In 2003, the BBC conducted a survey of the British public in order to find the "Nation's Best-Loved Book." It was a controversial show, as some praised it for raising public awareness of literary reading, while others saw it as a sensationalist approach to literature. Similar contests were held in other countries, including: Australia, Germany, Hungary, and various cities in the United States.
Here in the States, that original premise has morphed into The Big Read, a program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. Its purpose? "...to restore reading to the center of American culture." How are they doing that? Click on the links at then end of this post for more information.
Now, this post was inspired by reading a meme I've seen on blogs lately. It lists 100 Books - supposedly from The Big Read (but actually not, as blogger The Rabid Paladin found out after some digging) - where you're supposed to mark the ones you've read, the ones you plan to read, and the ones you've loved.
Well. I'm not about to type in a list of 100 books that someone else made up, then only mark about 30 or so of them! (Yes, I checked...) So instead, here is a list of fifty fave books I've read and loved - in no particular order:
1. The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig
2. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
3. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
4. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
5. The Wright 3 by Blue Balliett
8. Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan
9. The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl
10. Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott
11. The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
12. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
13. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
15. Sons by Pearl S. Buck
16. Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck
17. A Painted House by John Grisham
18. Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy
19. All of the Harry Potter Books, by JK Rowling
20. All of the Robert Ludlum novels, by, well, Robert
Ludlum
21. Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary Wolf
22. The Book of Lost Things by John Connelly
23. The Secret Order of the Gumm Street Girls by Elise
Primavera
24. The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry
25. Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke
26. Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
27. All of the Narnia books by CS Lewis
28. The Lemonade Club by Patricia Polacco
29. All of the Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey
30. All of Shel Silverstein's poetry collections
31. Sacajawea by Anna Lee Waldo
32. Coyote Summer by W. Michael Gear
33. Centennial by James Michener
34. Charleston by John Jakes
35. One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
36. Roots by Alex Haley
37. Queen by Alex Haley and David Stevens
38. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
39. The Touch by Colleen McCullough
40. Good Families Don't by Robert Munsch
41. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
42. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
43. Tuesday by David Weisner
45. Black Beauty by Anna Sewel
46. The Giver by Lois Lowry
47. King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry
48. Heidi by Johanna Spyri
49. Freckles by Gene Stratton Porter
50. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
I could go on...
How about you? What are some of your favorite books? Drop me a comment (or several) and let me know...
Sources on The Big Read:
