Short Stories Online, Days 19 (Sunday, was at Beach) and 20

Concluding last week's 'theme' (as yet unguessed!) I bring you the Nebula-shortlisted 'Henry James, This One's For You', by Jack McDevitt.

And commencing this week's theme (competition now open! vote early, vote often!) is 'The Disappearance of James H___', by Hal Duncan.

I'm special, so special

(in a unique and snowflakey way, no doubt).

Interesting article on BBC site reports and extrapolates from a survey of 4000 people -- "the books least likely to be finished by Britons". Direct quotations in bold.

- almost half the books these people bought remained unfinished. a.k.a. "What a lot of books! Have you read them all?" "No, not yet." My 'unread' pile is considerably less than half of the books I currently own: on the other hand, over a given period, I may well buy many more books than I read. This is called an 'accident' or an 'investment'.
Also, I don't tend to read every non-fiction book all the way through -- I'm often only reading for particular information.

- 32% had started but not finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; 28% ditto for Ulysses. This is what it says. I think they mean "of the people who'd bought the Potter book (lots), 32% did not finish it. Of the people who bought Ulysses (not many), 28% did not finish it.'

- The average Briton spent more than £4,000 on books during their lifetime. Well, yes, but how much more than £4,000? In my case quite a bit more. (OK, quite a lot more.) Mind you, I might be making up for my brother-in-law, who is quite proud of the fact he's never bought (or read) a book in his life.

And less than a quarter of Britons find time to read every day, apparently.

As far as the survey goes, it's interesting -- though I suspect there are many more books that are least likely to be started by Britons.