Did you watch it?!? On Tuesday, October 23 PBS aired the final episode of The Great American Read and revealed America’s favorite book. And the winner is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee! Lee’s book took and kept the lead right from the beginning. There were a few close calls: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier was bumped out of the 24th spot by The Stand by Stephen King and Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry edged past Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett to claim the 22nd spot. The ranking of each title is listed below:
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Outlander (Series) by Diana Gabaldon
- Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
- Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
- Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Help by Kathryn Stockett
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
- 1984 by George Orwell
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
- Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
- The Stand by Stephen King
- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
- A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
- Color Purple by Alice Walker
- Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
- The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- The Call of the Wild by Jack London
- The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
- The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
- Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
- Game of Thrones (series) by George R.R. Martin
- Foundation (series) by Isaac Asimov
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
- The Godfather by Mario Puzo
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
- The Shack by William P. Young
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- The Martian by Andy Weir
- The Wheel of Time (series) by Robert Jordan
- Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon
- A Separate Peace by John Knowles
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
- Hatchet (series) by Gary Paulsen
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- The Twilight Saga (series) by Stephanie Meyer
- Tales of the City (series) by Armistead Maupin
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
- Left Behind (series) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
- The Watchers by Dean Koontz
- The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
- Alex Cross Mysteries (series) by James Patterson
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
- Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews
- Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
- The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
- This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti
- Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Another Country by James Baldwin
- Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
- Looking for Alaska by John Green
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
- Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
- Mind Invaders by Dave Hunt
- White Teeth by Zadie Smith
- Ghost by Jason Reynolds
- The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah
- The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
- Doña Bárbára by Romulo Gallegos
Though I still haven’t read all the books on the list, I have made progress and I do intend on getting through it. So far, my favorite book on the list that I had not read until I saw the list is The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. What about you? Are you reading through the list? Any pleasant surprises?