Unfinished masterpieces: Beckham joins Joyce on list of books we never complete

For years, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking was said to be the book that everyone owned but few had read.

But a new survey shows that Hawking has been supplanted by David Blunkett and Bill Clinton as the authors of the books Brits are most likely to own but are unable to finish.

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The political memoirs of the former Home Secretary and the ex-American president respectively top the non-fiction poll of unfinishable reads in a new survey published today by Teletext.

David Beckham lies in third place with his autobiography, My Side, demonstrating that it is not only politicians who are eminently put downable.

In the fiction stakes, Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre's Man Booker Prize-winning story of an American teenager wrongly accused of a high school massacre, tops the books readers had failed to complete. More than a third of those who bought or borrowed the novel were defeated by it.

But he was in good company both in terms of sales and critical acclaim. JK Rowling's fourth tale of wizardry, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, took second place with Ulysses, James Joyce's legendarily tricky day in the life of Leopold Bloom in third.

Kevin Killeen, a University of Leeds academic who analysed the results, said he was somewhat surprised that Vernon God Little had beaten titles ranging from Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses to Tolstoy's War and Peace to top the poll.

But he was heartened by the lists overall. "They show some quite ambitious reading. I take heart from the nature of the books on the list," he said.

Other titles to have confounded would-be readers included hefty tomes such as The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and Wild Swans by Jung Chang.

But there are also books that are not normally regarded as a challenge such as Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Berniére's word-of-mouth bestseller.

Four out of 10 of the 4,000 people polled said they could not concentrate on long titles and less than a quarter found time to read every day.

Feeling tired and watching television instead were the main reasons for not finding time to read, with a fifth of people claiming it was because they worked late.

Londoners were the most likely to be too tired to read for pleasure (57 per cent) while those in the North-east are the most likely to be watching TV instead (49 per cent). Scots proved the most likely to read to the end, with 62 per cent saying they have never given up on a book they had started.

Dr Killeen said: "The research illustrates that the pressure of finding time for reading is the main factor when it comes to discarding a book unfinished."

One of the books that failed to make the top tens but came up often in discussion was the Bible. "I look at the history of reading and I think the Bible presents an interesting case study of how people have read [in the past]. It invites discontinuous reading," he said.

Any non-fiction title with an index invited a similar approach. It is not necessary to go from beginning to end to get something out of it.

In its bid to offer help to the over-taxed reader and promote its chunk-size information service, Teletext is offering one paragraph distillations of the top five fiction and non-fiction titles which Britons cannot finish, see panel on the right.

In case you didn't finish them ...

TOP FIVE UNREAD (FICTION)

Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre

Texas small-town schoolboy Vernon is wrongly accused of being an accessory to his best friend's murder-spree. After going on the run to Mexico, he is captured. Read on to learn how, while languishing in jail, he is subjected to a bizarre Big Brother phone vote for his execution.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling

Romance and teenage hormones sweep through Hogwarts in the fourth instalment, in which the Tri-wizard Tournament is used as a ploy by Lord Voldemort to capture Harry. The young wizard goes one-on-one with a dragon, fights a school of underwater mer-creatures and battles a malevolent maze. Only persistent readers will discover how Harry eventually evades Voldemort's evil clutches.

Ulysses, James Joyce

Ulysses traces the wonderings and thoughts of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus through a single ordinary day - 16 June 1904 - in Dublin. Readers who make it to the end will find that the final chapter is written from the viewpoint of Leopold's adulterous wife Molly and contains only eight sentences.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis De Bernieres

Second World War drama set on a Greek Island. Life is peaceful for Dr Iannis and his daughter Pelagia until the Italian invasion, led by the cultured Captain Corelli. It is not long until Pelagia rejects her Greek fiancé and falls in love with the Italian captain. However, Corelli finally decides not to pursue his love. Read to the end however and discover that they meet again decades later.

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

the book consists of six inter-linked stories taking the reader from the remote South Pacific in the 19th century to the futuristic aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse. The stories focus on characters including a 17th-century American lawyer, a 1930s British composer, 1970s nuclear scientist in Reagan's California, and a 1980s London vanity publisher, and has, at its centre, two science fiction stories that forecast the death of the human race.

TOP FIVE UNREAD (NON-FICTION)

* The Blunkett Tapes, David Blunkett

Taken from taped diaries recorded by the former cabinet minister, this lengthy autobiography provides a background to Blunkett's early career and how he overcame the difficulties caused by his blindness. For the most part, it concentrates on New Labour's rise to power and the nine years that followed and while it is particularly detailed on the day-day running of Government, it lacks personal insight to the scandals that led to Blunkett resigning not once but twice.

My Life, Bill Clinton

Autobiography of the popular former US President, which opens with recollections of the death of his father, a difficult home life, his time at Oxford and experiences as a Vietnam war protester. It continues on to cover his political rise, firstly as a young Arkansas politician and leading up to his run for Congress and eventual Presidency. Many will skip that bit to get to his affair with Monica Lewinsky - the investigations into which served to stall Clinton's government. * My Side, David Beckham

Beckham's story tackles in great detail his childhood and career with Manchester United, England and his move to Real Madrid. However, it makes scant reference to the former England captain's alleged affairs.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss

The bestseller on punctuation discusses how the poor use of apostrophes in public writing can alter meaning, while also shedding light on other commonly misused punctuation, from commas and colons to dashes.

Wild Swans, Jung Chang

Wild Swans tells the story of three "daughters of China", the author, her mother and grandmother and their struggle and survival against Communism. The author's mother was forced to march 1000 miles while pregnant and the author herself tells of the horrifying and violent rise of Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution.