Results of PBS American's Most-Beloved Books

[KeithD]

The results are in in the PBS canvasing for the most beloved books by American readers (50 Shades is #86, LC). What? no Wind in the Willows?

https://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/results/


1. To Kill a Mockingbird
2. Outlander (Series)
3. Harry Potter (Series)
4. Pride and Prejudice
5. Lord of the Rings
6. Gone with the Wind
7. Charlotte's Web
8. Little Women
9. Chronicles of Narnia
10. Jane Eyre
11. Anne of Green Gables
12. Grapes of Wrath
13. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
14. Book Thief
15. Great Gatsby
16. The Help
17. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
18. 1984
19. And Then There Were None
20. Atlas Shrugged
21. Wuthering Heights
22. Lonesome Dove
23. Pillars of the Earth
24. Stand
25. Rebecca
26. A Prayer for Owen Meany
27. Color Purple
28. Alice in Wonderland
29. Great Expectations
30. Catcher in the Rye
31. Where the Red Fern Grows
32. Outsiders
33. The Da Vinci Code
34. The Handmaid's Tale
35. Dune
36. The Little Prince
37. Call of the Wild
38. The Clan of the Cave Bear
39. The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy
40. The Hunger Games
41. The Count of Monte Cristo
42. The Joy Luck Club
43. Frankenstein
44. The Giver
45. Memoirs of a Geisha
46. Moby Dick
47. Catch 22
48. Game of Thrones (series)
49. Foundation (series)
50. War and Peace
51. Their Eyes Were Watching God
52. Jurassic Park
53. The Godfather
54. One Hundred Years of Solitude
55. The Picture of Dorian Gray
56. The Notebook
57. The Shack
58. A Confederacy of Dunces
59. The Hunt for Red October
60. Beloved
61. The Martian
62. The Wheel of Time (series)
63. Siddhartha
64. Crime and Punishment
65. The Sun Also Rises
66. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
67. A Separate Peace
68. Don Quixote
69. The Lovely Bones
70. The Alchemist
71. Hatchet (series)
72. Invisible Man
73. The Twilight Saga (series)
74. Tales of the City (series)
75. Gulliver's Travels
76. Ready Player One
77. Left Behind (series)
78. Gone Girl
79. Watchers
80. The Pilgrim's Progress
81. Alex Cross Mysteries (series)
82. Things Fall Apart
83. Heart of Darkness
84. Gilead
85. Flowers in the Attic
86. Fifty Shades of Grey
87. The Sirens of Titan
88. This Present Darkness
89. Americanah
90. Another Country
91. Bless Me, Ultima
92. Looking for Alaska
93. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
94. Swan Song
95. Mind Invaders
96. White Teeth
97. Ghost
98. The Coldest Winter Ever
99. The Intuitionist
100. Doña Bárbára

 

[ttvttp]

Some of my least favorite entertainment is on that list.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Some of my least favorite entertainment is on that list.

Some of my most loved .

And many I've never read.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Some of my least favorite entertainment is on that list.

Some of my most loved .

And many I've never read.

I agree with both of you.

 

[KeithD]

It would be interesting to read a British reader equivalent.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Ugh

Any “best American novel” list that doesn’t include Huckleberry Finn is ridiculous. It’s a far far better book than Tom Sawyer, but PBS was probably afraid to include it because some morons think it’s racist (of course it’s actually as anti-racist as you can get).

Anyway, the #1 favorite is a fine choice.

 

[rae121452]

this series was really terrible. remember it wasn't gauging the best book, only the most popular. there are several on that list that are only suitable for mulch. and, as soon as i saw "mockingbird" was on the list, i knew the result.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Any “best American novel” list that doesn’t include Huckleberry Finn is ridiculous. It’s a far far better book than Tom Sawyer, but PBS was probably afraid to include it because some morons think it’s racist (of course it’s actually as anti-racist as you can get).

It's certainly anti-slavery. Whether that automatically makes it anti-racist is a different question. Twain treats Jim with sympathy, but he also makes him a dim-witted stereotype who drifts into Comedy Negro Sidekick territory and who's easily outsmarted by a 13- or 14-year-old boy. In Twain's day, that book was an important progressive statement; in modern times, it's possible to look at it and see a touch of benevolent racism.

But if they were going to exclude books on those grounds, there's much more blatant and non-benevolent racism in Tom Sawyer. Twain had nothing good to say about Indians or "half-breeds".

I'd expect Huckleberry Finn is missing for the same reason as The Hobbit, Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men, Murder on the Orient Express, etc. etc.: the list is limited to one book/series per author. I happen to agree with you that Huckleberry Finn is a much better book, but it's also a tougher read in some ways, so maybe Tom Sawyer just got more votes?

 

[rae121452]

and on another tangent, has anyone else noticed how much meredith viera is starting to resemble the joker?

 

[ishtat]

I have read 24 of the list including six of the first 10. However, I have started and failed to finish at least a further 14. And I am a bit embarrassed to admit certain 'classics' I have never opened.

The one book I would like to see on the list is "Dead Souls" by Gogol. A far better Russian book than anything Tolstoy or Dostoevsky wrote.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm skeptical of the methodology for this list. The Web site says 7200 people participated, which is a pretty small number considering the size of the population of the country AND the number of books on the list. I imagine the books at the end of the list were selected by relatively few people, casting into doubt the usefulness and accuracy of the list.

 

[NotWise]

I was surprised and happy to find "Bless Me Ultima" on the list, though rather far down. The author, Rudolpho Anaya, is a local author/poet, and a civic figure in my neighborhood. The book digs into conflicts within the traditional Mexican-American community here, and Ultima herself was something of an inspiration for Abuela Ortiz in my "A Valentine's Day Mess" stories.

 

[kurrginatorX]

There's quite a few that have been brought out to the screen; makes me wonder if all the people that voted have really read them, or if part of their popularity is because people have seen them.

More than likely the case. Either this, or were forced to read in school.

My stories: https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=3938682&page=submissions

 

[Kantarii]

I’m surprised “The Hobbit” and “Sherlock Holms” didn’t make the list. “Alice in Wonder land” and “Frankenstein” should’ve placed higher on the list in my opinion.
Kant

 

[TheMrBurns]

I'm blown away to see a Canadian novel on that list... As well as a French one and do high up as well...

 

[Polranny]

As a Brit i am surprised Last of the Mohicans is missing, glad to see Moby Dick is there, but where is Charles Dickens?

 

[Polranny]

As a Brit i am surprised Last of the Mohicans is missing, glad to see Moby Dick is there, but where is Charles Dickens?

To me the results smack of best film from a novel .
Where are the Russians and French authors?. Presumably lost in translation

 

[Polranny]

Brit list

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8= Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

8= His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte's Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

 

[HBergeron]

Some truly worthy books on the list, but I agree with the poster above - a lot of this is more 'popular' fiction - 'Fifty Shades of Gray'? But then, it is 'most beloved' not 'best'. Moby Dick at 46 is disappointing.

 

[KeithD]

Yep, the British list looks more thoughtful and less faddish than the American one does.

 

[ishtat]

I scored 33 on the British list including 9 of the top 10. The criteria for the list may be a little different though, because if you are a Jane Austen fan there are at least 5 of her books on the list whereas I am not sure whether any of the Americans had multiple books.

Including the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare was a bit dodgy. Put your hand up if you have ever read Leviticus and the other hand if you ever heard the Book of Esther in any church. Similarly anyone read Timon of Athens? Corialinus? and King John?

But fun, and makes you promise to read the forgotten ones.

 

[jehoram]

I thought "Huckleberry Finn" would be on this list. But then, nobody made a movie of it in the past twenty or thirty years, so people don't know about it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

As a Brit i am surprised Last of the Mohicans is missing, glad to see Moby Dick is there, but where is Charles Dickens?

Great Expectations is at #29.

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

...

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

"The Chronicles of Narnia" is a seven-book series, and "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" is the first and best-known book in that series. It seems odd to list both of them - did the source have any info about why that was done?

I am amused to see "The Little Prince" sitting next to "The Wasp Factory". Hard to think of two more different books...

 

[Polranny]

I only googled the list. There are several , obviously critera and sample size differ. Not everyone who read the lww went on for the full chronicles so the 33 vs 36 is strange but lists can be informative all the same

 

[lovecraft68]

I only saw one horror novel (Swan song near the end) Unless Ghost is, not looking it up.

It is a skewed list to not have one Stephen King novel on there and you can't tell me the Exorcist doesn't rate.

Potter over Lord of the Rings is a big surprise if for no other reason than how old LOTR is compared to the relatively new(in terms of this list) Potter series.