http://americanthane.blogspot.com/2008/10/brilliant-blog-award-battle-of.html

(This is a blog I created for my AP English course, by the way)

The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest. The Big Read brings together partners across the country to encourage reading for pleasure and enlightenment.

The Big Read answers a big need. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 report by the National Endowment for the Arts, found that not only is literary reading in America declining rapidly among all groups, but that the rate of decline has accelerated, especially among the young. The concerned citizen in search of good news about American literary culture would study the pages of this report in vain.

The Big Read aims to address this crisis squarely and effectively. It provides citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within their communities. The initiative includes innovative reading programs in selected cities and towns, comprehensive resources for discussing classic literature, an ambitious national publicity campaign, and an extensive Web site providing comprehensive information on authors and their works.

Each community event lasts approximately one month and includes a kick-off event to launch the program locally, ideally attended by the mayor and other local luminaries; major events devoted specifically to the book (panel discussions, author reading, and the like); events using the book as a point of departure (film screenings, theatrical readings, and so forth); and book discussions in diverse locations and aimed at a wide range of audiences.

The NEA inaugurated The Big Read as a pilot project in 2006 with ten communities featuring four books. The Big Read continues to expand to include more communities and additional books. By 2009, approximately 400 communities in the U.S. will have hosted a Big Read since the program’s 2007 national launch.

*1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
*2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
*3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
*4 Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling (
**5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
**6 The Bible
*7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
*8 1984 - George Orwell

*10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
*11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
*12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (some)
*15 Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
**16 The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

*21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
*23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

%25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -

*28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
*29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
**30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
**31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

**33 Chronicles of Narnia- C.S. Lewis
*34 Emma - Jane Austen
*35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
**36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe -
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
**40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
*41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

*44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
*45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
*46 Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
*52 Dune - Frank Herbert

**54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

**57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
*58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
*65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
*73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A.S. Byatt
**81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

*83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

**87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
*89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
*92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - in French

*94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - also in French
*98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare–HEY, if it’s complete, it’s complete!
*99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl