The Great American Read. Do You Agree With The Results?

Ya know, I think it might be a good idea to re-read that one about now

 

If I had to guess, I'd say they probably just recoded all the "Harry Potter and the Blankity Blanks" to "Harry Potter." Seems like a decent way to represent the overall showing that "Harry Potter" made while acknowledging that no single one of those books may have made the list on its own.

And if it was a write-in poll, they probably got sick of trying to figure out what the respondent meant by, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Phoenix."

WRT authors, Rowling has also written a different series under the name, "Robert Galbraith." They're good but don't belong on the list of best-loved novels like the Harry Potter books do. That's why I'd exclude authors.

I missed that Wheel of Time was on the list. I think that might make me feel a bit better overall. I read somewhere (pre- Game of Thrones) that the sci fi/fantasy books were pretty routinely outselling the NYT Bestsellers by a lot, but that there was a subjective element to the list that tended to keep them off. But lots of people loved them.

I don't think I've read any of those books in the past decade other than "the Martian" which was fantastic but I think was probably helped into this list by having been made into a big-time fantastic movie too.

 

There's the theory that any reading is better than no reading. Most of this list is a solid argument either for or against that theory.

 

Alas, Babylon and On The Beach are both favorites of mine, but I don't view them as being superior to The Road. All three (and a plethora of others in the genre) easily outshine Swan Song.

 

Every four years for me. It's always enlightening. But Hell's Angels is by far my favorite HST.

 

No Wind-up Bird Chronicle?

Any list like this that doesn’t include Haruki Murakami fails, IMHO.

 

The Clan of the Cave Bear - Haven't read it, maybe I should

Clan of the Cave Bear was Mommy Porn before there was such a thing.

 

I liked your comments as much as--more than--the list itself. Thanks.

I read A Separate Peace, urp. Why? One Hundred Years of Solitude is a great book; I wish I could read it in Spanish. Atlas Shrugged could lose about 700 of its pages and be better for it. Beloved, damn: Toni Morrison is tough, great. So's Alice Walker, important voices both. I'm with you all the way on Chrichton. And The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is more than just a story about a boy and a runaway slave going down a river on a raft. . .should've been there. The peppering of top-pop listings (and the "assigned in school" nature of some of the others) shows the survey for what it is, a popularity contest, and I think we all should take heart in the fact there are as many great classics as there are making the list.

Ranking books is a quixotic task, tilting at windmills.

I'm just finishing the last of my four-volume boxed set of Kurt Vonnegut, all his novels and a bunch of short stories. I saved the second volume for last--Cat's Cradle; God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; Slaughterhouse-Five; and Breakfast of Champions--because that period, 1963-'72, was the height of Vonnegut's power and popularity. I'd read most of the twelve novels before, some of them several times, but it has been fun and interesting to read him so intensely, all his stuff at once. I plan to do the same thing soon with John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, and maybe Faulkner.


P.S. I count 49 books on the list that I've read before.

 

Not a novel.

 

Ironically, it's the same relationship with music these days.

 

In a thread about novels and literature, is it ironic that the word ironic is used incorrectly?

 

it's funny, everyone mentions The Three Musketeers and The Man In the Iron Mask, but not the books in between that marry the whole thing up (Vingt Ans Apre, Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, and Louise de la Valliere).

(I'll be over here, nerding...)

 

I've read the first three Strike novels, haven't around to Lethal White yet. They were adapted for television here.

 

The list by itself isn't very informative it lacks all of the background that went into making it. The series on the other hand, all 8 episodes were great, as is the interactive version of the list. Watching the various interviews of book lovers really helps you understand why people choose one book as a favorite over another.
the list is here:
https://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/books/#/
and the episodes here:
https://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/watch/

 

I read for entertainment so yeah I'm OK with that . Several of those books have been made into pretty good movies … again entertainment .

 

It seems these days, there is no incorrect use of the word "ironic".

Literally.

 

A Hundred Years of Solitude. Never read it? Get busy! It's stunning.
No Toni Morrison? I call foul.

 

Aaarrrrgghhhh

 

Those were enjoyable novels, and I quite liked the TV series. They really got the characters right.

 

No Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, or Michael Moorcock! I call foul.

Also, no Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum, and yet they sold hundreds of millions of books.