Earlier this year, Public Broadcasting Service issued a list of the top 100 fiction books and series that have shaped American reading.
Starting Tuesday night, host Meredith Vieira will be counting down all 100 before revealing America’s favorite book in an eight-part series called “The Great American Read” on PBS.
Also starting Tuesday: a chance for the public to vote to decide the top book. Polls will be open on the program’s website and on social media channels.
Not all of the books were written by American authors or even take place in part in the U.S. To qualify, a book just had to be translated into English.
All 100 books are available at K.O. Lee Aberdeen Public Library, said Cara Romeo, assistant director. There’s at least one hard copy of each book, and more popular books might be available as CD audiobooks, downloadable audiobooks and e-books.
When the list was released, Romeo said library staff combed it and ordered any that were missing from the collection.
The 100 books were selected by publishing industry professionals. Authors can only have one book or series on the list to increase diversity, according to information on the PBS website.
The grand finale revealing the No. 1 book will air in October.
The 100 contenders
• “1984” by George Orwell.
• “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole.
• “A Prayer For Owen Meany” by John Irving.
• “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles.
• “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by Betty Smith.
• “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain.
• “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho.
• “Alex Cross Mysteries” (series) by James Patterson.
• “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll.
• “Americanah Chimamanda” by Ngozi Adichie.
• “And Then There Were None” by Agatha Christie.
• “Anne of Green Gables” by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
• “Another Country” by James Baldwin.
• “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand.
• “Beloved” by Toni Morrison.
• “Bless Me, Ultima” by Rudolfo Anaya.
• “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak.
• “The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao” by Junot Díaz.
• “The Call Of The Wild” by Jack London.
• “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller.
• “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger.
• “Charlotte’s Web” by E. B. White.
• “The Chronicles of Narnia” (series) by C.S. Lewis.
• “Clan of the Cave Bear” by Jean M. Auel.
• “Coldest Winter Ever” by Sister Souljah.
• “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker.
• “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas.
• “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
• “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon.
• “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown.
• “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes.
• “Dona Barbara” by Romulo Gallegos.
• “Dune” by Frank Herbert.
• “Fifty Shades Of Grey” (series) by E. L. James.
• “Flowers In The Attic” by V.C. Andrews.
• “Foundation” (series) by Isaac Asimov.
• “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley.
• “Game of Thrones” (series) by George R. R. Martin.
• “Ghost” by Jason Reynolds.
• “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson.
• “The Giver” by Lois Lowry.
• “The Godfather” by Mario Puzo.
• “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn.
• “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell.
• “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck.
• “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens.
• “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
• “Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift.
• “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood.
• “Harry Potter” (series) by J.K. Rowling.
• “Hatchet” (series) by Gary Paulsen.
• “Heart Of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad.
• “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett.
• “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy” by Douglas Adams.
• “The Hunger Games” (series) by Suzanne Collins.
• “The Hunt For Red October” by Tom Clancy.
• “The Intuitionist” by Colson Whitehead.
• “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison.
• “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë.
• “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan.
• “Jurassic Park” by Michael Crichton.
• “Left Behind” (series) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.
• “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
• “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott.
• “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry.
• “Looking for Alaska” by John Green.
• “The Lord of the Rings” (series) by J.R.R. Tolkien.
• “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold.
• “The Martian” by Andy Weir.
• “Memoirs of a Geisha” by Arthur Golden.
• “Mind Invaders” by Dave Hunt.
• “Moby-Dick” by Herman Melville.
• “The Notebook” by Nicholas Sparks.
• “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
• “Outlander” (series) by Diana Gabaldon.
• “The Outsiders” by S. E. Hinton.
• “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde.
• “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan.
• “The Pillars of The Earth” by Ken Follett.
• “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen.
• “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline.
• “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier.
• “The Shack” by William P. Young.
• “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse.
• “The Sirens of Titan” by Kurt Vonnegut.
• “The Stand” by Stephen King.
• “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway.
• “Swan Song” by Robert R. McCammon.
• “Tales of The City” (series) by Armistead Maupin.
• “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston.
• “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe.
• “This Present Darkness” by Frank. E. Peretti.
• “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee.
• “The Twilight Saga” (series) by Stephenie Meyer.
• “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy.
• “Watchers” by Dean Koontz.
• “The Wheel of Time” (series) by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.
• “Where the Red Fern Grows” by Wilson Rawls.
• “White Teeth” by Zadie Smith.
• “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë.
How many have you read? Visit pbs.org/the-great-american-read/quiz/ to find out.