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UK News

Bible tops list of books Brits lie about reading

by Tola Mbakwe

A survey from Sky Arts found 56 per cent of people claim they're better read than they really are.

In the study of 2,000 people, 31 per cent said they lied about the books they've read to seem smarter, and 37 per cent said they did so in order to join in a conversation about a particular book.

The book second in line in that's most fibbed about it To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Phil Edgar-Jones, director of Sky Arts, said: "We say we are a nation of readers, but it turns out we're also a nation of fibbers when it comes to getting stuck into a book."

The survey also revealed that people put specific books on their book shelves to seem cultured, and post photos of them holding an "intellectual" book on social media that they've never read.

Here's the full list of the top 20 books Brits lie about reading:

1. The Bible 12%

2. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee 10%

3. Romeo And Juliet by William Shakespeare 10%

4. 1984 by George Orwell 9%

5. Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen 8%

6. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 7%

7. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville 7%

8. War And Peace by Leo Tolstoy 6%

9. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson 6%

10. The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain 5%

11. A Brief History Of Time by Steven Hawking 5%

12. Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky 5%

13. The Odyssey by Homer 5%

14. The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway 4%

15. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 4%

16. Ulysses by James Joyce 4%

17. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell 3%

18. Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari 3%

19. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 3%

20. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand 2%

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