The Great American Read on PBS

Part 5: "America's 100 Most-Loved Novels" List, Titles 61-80

The Great American Read is a PBS series that explores and celebrates the power of reading as the core of an ambitious digital, educational, and community outreach campaign designed to get the country reading and passionately talking about books. One hundred books, to be exact, so here are books 81-100 on the list! (If you missed the first four blog posts with titles 1-80, start here.)

What is The Great American Read?

The Great American Read is an eight-part PBS series that explores and celebrates the power of reading through the prism of America's 100 most-loved novels as chosen in a national survey¹. The series explores how and why writers create their fictional worlds and features documentary segments with testimonials from celebrities, authors, notable Americans, and book lovers across the US.

The 100 books on the list were revealed in the first episode, so no spoilers here, just the goods to get you reading! Also, you can participate in choosing "America's most-loved novel" by voting for your favorite—the winner will be announced in the series finale.

¹PBS doesn't actually endorse any of the books on the list, so for the curious, the FAQs outline the process of how the titles were selected.

America's 100 Most-Loved Novels, Titles 81—100

Each title has a hashtag, so you can vote for your favorite book on social media or via SMS. You can also vote on the PBS website, or skip voting altogether and let ThriftBooks help you build a "100 Most-Loved Books" collection.

81. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline — #VOTEPlayer1
82. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier — #VOTERebecca
83. The Shack by William P. Young — #VOTETheShack
84. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse — #VOTESidd
85. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut — #VOTESirens
86. The Stand by Stephen King — #VOTETheStand
87. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway — #VOTESunRises
88. Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon — #VOTESwanSong
89. Tales of the City (series) by Armistead Maupin — #VOTETalesCity
90. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston — #VOTEWatchingGod
91. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe — #VOTEFallApart
92. This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti – #VOTEDarkness
93. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee — #VOTEMockingbird
94. The Twilight Saga (series) by Stephenie Meyer — #VOTETwilight
95. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy — #VOTEWarPeace
96. Watchers by Dean Koontz — #VOTEWatchers
97. The Wheel of Time (series) by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson — #VOTEWheelTime
98. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls — #VOTERedFern
99. White Teeth by Zadie Smith — #VOTEWhiteTeeth
100. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë — #VOTEWuthering

Happy reading, and keep an eye out for #TheGreatAmericanRead updates, including an "America’s Most-Loved Novel" winner announcement following the grand finale episode, which airs on Tuesday, October 23.

Read more by Beth Clark