How Many Great Books Have You Read?
Did you vote? No, not in the mid-term elections! For the PBS Great American Read.
I have been wearing my campaign button on my handbag for months, ever since I got it at the New York Library Association (NYLA) conference. Public television viewers have been voting during the past year for the Top 100 books read by Americans. They are not all American books; many are British, French, Russian, Colombian, Canadian. They range across all generations and genres, from Gulliver’s Travels, written in the 18th century to The Godfather, in the 20th. From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to The Book Thief. From Westerns such as Lonesome Dove to Easterns (I guess) such as Memoirs of a Geisha. From assigned high school texts such as The Catcher in the Rye to (ahem) more adult fare such as Fifty Shades of Grey.
Did You Vote?
Today was “election day” (no, not that day off from school in November)! The votes were tallied and the winner is….
Other titles in the top five were:
Well, I voted for To Kill a Mockingbird. (Yes, I know…just like those people who said they got the Final Jeopardy question right, even though they know NOTHING about body parts of reptiles that have eleven letters). But the reason I am excited is that the people who guessed brilliantly ascertained the winning book will win ALL 100 BOOKS! So, please Mr. Postman…or Amazon driver in an anonymous white box truck…please deliver a great big box to me! (Oh yeah, the fine print said their names will be entered into a drawing to win!) Now you know how the kids feel when you tell them they will win a free book for reading more minutes than skateboarding, more than video games, more than breathing…but what you mean is you will pick the “winner’s” name out of a hat. Bummer!
If you want to see what a smarty pants YOU are…check out how many of the 100 books you have read (click on this link):
Great American Read List of 100 Books
Read that Movie!
You might not think they are all great literature. Some have been made into TV shows, like A Game of Thrones, Outlander, The Handmaid’s Tale. Others were made into movies, like The Hunt for Red October, The Twilight Saga, The Martian, The Help, The Joy Luck Club, The Great Gatsby. But, I know from the kids in my school library, often a movie generates interest in the original book. Or, as the kids say, “Hey, I read that movie”!
If you library is experiencing a run on these popular-again titles, there’s always Amazon.
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