BVA surveyed French reading habits in Les Français et la lecture and offer some of the summary-results there.
That Victor Hugo remains the most popular author isn't that surprising; that Marcel Pagnol ties him perhaps is. But domestic tastes are often ... idiosyncratic. And the double bill of Jean de Florette and Manon of the Springs (get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk) certainly has more than just name-recognition even in English (helped by the film versions ...)
Interesting also that Emile Zola is cited as the next-most-popular -- ahead of the similarly prolific Balzac, and also Flaubert ..... Jules Verne, on the other hand ... no surprise.
(And as far as the foreigners go: Agatha Christie, followed in popularity by Stephen King, and Mary Higgins Clark. Which reflects the bestseller-lists pretty well, so at least the respondents seem to be honest with their answers (always a question with these 'who do you read'-surveys).)
That Victor Hugo remains the most popular author isn't that surprising; that Marcel Pagnol ties him perhaps is. But domestic tastes are often ... idiosyncratic. And the double bill of Jean de Florette and Manon of the Springs (get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk) certainly has more than just name-recognition even in English (helped by the film versions ...)
Interesting also that Emile Zola is cited as the next-most-popular -- ahead of the similarly prolific Balzac, and also Flaubert ..... Jules Verne, on the other hand ... no surprise.
(And as far as the foreigners go: Agatha Christie, followed in popularity by Stephen King, and Mary Higgins Clark. Which reflects the bestseller-lists pretty well, so at least the respondents seem to be honest with their answers (always a question with these 'who do you read'-surveys).)