The Great American Read

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


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    Public Broadcasting Service television ran a miniseries called The Great American Read during 2018, in which Viewers Like You were invited to vote for their favorite works of literature. On October 23, 2018, they announced that these were the works that were voted the 100 best-loved books or book series in the USA.[1]

    Note that these are best-loved works, not seminal or most influential. They're also works beloved by readers in the USA, not necessarily works written in the USA.


    The list:
    1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
    2. Outlander (series) by Diana Gabalon
    3. Harry Potter (series) by J. K. Rowling
    4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
    5. The Lord of the Rings (series) by J. R. R. Tolkien
    6. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
    7. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
    8. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
    9. The Chronicles of Narnia (series) by C. S. Lewis
    10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
    11. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
    12. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
    13. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
    14. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
    15. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
    16. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
    17. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
    18. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
    19. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
    20. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
    21. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
    22. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
    23. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
    24. The Stand by Stephen King
    25. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
    26. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
    27. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
    28. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
    29. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
    30. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
    31. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
    32. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
    33. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
    34. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
    35. Dune by Frank Herbert
    36. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
    37. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
    38. The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
    39. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
    40. The Hunger Games (series) by Suzanne Collins
    41. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
    42. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
    43. Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
    44. The Giver by Lois Lowry
    45. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
    46. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
    47. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
    48. A Song of Ice and Fire (series) by George R. R. Martin
    49. Foundation (series) by Isaac Asimov
    50. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
    51. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
    52. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
    53. The Godfather by Mario Puzo
    54. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
    55. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
    56. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
    57. The Shack by William P. Young
    58. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
    59. The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
    60. Beloved by Toni Morrison
    61. The Martian by Andy Weir
    62. The Wheel of Time (series) by James Oliver Rigney
    63. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
    64. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    65. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
    66. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
    67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
    68. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
    69. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
    70. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
    71. Hatchet (series) by Gary Paulsen
    72. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
    73. Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer
    74. Tales of the City (series) by Armistead Maupin
    75. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
    76. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
    77. Left Behind (series) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
    78. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
    79. Watchers by Dean R. Koontz
    80. The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
    81. Alex Cross (series) by James Patterson
    82. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
    83. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
    84. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
    85. Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews
    86. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
    87. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
    88. This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti
    89. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    90. Another Country by James Baldwin
    91. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
    92. Looking for Alaska by John Green
    93. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
    94. Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
    95. Mind Invaders by Dave Hunt
    96. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
    97. Ghost by Jason Reynolds
    98. The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah
    99. The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
    100. Doña Bárbara by Rómulo Gallegos

    1. As reported by CBC Books.