The Great American Read

PBS wants to know America’s favorite book
Over the next several months, PBS will delve into the books that American readers love, both classic and modern, in an effort to discover the most popular book in the country. The Great American Read is a celebration of the power of reading, an investigation on how fictional worlds come into existence, and how stories affect us. Ultimately, it’s a look into what the most popular novels in America say about the nation and the people who live here.

The top 100 titles were selected through a survey of more than 7,000 representative Americans and an advisory panel of thirteen literary professionals. From that list of 100, America’s favorite novel will be chosen through open online voting. To make sure your readers are aware of this exciting program, we’ve created a Marketplace list with every title in the top 100. Because it’s likely your digital library has several of these books already, we’ve also created a customized list for your library that will help you fill in any potential gaps.

Capitalize and Curate
PBS has planned an eight-part televised series to dig into this list and will be heavily promoting The Great American Read all throughout the summer and fall. This makes now a great time to curate a collection of these books on your OverDrive homepage to give your readers the ability to join the fun. As we’ve seen with The Handmaid’s Tale and To Kill A Mockingbird in the past, when older books resurface in the zeitgeist, they’re sure to skyrocket in popularity once more.

Noted about The Great American Read
This program is an effort to discover the country’s most beloved novel and, as such, you won’t see nonfiction works in this list. Additionally, books published in a series (we’re looking at you, Harry) are counted as a single entry on the list. For your convenience, we’ve added the entire series to our Marketplace lists. Each author was also limited to one title on the list to keep it varied. You’ll also notice books published outside of America. Books could be from anywhere in the world, as long as they were published in English.