The Way of the Wombat

That 100 Book meme that's around again at the moment? I was curious about the make-up of the list, and when the BBC might have published it. Now I almost hate to tell you all this - but actually the BBC neither wrote the list, nor said you were likely to only have read 6 books from it.

The original BBC list of 100 books was actually to do with people's favourite books and was drawn up as part of The Big Read, 10 years ago - here it is.

But you will notice that it isn't exactly the same as the one currently doing the rounds of Facebook and now here - the BBC list is actually even more Brit-centric.

There is an article here looking at a way in which the BBC list might have been changed to become that meme... And another article here which points out that the list bears more resemblance to the Guardian's list, posted in 2007, showing the result of a poll of 2,000 people for World Book Day - which I think it does.

But again, the Guardian writers make no suggestion that people will only have read 6.

So - it is an interesting list of books which seems to be ever-changing (which is true of many of these memes), isn't from the BBC, and no-one ever suggested you are better than average if you've read more than 6... Sorry.

However the meme is still interesting in it's own right, of course!

** The Truth is, of course, also the title of a book by Terry Pratchett - some of whose works are in the original, BBC, list - but not in the meme.