The Great Big Reads

Photo by Eugenio Mazzone (Unsplash)

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel… is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”

– Ursula K. Le Guin

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you only think what everyone else is thinking.” – Haruki Murakami

I’ll admit it… I’m a book browser. I hate prescribed lists of what you SHOULD read or what book clubs ARE reading. I seek out stories that speak to me and what I’m processing at the time. Often the most off-beat covers contain the most unique prose.

Why is there a dodo on a plain red back drop? (The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde)
Will the dove return? (If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor)
What happened after the astronauts walked on the moon? (Moondust, Andrew Smith)
Why is a guy climbing down stacked trailers? (Ready Player One, Ernest Cline)

As bricks and mortar bookstores disappear, browsing has become a wee bit more challenging...

This week I came across an episode of “The Great American Read” on PBS. Similar to the BBC 2003 “The Big Read”, both projects aim to discover the best loved novels as voted by the public. The premise, although completely unscientific, is an interesting experiment highlighting the stories which shape our collective psyche. Accepting that 15 years have passed - How similar are the lists? What’s missing that I might recommend?

Note: “The Big Read” listed books in a series separately. “The Great American Read” collected series into one listing. I have compared the long list from “The Big Read” to the 100 books on “The Great American Read”. I have not controlled for books published after 2003.

A cursory glance shows how unique the lists are. The British list is heavy on what most would consider classics whereas the American lists contains more social commentary and modern issues relating to race. Without controlling for books published after 2003, 42 books overlapped both lists. 42! That’s amazing. Moreover, some of the books missing between the lists caught my eye.

Having lived in both countries, I tend to favor British novels due to the often dramatic prose and dynamic use of language. Missing from the American list – authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), Roald Dahl, Terry Pratchett (Discworld Series), Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials Series), and Bram Stoker (Dracula) among others. I chucked when I realized several of the individual titles trended heavily towards science fiction/fantasy including A Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), The Wasp Factory (Iain Banks), The Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco), and The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells). I was stunned not to see On the Road (Jack Kerouac). All amazing stories that will challenge you to think if you haven’t read them before.

Four novels surprisingly missing from the British list – Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand), Foundation (Isaac Asimov), And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie), and Siddhartha (Herman Hess). Again, beautiful storytelling all around.

Projects like these mark a particular moment in history, reflecting what a society values or is struggling to understand. They are fluid as are the choices we make about what we read and why we read. In researching these projects, I may have added a few more titles to my current wish list as they spoke to me.

Update: Hovering at 40% complete in Quiet. Until then…

How many of these books have you read? Which is your favorite? Will you vote for your favorite in “The Great American Read”? Voting continues until 18 October.