A monumental task ... A woman looks at a wall of books. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Just when you thought we'd had all the books polls we could stand, here comes another. Oddly enough, the latest bit of pop psephology is really quite interesting. Sort of, anyway.
Scoffing at parochial attempts to find Britain's favourite book, PollthePeople.com is aiming to establish the world's number one books, films and albums - and to use a bigger sample than any previous taste survey. The target is 50,000 top fives by July, and there are strenuous efforts underway to get it built into all the most popular social networking sites.
As well as the scale, one of the things that makes this a bit more interesting is the opportunity it offers to cross-reference other people's tastes. It's also an ongoing project: registered users are encouraged to change their preferences, so the planet's favourite read could shift from day to day.
It does seem to offer the possibility of an international perspective, which would be a novelty indeed. (Though presumably the result in any fair poll will be that the Bible and the Qur'an occupy the top slots on a permanent basis. But who knows? It could be Harry Potter.)
The fact that it's a shopping opportunity - all the entries are linked to Amazon - presumably means there'll be some energy going into generating a big response. It also reminds us that we probably already know the answer - who has sold the most? - and leaves any consideration of quality well alone.
For the moment, however, only 200 people have voted in the books category. Which means that a concerted effort by Guardian Books blog readers could see Sam Jordison declared the world's favourite author. Or is that an unforgivable bid to corrupt democracy?
