It is the list no author would ever want to be seen on — the books you bought but just could not finish.

Vernon God Little, by D. B. C. Pierre, won the Man Booker Prize three years ago and sold 620,000 copies in Britain alone, but it tops the top ten list of unfinishable novels.

According to a survey of Britain’s reading habits, 35 per cent of readers gave up on the novel before the end.

Television, tiredness, computer games, there was always a reason — or an excuse — to do something else.

The survey, published today, reveals that the average Briton spends more than £4,000 on books over a lifetime, but leaves nearly half unfinished.

Pierre is in good company. About 32 per cent of the 4,000 adult readers surveyed found J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire— second in the fiction poll — no magic read. In third place was Ulysses, James Joyce’s notoriously difficult masterpiece. About 28 per cent could not wade through its 1,000 pages.

Other books on the fiction list include The Satanic Verses, which brought a clerical death sentence on its author, Salman Rushdie. While he suffered for his art, 21 per cent of those surveyed suffered while reading it.

This lack of passion is a far cry from the Tony Hancock comedy classic in which he borrowed a whodunnit from the library only to discover that the final page — revealing the murderer’s identity — had been torn out. He was distraught.

Kevin Killeen, who carried out the study, said that not finishing a book “was an insult to the author — or an insult to the reader”. He then hastily added: “But it’s not necessarily either of those things — it’s a parting of the ways.”

Although failure to finish a book might imply a lack of moral fibre or educational grit, at least people were prepared to admit their foibles.That people were not finishing Ulysses did not detract from its brilliance. Dr Killeen, who teaches English at the University of Leeds, was surprised to see Vernon God Little at the top of the fiction list. Its idiosyncratic style won over the Man Booker judges, who awarded Pierre a £50,000 cheque, and it has been adapted for the stage of the Young Vic. “I suppose people coming to it as a Booker prizewinner have certain expectations, which quickly get dispelled,” he said.

Commenting on the survey, Pierre’s agent, Clare Conville, said: “He’s not that bothered.”

Nor, according to his spokesman, was David Blunkett, whose The Blunkett Tapes was abandoned by 35 per cent of readers well before the end of its 800-plus pages. His account of his days in Government and his descriptions of his Cabinet colleagues’ failing tops the survey’s nonfiction list.

The former Home Secretary is also in good company. Bill Clinton’s 1,024page autobiography, My Life, lost 30 per cent of readers, despite his forthright assessments of his marriage and his affair with Monica Lewinsky while US President. Perhaps readers only looked at those bits.

The survey, which involved 4,000 people and was commissioned by Teletext, also gives an insight into pressures facing the 21st-century bookworm. Four out of ten respondents admitted that they were unable to concentrate on long books and less than a quarter managed to read every day. Their main excuses were feeling too tired (48 per cent), watching television (46 per cent) or playing computer or interactive games (26 per cent).

More than half of the respondents admitted that they bought books such as Ulysses or The Downing Street Yearsby Margaret Thatcher, simply to look good. They had no intention of reading them.

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Look away now if you don’t want to know how the top three finish:

Vernon God Little Having been wrongly accused of being an accessory to his best friend’s killing-spree, Vernon is given a last-minute reprieve. The Texan schoolboy is not executed and lives happily ever after

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire The boy wizard fights dragons, mermen and a malevolent maze only to fall into the clutches of the evil Voldemort. He escapes with the ghostly help of his slain mother and father and returns to Hogwarts a hero

Ulysses The final chapter is written from the viewpoint of Molly, the wife of the main character, Leopold. It is frequently interpreted as her having an orgasm

Top unfinished fiction

1 Vernon God Little, D.B.C. Pierre

2 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J K Rowling

3 Ulysses, James Joyce

4 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis De Berniãres

5 Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

6 The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie

7 The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

8 War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

9 The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

10 Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky

Top unfinished nonfiction

1 The Blunkett Tapes, David Blunkett

2 My Life, Bill Clinton

3 My Side, David Beckham

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

5 Wild Swans, Jung Chang

6 Easy Way to Stop Smoking, Allen Carr

7 The Downing Street Years, Margaret Thatcher

8 I Can Make You Thin, Paul McKenna

9 Jade: My Autobiography, Jade Goody

10 Why Don’t Penguins’ Feet Freeze?: And 114 Other Questions, Mick O’Hare

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