PBS’s “The Great American Read”

Last week, inspired by Thrice Read, I took a look at the composition of TIME’s “100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time”. I crunched some numbers on the composition of the list, and took a look at how many of the 100 I have read. Since then, PBS has announced their list of 100 books entitled “The Great American Read“. They will be profiling “America’s 100 most-loved books” in a miniseries beginning in May, and then America will have a chance to vote on which book is “greatest”. As a Canadian, I don’t know that I will be able to vote – but I enjoyed reviewing TIME’s list so much that I thought I would do the same here! First, the numbers on PBS’ “The Great American Read”:

• 67 of the books were written by men, 33 by women
• 62 of the books were written by American authors, 21 by English-speaking Europeans, 4 by Canadians, and 1 by an Australian. That leaves 12 books written by authors in Africa (2), Latin America (4), and non-English-speaking Europe (6). This distribution is slightly better than the TIME list, though of course it is still heavily skewed towards books written in English. Since this list is compiling “most-loved” books instead of “best,” I think that is understandable.
• A look at the chronology of the books:
  • Pre-1900: 17
  • 1900-1939: 10
  • 1940-1959: 14
  • 1960-1979: 13
  • 1980-1999: 27
  • 2000-present: 19
• Finally, 83 of the 100 books were written by white authors. 17 books on PBS’ list were written by people of colour. Again, this is a slightly higher number than on TIME’S list of YA books, but still does not nearly represent the diversity of American readers. I am recommitting myself to reading more diversely – the more people who buy books by diverse authors, the more diverse authors will be given the opportunity to publish. Or at least the hope in me believes so.

Here is the list in alphabetical order. How many have I read?:

Rank and Title	Read?
1. 1984	Yes
2. A Confederacy of Dunces	Yes
3. A Prayer For Owen Meany	No
4. A Separate Peace	No
5. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn	Yes
6. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer	Yes
7. The Alchemist	Yes
8. Alex Cross Mysteries (Series)	No
9. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland	Yes
10. Americanah	No
11. And Then There Were None	Yes
12. Anne of Green Gables	Yes
13. Another Country	No
14. Atlas Shrugged	Yes
15. Beloved	No
16. Bless Me, Ultima	No
17. The Book Thief	Yes
18. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao	Yes
19. The Call of the Wild	No
20. Catch-22	Yes
21. The Catcher in the Rye	Yes
22. Charlotte’s Web	Yes
23. The Chronicles of Narnia (Series)	Yes
24. Clan of the Cave Bear	No
25. Coldest Winter Ever	No
26. The Color Purple	Yes
27. The Count of Monte Cristo	Yes
28. Crime and Punishment	No
29. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	Yes
30. The Da Vinci Code	Yes
31. Don Quixote	No
32. Doña Bárbára	No
33. Dune	Yes
34. Fifty Shades of Grey (Series)	No
35. Flowers in the Attic	No
36. Foundation (Series)	No
37. Frankenstein	Yes
38. Game of Thrones (Series)	No
39. Ghost	No
40. Gilead	No
41. The Giver	Yes
42. The Godfather	Yes
43. Gone Girl	No
44. Gone With the Wind	Yes
45. The Grapes of Wrath	Yes
46. Great Expectations	Yes
47. The Great Gatsby	Yes
48. Gulliver’s Travels	No
49. The Handmaid’s Tale	Yes
50. Harry Potter (Series)	Yes
51. Hatchet (Series)	Yes
52. Heart of Darkness	Yes
53. The Help	No
54. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy	Yes
55. The Hunger Games (Series)	Yes
56. The Hunt for Red October	No
57. The Intuitionist	No
58. Invisible Man	No
59. Jane Eyre	Yes
60. The Joy Luck Club	No
61. Jurassic Park	Yes
62. Left Behind (Series)	No
63. The Little Prince	Yes
64. Little Women	Yes
65. Lonesome Dove	No
66. Looking For Alaska	Yes
67. The Lord of the Rings (Series)	Yes
68. The Lovely Bones	Yes
69. The Martian	No
70. Memoirs of a Geisha	No
71. Mind Invaders	No
72. Moby-Dick	Yes
73. The Notebook	No
74. One Hundred Years of Solitude	Yes
75. Outlander (Series)	No
76. The Outsiders	Yes
77. The Picture of Dorian Gray	Yes
78. The Pilgrim’s Progress	No
79. The Pillars of the Earth	No
80. Pride and Prejudice	Yes
81. Ready Player One	No
82. Rebecca	Yes
83. The Shack	No
84. Siddartha	No
85. The Sirens of Titan	No
86. The Stand	Yes
87. The Sun Also Rises	No
88. Swan Song	No
89. Tales of the City (Series)	No
90. Their Eyes Were Watching God	Yes
91. Things Fall Apart	No
92. This Present Darkness	No
93. To Kill a Mockingbird	Yes
94. The Twilight Saga (Series)	Yes
95. War and Peace	Yes
96. Watchers	No
97. The Wheel of Time (Series)	Yes
98. Where the Red Fern Grows	Yes
99. White Teeth	No
100. Wuthering Heights	Yes

54 out of 100 – more than half! This is an… interesting list. PBS outlines on their website that the list was compiled using a survey of about 7,200 Americans, asking them simply to name their most-loved novel. There are a few inclusions here that baffle me (Mind Invaders is hardly even findable on Google) and leave real questions as to the diversity of their sample size. But again, framing the conversation in terms of “most-loved,” a completely subjective measure, gives them a lot of license to be unscientific.

What do you think of this latest “Top 100” list? Let me know in comments how many YOU have read!