The Bone People still NZ's favourite book

It's been 20 years since Keri Hulme's Booker Prize-winning The Bone People was first published but the novel still rates supreme in a new poll listing New Zealanders' top 20 books of all time.

The online poll, run in partnership by the Weekend Herald and TimeOut book shop in Mt Eden, Auckland, was open to all genres and attracted more than 2000 entries.

Fiction dominated the top 20, with a few notable exceptions, and it was a close-run race between The Bone People and Elizabeth Knox's The Vintner's Luck, which missed out on the top place by a single vote.

The poll was taken in conjunction with the inaugural NZ Book Month, which winds up tomorrow.

Book Month, an initiative of Booksellers NZ, had a budget of $575,000, which included $100,000 from the Ministry of Economic Development and $55,000 from Creative New Zealand. The remainder of the budget came from the book trade, sponsorship by internet shopping website Ferrit and sales of The Six Pack, a book of short stories commissioned for the Book Month launch.


The Top 20

1. The Bone People, Keri Hulme (Picador)
2. The Vintner's Luck, Elizabeth Knox (VUP)
3. The Penguin History of New Zealand, Michael King (Penguin)
4. Under the Mountain, Maurice Gee (Puffin)
5. Plumb, Maurice Gee (Penguin)
6. Blindsight, Maurice Gee (Penguin)
7. The Whale Rider, Witi Ihimaera (Reed)
8. Edmonds Cookery Book (Goodman Fielder NZ Ltd)
9. Season of the Jew, Maurice Shadbolt (David Ling)
10. Owls Do Cry, Janet Frame (Random House)
11. In My Father's Den, Maurice Gee (Penguin)
12. Bulibasha, Witi Ihimaera (Penguin)
13. The Changeover, Margaret Mahy (Harper Collins)
14. An Angel at My Table, Janet Frame (Random House)
15. Tu, Patricia Grace (Penguin)
16. The Book of Fame, Lloyd Jones (Penguin)
17. Man Alone, John Mulgan (Penguin)
18. Once Were Warriors, Alan Duff (Random House)
19. The Captive Wife, Fiona Kidman (Random House)
20. Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy, Lynley Dodd (Penguin)