all British tolkienites HERE

[Eurytus]

But my main problem with the final of the Big Read was the facile, and at times immature, behaviour displayed by many of those who commented adversely upon it, and also Clive Anderson's complete inability to display the impartiality required of his role.

To be frank the whole show was ludicrous and not the attitude towards LOTR was not the only indicator of this.
I watched few of the shows, I will admit, but frankly when I saw Ruby Wax potentially put anyone who watches it off reading “The Catcher in the Rye” despite advocating it, I knew there were problems. She, and others of the presenters, seemed to consider the books a chance to talk about themselves. And that is something that Ms Wax needs no encouragement to do.

I saw the final show and that confirmed things for me. The concept of having tables devoted to various “camps” of book fans and having them whoop and holler like some American sitcom audience does every time Joey walks into a room left me in quiet amazement.

It was predictable that the show would end up like this as the whole point of reading is that it is a solitary occupation and the effect a book will have is dependent upon the person reading it as much as upon the book. So quite how they can suppose to have spokesmen (or women) talking up the points of my favourite book (when I might have read it in a completely different way) is baffling to me.

However we can draw some benefit from the program in that it does seem to have had some effect on the reading habits of people (especially children) in this country. Anything that even causes one person to turn of Big Brother or Changing Rooms and read a book can’t be all bad. After all, whatever our differences of opinion on individual books, pretty much any book (maybe even Jeffrey Archer) is going to do you more good than watching yet another room be converted in faux-zebra skin or watching Bob from Bristol take a dump in the Big Brother house.