The Great American Read is over, and the final standings were revealed on PBS in the season finale.<\/p>\n
A GAME OF THRONES (well, A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, more precisely) finished 48th.\u00a0\u00a0 Pretty cool.\u00a0\u00a0 I was in the top 50, anyway, and I edged out the FOUNDATION series and WAR AND PEACE.\u00a0\u00a0 Not half bad.\u00a0\u00a0 But really, just being on the list at all was amazing.\u00a0 I mean, being included among in America’s top one hundred favorite novels out of… well, out of all the novels ever written, actually… that’s not too shabby.<\/p>\n
Just to be in this company was enormously gratifying.\u00a0 Though, like everyone else, I could have quibbled over some of the selections.\u00a0 (I mean, Ayn Rand?\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 C’mon.\u00a0 And while Mark Twain certainly deserved to be on the list, I am baffled as to why they would choose to represent him with TOM SAWYER rather than HUCKLEBERRY FINN.\u00a0\u00a0 Charles Dickens is a must, of course, and GREAT EXPECTATIONS is well regarded, but I would have gone with A TALE OF TWO CITIES myself.\u00a0 And if they had nominated A CHRISTMAS CAROL, beloved as it is, Dickens might have finished in the top five.\u00a0\u00a0 I was thrilled to see so much SF and fantasy on the list, but troubled by the omission of some of our genre’s classics.\u00a0\u00a0 Where was H.G. Wells?\u00a0 Surely THE TIME MACHINE or WAR OF THE WORLDS belonged on the ballot.\u00a0\u00a0 And Heinlein… if you are going to include SF at all, you have to include RAH, imnsho.\u00a0 That being said, SF and fantasy came out better than some other genres.\u00a0\u00a0 There were a couple mystery novels contending, but no Chandler, no Hammett. \u00a0 Well, I could go on and on… and you guys will no doubt have opinions as well. \u00a0 All in all, I think it was a very good list, but by no means a definitive one).<\/p>\n
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD won, and led from pillar to post, it was announced.\u00a0\u00a0 And my friend Diana Gabaldon finished second with her OUTLANDER series, a truly wonderful accomplishment.\u00a0 Congratulations to Diana, and kudos to her fans.<\/p>\n
LORD OF THE RINGS, which I endorsed in the season premiere, came in fifth.\u00a0 Yay Tolkien!\u00a0 Yay fantasy!<\/p>\n
Millions of people voted… and more importantly, millions of people READ, and were exposed to books they might elsewise never have encountered.\u00a0\u00a0 This was a wonderful idea, and I hope PBS does it again in a few years… maybe with a different hundred books.\u00a0\u00a0 There are so so many great books out there, and anything that promotes reading and literature is to be commended.<\/p>\n
A tip of the hat to everyone who voted.\u00a0 Even if you didn’t vote for me.<\/p>\n
Comments allowed… but ONLY on the Great American Read, literature, reading, and all that good stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Great American Read is over, and the final standings were revealed on PBS in the season finale. A GAME OF THRONES (well, A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, more precisely) finished 48th.\u00a0\u00a0 Pretty cool.\u00a0\u00a0 I was in the top 50, anyway, and I edged out the FOUNDATION series and WAR AND PEACE.\u00a0\u00a0 Not half […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[218],"tags":[29,294],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5025"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5025"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5043,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5025\/revisions\/5043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}