On Tuesday, PBS aired a special to announce the results of its six-month contest to identify America’s 100 best-loved novels called The Great American Read.
With more than 7 millions votes cast, it’s clear from the results that Americans love to read. How well they read is an entirely different matter, again based on the results.
America’s best-loved novel, based on the PBS contest, is Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird.” No surprise there. It’s been a cherished novel since its publication since 1960.
But the list took some odd turns after that.
Diana Gabadon’s Outlander, now a popular mini-series, is the second most-loved book in America. Uh. OK. If you say so. Coming in third was J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, followed by Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice and, in fifth, J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” series.
Only “To Kill a Mockingbird” would have made my top five list, and I doubt very much that Outlander, an annoying exercise in time travel and men in kilts, wouldn’t have sniffed my Top 100.
I’ll say this for Harry Potter, though: If the contest has been held to identify the 100 most important books, Rowling’s Harry Potter series would earn a sport near the top. Not since J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” (No. 30 in the list) has there been a book that has so inspired a generation of new readers.
That’s the important thing to note about this list. PBS did not attempt the identify the most important novels, nor even the best-written novels, which explains the presence of the truly awful writing found in Tim LaHaye’s “Left Behind” series ( NO. 77) or E.L. James “Fifty Shades of Grey” (86). If you want wooden characters, predictable plots and contrived dialogue, those two novels should be your guide.
Meanwhile, William Faulkner and Eudora Welty didn’t crack the Top 100. Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” widely regarded as the first great American novel, didn’t make the list, either.
Most of my favorites made the list somewhere, including John Kennedy Toole’s comic masterpiece, “A Confederacy of Dunces” (No. 58).
I guess that’s the nature of such a contest.
When you choose a list of “bests,” there are objective criteria that can be used. But when it’s a list of favorites,” there is only one vote: Your own.
So no two lists are likely to be the same and while I would like to steer clear from anyone whose best loved book is “Left Behind” or “Fifty Shades of Grey,” I will say like readers.
Readers are thinkers. They are open to knew ideas. They are curious.
Show me a dull person and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t read. That’s true 100 percent of the time.
So, while the outcome of the Great American Read didn’t produce the results exactly as I would have expected, I think it was a great way to promote reading.
There were quite a few books on the list that I have not read which I now intend to read. I suspect the same is true for everyone who tuned in to see how the contest would play out.
I hope that schools will use the program to help shape their own reading programs and encourage students to read.
Last week, I sat down with Brad Meltzer, whose novels have regularly made it on the New York Times best-seller list, a few hours before he delivered in the keynote address at the Eudora Welty Gala. In his bio, I had noticed that he was the first in his family to go to a four-year college and I had a theory about that I wanted to explore.
I asked him if there were books in his home growing up.
As I suspected, he said no. His mom read tabloid magazines and his dad read the newspaper sports section, that was about it.
“But I had a grandmother who had this thing called a library card,” Meltzer said. “I remember going to the library and walking in the children’s section. The lady there told me, ‘This is your section.’ I thought it was literally true; that all of these books were mine. So I read everything.”
That’s the kind of power reading can unleash.
And that is why that it may not be a matter of what Americans read as much as the fact that we still read that gives me hope for the future.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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