LIBRARY users have expressed surprise at the winner of the Man Booker Prize.

Library and information centres across North Yorkshire held their own competitions using the shortlisted books.

And the unanimous decision was that David Mitchell should have won for his novel Cloud Atlas.

The winner of the national competition was Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst.

Councillor Carl Les, the county council's executive member with responsibility for libraries, said: "This is the first year that the organisers of the Man Booker have involved public libraries and we have been delighted with the amount of interest that this involvement has caused.

"Not only have members of several reading groups across the county taken part in our juries but they have also used our free computers to vote for their choices.

"We may think that the official judges got their decision wrong, but we certainly think that the organisers got the decision to involve libraries dead right."

Man Booker displays have been placed in libraries across the county.