We’re so excited to tell you about The Great American Read. It’s an 8 part PBS series created to get people reading and talking about books. They’ve curated a list of 100 fiction titles that people love best as voted on by a national survey. Read more about how the top 100 were chosen here.
You can watch The Great American Read television show on your local PBS channel or on pbs.org. It’s hosted by Meredith Veira who facilitates analysis of the books chosen and how they represent our American culture.
So how can you participate? We’ve listed the titles alphabetically below and they are linked to our library’s catalog. If you’re interested in reading some (or all!) of the titles that the nation has chosen, WNPL is here for you. You can also print The Great American Read List to use as a checklist.
If you’d like to take it a step further, you can follow The Great American Read Club on Facebook to discuss the various books with other fans.
Which have you read and which are on your list? Let us know in the comments below!
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Alex Cross Mysteries (Series) by James Patterson
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maude Montgomery
Another Country by James Baldwin
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chronicles of Narnia (Series) by C.S. Lewis
The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Dona Barbara by Romulo Gallegos
Fifty Shades of Grey (Series) by E.L. James
Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews
Foundation (Series) by Isaac Asimov
Game of Thrones (Series) by George R.R. Martin
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Smith
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
Hatchet (Series) by Gary Paulsen
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Hunger Games (Series) by Suzanne Collins
The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Left Behind (Series) by Tim LaHaye
The Little Prince by Antione de Saint-Exupery
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty
Looking for Alaska by John Green
The Lord of the Rings (Series) by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Mind Invaders by Dave Hunt
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Outlander (Series) by Diana Gabaldon
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
Tales of the City (Series) by Armistead Maupin
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Twilight Saga (Series) by Stephenie Meyer
The Wheel of Time (Series) by Robert Jordan