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Vote: The Books America Can’t Live Without

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This isn’t as scientific as I’d like, but given the amount of comments I received and the pool of books selected in those comments, coupled with informal polls offline, I have cobbled together a list of twenty books America can’t live without, in no particular order. Here’s where you come in. Let’s put them order. Vote for your top five in the comments. I will tally the votes and rank the books from 1-20.

  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  • Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  • Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  • The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Collected Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
  • The Bible
  • The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  • The Once and Future King by T.H. White
  • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  • Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
  • Dracula by Bram Stoker
  • The Short Stories of Flannery O’Connor by Flannery O’Connor
  • The Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
  • For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
  • The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  • Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Remember to select only five books, and it would be helpful if you ranked them from 1-5 as well. More votes for a certain book for number one as opposed to number five might help me break ties.

[tags]literature, reading, education, favorite books[/tags]

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16 thoughts on “Vote: The Books America Can’t Live Without”

  1. My picks:

    1. Harry Potter books

    2. The Great Gatsby

    3. To Kill a Mockingbird

    4. The Collected Works of Shakespeare

    5. The Lord of the Rings

  2. 1. The Collected Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

    2. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

    3. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

    5. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

  3. Pingback: Much Madness is Divinest Sense » Vote: The Books America Can’t Live Without

  4. 1. The collected works of Shakespeare

    2. The Bible

    3. Huckleberry Finn

    4. 1984 (replaces Brave New World – sorry 🙁 I know it's not what you asked for, but it's far superior and I can't see leaving it off any must-read list)

    5. To Kill a Mockingbird

  5. 1. The Collected Works of William Shakespeare

    2. the Harry Potter books

    3. The Sound and the Fury

    4. To Kill a Mockingbird

    5. The Catcher in the Rye

  6. 1) The Collected Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

    2) The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

    3) The Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe

    4) Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

    5) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

  7. 1. The Collected Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

    2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

    3. Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

    4. The Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe

    5. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

  8. 1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

    2. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

    3. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

    4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    5. The Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe

  10. 1. Bible

    2. Collected Works of William Shakespeare

    3. To Kill a Mockingbird

    4. The Adventures of Huck Finn (Although A Separate Peace would really be here, if it had been on the original list :))

    5. The Sound and the Fury

  11. 1) The Collected Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

    2) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

    3) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

    4) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

    5) Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

    [There's method here: These are the passions and the history that we must deal with now — that color our current America.]

  12. 1. Of Mice and Men

    2. Brave New World

    3. Dracula

    4. To Kill A Mockingbird

    5. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

  13. I'm writing on behalf of Public Radio International's Studio 360, a weekly radio program about creativity, pop culture, and the arts hosted by Kurt Andersen.

    I think you and your readers might be interested in this week’s episode, part of our American icon series, devoted entirely to The Great Gatsby, which you can find here: http://www.studio360.org/americanicons/episodes/2…

    Enjoy!

  14. 1. The Bible

    2. Brave New World (bosh on 1984!! 😉 sillies…)

    3. Huck Finn

    4. To Kill a Mockingbird

    5. Of Mice and Men

    I love, LOVE Shakespeare's work, but… it's hard for me to think of it as "books."

  15. 1. The Harry Potter Series

    2. All of Jane Austens Books

    3. Lord of the Rings Series

    4. Works of William Shakespeare

    5. Collected works of Edgar Allen Poe

    I would like to substitute All of Jane Austens books instead of just Pride and Prejudice.

  16. PS… I am surprised that the works of Dicken's aren't listed here! If I had Austen, Dicken's, Rowling, Tolkien and Shakespeare I would be set.

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