A UNIQUE poll has revealed that J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" is the most popular book in Bury.

It topped a survey of 8,000 council staff carried out by the libraries service as part of the BBC's Big Read initiative.

Bury went one better than the Beeb and chose 22 most popular books, and all branch libraries are now to get copies of these.

Councillors, as well as staff, were asked to nominate their favourite titles: and Councillor Siobhan Costello, executive member for community services, chose Louisa May Alcott's early feminist classic "Little Women" as her favourite work of fiction. This title finished joint second in the local survey, and Coun Costello presented a copy of the novel to Radcliffe library.

"The book has definitely stood the test of time," she said. "I first read it when I was very young and the story of the March sisters appealed to me instantly; they were people from another country and 100 years in the past but I thought of them as friends. I still do. My favourite sister? Jo, of course." By contrast, readers are being asked to nominate their Room 101 books: the ones they truly hate! There are voting slips in every library, and all non-libellous comments will be displayed.

The 22 most popular books were:

First place: "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Joint second: "Bridget Jones's Diary", Helen Fielding; "The Lord of the Rings", J. R. R. Tolkien; "The Magic Faraway Tree", Enid Blyton; "Little Women", Louisa May Alcott.

Joint third: "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", C. S. Lewis; "Gormenghast", Mervyn Peake.

Joint fourth: "Jane Eyre", Charlotte Bronte; "Rebecca", Daphne Du Maurier; "The Wind in the Willows", Kenneth Grahame; "Animal Farm", George Orwell.

Joint fifth: "Goodnight Mister Tom", Michelle Magorian; "Lord of the Flies", William Golding; "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist", Robert Tressell; "To Kill a Mockingbird", Harper Lee; "Wuthering Heights", Emily Bronte; "Captain Corelli's Mandolin", Louis de Bernieres.

Joint sixth: "Cold Comfort Farm", Stella Gibbons; "Gone With The Wind", Margaret Mitchell; "Nineteen Eighty-Four", George Orwell; "Of Mice and Men", John Steinbeck; "Artemis Fowl", Eoin Colfer.

Ramsbottom library's reading group now has so many members that it has split into two. The "original" group will continue to meet at 6pm on the last Friday of the month, while the new group will be on first Fridays at 2.30 pm. Both groups cater for visually impaired readers, and their book of the month is made available on tape.