The Times has an interesting article on reading differences in various regions of the UK: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article5671940.ece

Analysing library lists, it says:
Lending figures for last year suggest that southerners are slaves to Richard & Judy, flocking to their local library to borrow everything they mention. The couple’s recommended titles make up at least half of the ten most-borrowed books in London, the South East, the South West, the East, the East Midlands and the South West.

Northerners, by contrast, pay no attention to them. None of the couple’s recommendations appears in the top ten lists for the North East, the North West and Merseyside, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales. Readers were much more likely to plump for tried-and-tested books in the crime and romance genres. James Patterson’s hard-boiled thrillers are overwhelmingly popular in the North. Readers in the North East are most likely to select a pulse-quickening romance by Danielle Steel or Josephine Cox.

The only area not following the north-south trend was Yorkshire and Humberside, where eight out of the ten most-borrowed books had appeared on the television show. The West Midlands hovered in between, with two recommended titles.

Suggestions for this include that the South has more bookgroups, who are likely to choose this kind of book (says Ian Rankin), and that people essentially like to read about themselves, and the R&J books are largely set in the South (paraphrased from Stuart Maconie) both of which seem a little patronising towards Northerners.

I’m on the fence about the R&J. On one hand, I often do enjoy the books that are chosen though they may well not be what I’d have chosen for myself but, because they’re usually discounted* I buy them and they get passed around my family. On the other, as a Semi-Aspirational Author, I find the concept of Amanda Ross choosing books she hasn’t even read concerning - I read that after she’d chosen Brick Lane, for instance, she read it and realised she in fact hated it.

Obviously being based on library lists, it ignores the books that people buy and is, effectively, targeting only sections of the population - I think there are probably significant numbers who buy rather than borrow. It’s interesting to look at these lists but is by no means the whole story. My grandma will buy books from charity shops for a pound or two each and donate them back when she goes for the next lot - a higher library charge, if you will, that goes to the charity that can set up the best book shop. The library books they list are also, I think, more likely to be one-time books. You read them, enjoy them but they’re not necessarily the ones you want to read again and again. I like Danielle Steel, and James Pattison, but half the enjoyment is not knowing what’s going to happen (precisely, anyway, because again the formula is part of the enjoyment) - if I read it for a second time it’s because it’s become comforting in some way, a retreat. R&J does increase sales of the books chosen, but it would be interesting to know if the library lists mirror the bought lists because so often they don’t. Catherine Cookson usually remains in the top 10 library books but she’s rarely in the bestsellers list. Because she wrote comfort books, that you read and then either forget or go back to for an easy evening’s read. That may sound derogatory but it’s absolutely not. I have no patience with those who say Catherine Cookson or Stephen King aren’t decent books, don’t write well, whatever (which sadly many in my creative writing degree thought) because they bring enjoyment to millions of people, and isn’t that what writing novels is for?

* This is usually my criteria for buying books. Often I will target specific authors, either ones I’ve read before, are recommended or I know online like C E Murphy, but if I have a spare £15 it’s waterstones and the three for two tables on the ground floor, looking to see what I like the look of. Which, again, as a SAA, I should probably be shunning in favour of independent bookshops because I know publishers pay extra for books to be in that offer or ‘personally recommended by staff’ so I’ll see them and buy them, but apparently that’s where the line between my ethics and my wallet lies.