes with the Big Read would look nice integrated into the succession boxes that many of the articles already have. Eldestone 10:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Technically, those are not successions. If you had Big Read polls in 2003, 2004, 2005, etc. Then possibly you could do this, but for the winner only. But you are reinventing the single 2003 list at Big Read as a series of succession boxes. There have not been later Big Read polls, as far as I know. It also gets silly when you get down to the later entries (eg. number 200) in the list, as seen at yout talk page User_talk:Eldestone. Sorry, but I still think this is a really bad idea. People reading the individual articles should click on Big Read to get to the list. People can use the list at Big Read to navigate around. Why are succession boxes easier to navigate than a list? Carcharoth 10:43, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I still think it would be nice. I guess it comes down to how noteworthy you consider the Big Read. Eldestone 10:59, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Examples
To Kill a Mockingbird:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Eldestone 10:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)


 * It does seem excessive. Before reading the article here, I never heard of it - it's not on the order of the example Pulitzer. What needs to be done (since the category was ditched) is a simple statement somewhere in the article that was ranked n out of 200 in The BBC's Big Read. &mdash; RevRagnarok  Talk Contrib 11:38, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I was invited to comment here by Carcharoth. I do not like these navigation boxes, especially for ranking how individual books ranked in a published list (because some books will be ranked highly in multiple lists, leading to multiple cumbersome navigation boxes). The navigation boxes shown here are specifically cumbersome for navigating among the books in the Big Read. I would simply rather see the book's awards listed in one bulleted list and the book's inclusion in various published lists given in a second bulleted list. (unsigned comment added by User:Dr. Submillimeter)

Eldestone, there seems to be enough consensus to replace the succession boxes with "ranked n out of 200 in The BBC's Big Read" comments. What do you think? Carcharoth 14:25, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I think that it's a good idea. Eldestone 07:55, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The Big Read is hardly notable enough for succession boxes. I hope these are dismantled over time. The Big Read is just one of dozens of such lists that come out every year in the press. It's slow news day material. I caution users from falling too in love with their favorite list and plastering it all over Wikipedia. This seems to be a common problem actually, the Time 100 list is another example. Fothergill Volkensniff IV (talk) 04:06, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Lord of the Rings -vs- Harry Potter
Why is the Lord of the rings combined as a single novel (3: Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and Return of the King) while the Harry Potter series is not combined? Fothergill Volkensniff IV (talk) 04:03, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Same goes for His Dark Materials which is condensed into one while Discworld and The Chronicles of Narnia are divided into their individual chapters.
 * Discworld novels are stand-alone. They are situated in the same world, but have little in common (especially the ones that do not feature the same characters). -- L a v e o l  T 12:20, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Because The LotR was a single, multi-volume book (6 volumes I think?, although it's generally condensed into 3 books for some reason). The Hobbit was a separate, earlier work, that originally didn't even take place in the same universe as LotR (The Hobbit was rewritten after LotR was published so that they were compatible). Same with The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan (and his replacement). The WoT is a single 14 volume novel (plus one prequel), not 14 different novels. I don't know about the His Dark Materials novels/volumes, since I haven't read them. Discworld and Narnia are both divided into separate novels that make up a series.


 * It's a little weird, because in the case of Discworld you really could divide the series up into 5 or 6 different multi-volume books if you so desired (The City Watch books, Death's books, The Wizards' books, The Witches' books, Ankh-Morporkian Evolution books (Newspaper/Klacks/Mint/Postoffice/Taxreform/Peacekeeping, etc), and Misc. Did I miss a category?). I guess in the end it all boils down to author's choice. Gopher65talk 15:32, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

(Years later.) These replies are reasonable and the BBC identification of 200 titles as novels may be reasonable but more explanation is appropriate if available. To this point we now say only, In the unstructured first round, no doubt the public voted for many titles that the BBC deemed inappropriate, not only titles of Shakespeare plays and such as The Fellowship of the Ring and Harry Potter. Contemporary coverage of the first or second stage probably includes something about the intervening editorial work of culling and combining free-form titles.
 * "The British public voted originally for any novel that they wished.[5] From this, a list of 200 was drawn up [...] As the poll was based on novels, the plays of William Shakespeare were not part of the survey."

Perhaps number 199 The Very Hungry Caterpillar represents a class of books that was otherwise culled. Or a gross oversight. --P64 (talk) 17:06, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Celebrities who plugged the top books
When this programme was on in 2003, celebrities plugged each of the top 21 books - for example, Ray Mears plugged "The Lord of the Rings", and Meera Syal plugged "Pride and Prejudice". Does any one think we need to have the celebrities who plugged the top books in the article? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:25, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

British novels and others
There are five U.S. novels among the top 21 or top 25[*], if i clerk correctly -- ranking #6 (To Kill a Mockingbird), 11, 15, 18, 21. (* Top 21 and top 25 have integrity in different ways explained at the top of section 3.)

Number 20 (War and Peace) was published in another language and presumably read in translation by almost everyone who participated in the survey --if read at all rather than known by some adaptation.

More information welcome here and some welcome in the article.

(Moments ago I expanded the last paragraph of Little Women to be more explicit about the three 21c. surveys cited. The Big Read is first [of those] and we now say it was "ranked number 18 ... fourth-highest among novels published in the U.S."). --P64 (talk) 03:13, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * and now say "it is fourth-highest among novels published in the U.S. on that list".


 * Number 41 Anne of Green Gables was published in the U.S. but is Canadian by setting as well as both nationality and residence of writer LMMontgomery. We cover this survey in section 6 of the book article but say nothing there about the survey in relation to novels that may be Canadian in any sense.
 * By the way, I am likely to add or amend coverage of this survey only re books that are commonly if not universally considered children's novels. --P64 (talk) 22:34, 30 October 2015 (UTC)