By Peter Stuart
Smith (AKA Max Adams, James Barrington, James Becker, Tom Kasey, Thomas Payne
and Jack Steel)
Some interesting news about books was published recently,
but from an unexpected source. In the United Kingdom there’s a popular chain of
budget hotels known as Travelodge, and they recently issued a report which
listed the number of books which had been left behind in their hotel rooms, and
which of these novels – which had clearly so displeased their owners that they
simply discarded them, not even being prepared to carry them out to their cars
– had proved to be the most popular, or rather the most unpopular.
It may
not come as a particular surprise to anyone to learn that the book which came
top, with around 7,000 copies being abandoned, was the erotic bestseller by E L
James, Fifty Shades of Grey, which accounted for almost one in every three
books which had been dumped, Travelodge stating that in all a total of 21,786
books had been recovered from its 36,500 hotel rooms during 2011. It will
probably also not be entirely surprising that the other two books in the
trilogy – Fifty Shades Freed and Fifty Shades Darker – also made
the ‘Books Left Behind’ worstseller list at numbers 4 and 7 respectively. I
haven't read any of these three novels, and so I'm not qualified to comment on
their literary worth, but I do think it's significant that most people I've spoken
to who have read them, or have tried to read them, have dismissed them as
boring rubbish.
But I am
familiar with the work of the late Steig Larsson, whose three novels have also
featured prominently in this list, and again their inclusion does not come as
any kind of a surprise to me, because I thought the books were really very
average indeed. In fact, I couldn't even be bothered to finish the last one in
the series. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins also proved to be
unpopular, as did her other two books. But as well as this collection of
entirely forgettable novels, there were also some surprises, including The
Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry and John le Carre's classic Tinker,
Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
The full
and unexpurgated list is as follows:
1. Fifty
Shades of Grey E.L.
James
2. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Stieg
Larsson
3. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest Stieg Larsson
4. Fifty Shades Freed E.L.
James
5. The Hunger Games Suzanne
Collins
6. The Girl Who Played With Fire Stieg
Larsson
7. Fifty Shades Darker E.L.
James
8. Catching Fire Suzanne
Collins
9. Mockingjay Suzanne
Collins
10. The Help Kathryn
Stockett
11. One Day David
Nicholls
12. A Tiny Bit Marvellous Dawn
French
13. Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography Steve Jobs
14. Diary Of A Wimpy Kid Jeff
Kinney
15. The Brightest Star In The Sky Marian
Keyes
16. The Fry Chronicles Stephen
Fry
17. Room Emma
Donoghue
18. StrengthsFinder 2.0 Tom
Rath
19. The Confession John
Grisham
20. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John
Le Carre
There are of course a number of conclusions one can draw
from this report. It could be argued that the abandoned books are an accurate
reflection of the changing reading habits of the British public, and a
spokeswoman for Travelodge confirmed that they had noted a change in the types
of books. Previously, the majority of dumped books were either celebrity
biographies or chick lit, both of which categories had clearly failed to live
up to the low expectations of their purchasers. So, in 2007 the most abandoned
book was The Blair Years by Alastair Campbell, which reportedly failed
to satisfy on any number of levels, while the following year it was Piers
Morgan's equally unimpressive Don't You Know Who I Am? In 2009, the book
most commonly tossed aside by Travelodge customers was Katie Price's
autobiography Pushed to the Limit, which presumably she paid somebody to
write for her, just like all her other books: at least E L James actually wrote
what she put her name to.
Perhaps inevitably, ‘unusual’ reading material was
discovered at several hotels in the chain, including a bag of Kama Sutra books
found in a room previously occupied by an elderly couple in Scarborough, and in
Peterborough a company CEO left behind a suitcase filled with comics.
And I really don’t quite know what to make of that!
Finally, and nothing to do with the topic of this
post, I will not be posting anything else until January 2013, assuming that the
world doesn’t end on 21 December 2012, as some people are claiming the Mayans
predicted, because we will be travelling and also taking a cruise. I’m a guest
lecturer on the Fred Olsen ship Boudicca,
sailing from Portsmouth on 18 November on a round trip to the Caribbean.
You can contact me at:
Twitter:
@pss_author
Facebook:
Peter Stuart Smith
Blogs: The
Curzon Group
Website link: Brit
Writers
