This week I stumbled on an ad for a new show: The Great American Read on PBS. It airs this week on Tuesday, and I’m so excited! They’ve picked 100 favorite books, and assembled a bunch of mini-documentaries about the books, why we love books, and how authors write books. Then we get to vote to choose America’s favorite book! YAY!
Based on the preview, the list looks like it has a lot of variety, from classics to very new, YA, kids, adult, science fiction, fantasy, a little bit of everything. I’m really looking forward to whatever the show has to tell us about these books, listening to favorite authors talk about their favorites, and (of course) casting my own vote!
Here. Watch the preview.
And, of course, what kind of book blogger would I be if I didn’t go through THE LIST (!!!!!) and see how many I’ve read? I haven’t looked at the list yet, but I’m guessing I’ll have read less than half. I never do well on lists like these. Still, I’m excited to find out what books they’ve picked, to see how many I read, and to get an idea of what I might be hearing about on Tuesday night.
Well, here goes nothing!
| Title | Author | Read? |
| 1984 | George Orwell | Yes |
| A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole | |
| A Prayer for Owen Meany | John Irving | |
| A Separate Peace | John Knowles | Yes |
| A Tree Grows in Brooklyn | Betty Smith | |
| The Adventures of Tom Sawyer | Mark Twain | Yes |
| The Alchemist | Paul Coelho | Yes |
| Alex Cross Mysteries (series) | James Patterson | |
| Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland | Lewis Carroll | |
| Americanah | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | |
| And Then There Were None | Agatha Christie | Yes |
| Anne of Green Gables | Lucy Maud Montgomery | |
| Another Country | James Baldwin | |
| Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand | |
| Beloved | Roni Morrison | |
| Bless Me, Ultima | Rudolfo Anaya | |
| The Book Thief | Markus Zusak | Yes |
| The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | Junot Diaz | |
| The Call of the Wild | Jack London | Yes |
| Catch-22 | Joseph Heller | Yes |
| The Catcher in the Rye | J.D. Salinger | Yes |
| Charlotte’s Web | E.B. White | Yes |
| The Chronicles of Narnia (series) | C.S. Lewis | Yes |
| Clan of the Cave Bear | Jean M. Aul | Yes |
| Coldest Winter Ever | Sister Souljah | |
| The Color Purple | Alice Walker | |
| The Count of Monte Cristo | Alexandre Dumas | Yes |
| Crime and Punishment | Fyodor Dosteyevsky | |
| The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time | Mark Haddon | Yes |
| The Da Vinci Code | Dan Brown | Yes |
| Don Quixote | Miguel de Cervantes | |
| Dona Barbara | Romulo Gallegos | |
| Dune | Frank Herbert | |
| Fifty Shades of Grey (series) | E.L. James | |
| Flowers in the Attic | V.C. Andrews | |
| Foundation (series) | Isaac Asimov | Yes (1st book) |
| Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | Yes |
| Game of Thrones (series) | George R.R. Martin | Yes |
| Ghost | Jason Reynolds | |
| Gilead | Marilynne Robinson | |
| The Giver | Lois Lowry | Yes |
| The Godfather | Mario Puzo | |
| Gone Girl | Gillian Flynn | |
| Gone With the Wind | Margaret Mitchell | Yes |
| The Grapes of Wrath | John Steinbeck | |
| Great Expectations | Charles Dickens | Yes |
| The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Yes |
| Gulliver’s Travels | Johnathan Swift | Yes |
| The Haindmaid’s Tale | Margaret Atwood | Yes |
| Harry Potter (series) | J.K. Rowling | Yes |
| Hatchet (series) | Gary Paulson | Yes (1st book) |
| Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad | Yes |
| The Help | Kathryn Stockett | Yes |
| The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galexy | Douglas Adams | Yes |
| The Hunger Games (series) | Suzanne Collins | Yes |
| The Hunt for Red October | Tom Clancy | |
| The Intuitionist | Colson Whitehead | |
| Invisible Man | Ralph Ellison | |
| Jane Eyre | Charlotte Bronte | Yes |
| The Joy Luck Club | Amy Tan | |
| Jurassic Park | Michael Chrichton | |
| Left Behind (series) | Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins | |
| The Little Prince | Antoine de Saint-Exupery | |
| Little Women | Louisa May Alcott | Yes |
| Lonesome Dove | Larry McMurty | |
| Looking for Alaska | John Green | |
| The Lord of the Rings (series) | J.R.R. Tolkien | Yes |
| The Lovely Bones | Alice Sebold | |
| The Martian | Andy Weir | Yes |
| Memoirs of a Geisha | Arthur Golden | |
| Mind Invaders | Dave Hunt | |
| Moby-Dick | Herman Melville | |
| The Notebook | Nicholas Sparks | Yes |
| One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | |
| Outlander (series) | Diana Gabaldon | |
| The Outsiders | S.E. Hinton | |
| The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde | Yes |
| The Pilgrim’s Progress | John Bunyan | |
| The Pillars of the Earth | Ken Follett | Yes |
| Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | Yes |
| Ready Player One | Ernest Cline | Yes |
| Rebecca | Daphne du Maurier | |
| The Shack | William P. Young | |
| Siddhartha | Hermann Hesse | Yes |
| The Sirens of Titan | Kurt Vonnegut | |
| The Stand | Stephen King | |
| The Sun Also Rises | Ernest Hemingway | |
| Swan Song | Rober R. McCammon | |
| Tales of the City (series) | Armistead Maupin | |
| Their Eyes Were Watching God | Zora Neale Hurston | Yes |
| Things Fall Apart | Chinua Achebe | |
| This Present Darkness | Frank E. Peretti | |
| To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | Yes |
| The Twilight Saga (series) | Stephanie Meyer | Yes |
| War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy | |
| Watchers | Dean Koontz | |
| The Wheel of Time (series) | Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson | |
| Where the Red Fern Grows | Wilson Rawls | |
| White Teeth | Zadie Smith | |
| Wuthering Heights | Emily Bronte | Yes |
Total Read: 44
Wow! That’s like, the most I’ve ever read on a list like this! And I have to say, PBS, this is an outstanding list. Almost every book I would expect to see on it is. There were only a couple surprises. For example, I’m a little shocked that Looking for Alaska was the John Green novel they picked. I mean, the TFIOS bench is now on Google Maps…
It’s important to remember as you go through this list, however, that it’s a list of most popular books, not the best books. That’s how picks like Fifty Shades of Grey and The Da Vinci Code made it. They’re not awesome, but MAN are they popular!
I’m super excited to watch and see how voting goes. I have no idea what I’m going to vote for. Both of my favorites are on this list, and choosing between them would be like choosing a favorite child. DECISIONS, DECISIONS!
To find out more about The Great American Read you can visit PBS’s webpage here. Look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday night!
What’s your favorite book? Did it make PBS’s list?
Never Not Reading 
WOAH this show looks like my cup of tea!! I’m so glad you posted about it because I’ll definitely be tuning in 🙂
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I know! I feel so lucky that I just HAPPENED to see an ad!
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Yay! Someone else plans to watch this! *lol* Three of my favorites are on this list: The Lord of the Rings, Pride and Prejudice, and Dune.
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LOTR and P&P are the two that I’m never going to be able to choose between. Never read Dune, mostly because I started the movie once and was bored out of my mind. But it’s on my someday list. Definitely want to, just can’t commit the time to that monster at the moment. Too many other monsters on my shelf, lol.
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I think I’d pick LotR over Pride and Prejudice. My history with Tolkien is longer than my history with Austen.
Did you try to watch the David Lynch movie, or the SyFy miniseries? The David Lynch version is just dreadful and wanders well away from the book in many ways. The SyFy version is much closer to the book, though the color of the production design and the cinematography are weird.. Apparently, Denis Villeneuve (who directed Arrival and Bladerunner 2049) is working on a two-part film version, so we’ll see if that becomes a reality.
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Don’t know, it was a long time ago. Based on how your spelling SyFy I would guess NOT that version, because back in those days it was still the Sci Fi channel.
My history with Tolkien is longer too, by almost five years. But they’re just too different to compare. I love them both in very different ways, so who is to say which one I like better?
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SyFy’s version came out with it was still The Sci Fi Channel, but I’m used to calling it SyFy…. I think it was around 2000 or 2001? David Lynch’s version came out around 1980 and starre Kyle McLachlan. Sting made an appearance, as did Patrick Stewart.
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It was probably that movie. We rented it from Blockbuster (showing my age, here, lol), and I’m thinking they wouldn’t have had a Sci Fi mini-series there. Also, I googled the poster, and it looks familiar.
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I love the way you compared your real-life reading to the list! I’m too lazy to really figure this out for myself, but I’m guessing I’ve read even less than you. It’s interesting that a lot of the books they’ve chosen seem to be cultural sensations rather than “good” literature, like Fifty Shades. The sociologist in me finds this intriguing!
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I was so interested in that aspect of this list too! Especially because I recently did a similar post about Amazon’s top 100 books list, and the two are so VERY different.
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I definitely think The Lord of the Rings should win, but I also feel an inclination to vote for To Kill a Mocking Bird and a few others. Too many good choices!
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LOTR is one of my two favorites. I used to read it every year, and I still never get tired of it. ❤
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I have read, (or attempted to read) 21, I am surprised about a few of these though. I suspect some of the people that were asked haven’t read a book since middle school because a few of these are required for english class. Who knows, maybe for someone out there “The call of the Wild” really is their favorite book, but I never cared for it. Many of these books like “The Stand” I started, but after a few hundred pages still couldn’t handle it. A lot of awesome picks too, and many I haven’t even heard of. (Yes, I’m a barbarian) But all in all it sounds awesome.
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Based on the website, it sounds like the list was compiled through a survey of a couple thousand Americans, but then sorted through by a handful of literature experts. The experts were allowed to add whatever book they wanted (I think) regardless of whether anyone voted for it or not. Which is how I imagine some of the books I’d never heard of made it.
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Okay, that makes a bit more sense. It will be interesting to see.
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I love going through lists like this. Although I’m always puzzled why some books make the list while others don’t. (Especially when I’ve never heard of a book.)
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I enjoy these kinds of lists too! The main couple I was surprised to NOT see on this list were some mega-popular kids books, like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Captain Underpants, or Percy Jackson.
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This programme looks so awesome!! I got 47 (I think- I might have miscounted, but I cba to count again) and yeah there’s definitely loads of amazing books to choose from here- I reckon everyone will have a hard time voting!
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Twitter was NOT struggling last night, lol. Everyone was very opinionated. But they said you can vote for as many different books as you want, so that helps me out!
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hehehe well that’s good!!
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you’ve read so many of these!!
i’m struggling a little bit that 50 shades of gray made the list. like top 100? sheesh.
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Well, it’s 100 most popular, not 100 best. And like or not, the 50 Shades series is DEFINITELY popular…
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OHHH I didn’t make that distinction, good point!
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