Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

Tor Books and Tor.com are excited to announce that Robert Jordan’s iconic work of fantasy, The Wheel of Time, has been named as one of American’s 100 most beloved books by PBS’ Great American Read series!

Jordan’s epic will be included in its entirety (all 10,173 pages!) making it the longest entry in the list of 100 books vying to be named America’s favorite in PBS’ Great American Read, an eight-part television and online series, hosted by Meredith Vieira and designed to spark a national conversation about reading.

Robert Jordan began writing his multi-volume fantasy epic in 1984, with the first volume The Eye of the World, coming out from Tor Books in 1990. It was originally planned as a three-book series, then a six-book series, but expanded in the writing. The author passed away in 2007 while working on the very final volume, A Memory of Light, which was subsequently completed by author Brandon Sanderson as a three-volume concluding trilogy: The Gathering Storm, Towers of Midnight, and A Memory of Light. The very final scene of the series was written by Jordan himself before his passing, and we’re happy to see this masterwork of modern fantasy included in the pantheon of Great American Reads.

The Great American Read will launch with a special on Tuesday, May 22 at 8/7c on PBS stations. Host Meredith Vieira along with authors, teachers, actors, athletes, and readers of all stripes will discuss these 100 diverse and beloved books that have shaped America. Audiences are encouraged to read along and vote for their favorites as the series attempts to identify the singular most beloved American read.

The series will span themes including “Growing Up,” “Heroes,” “Villains and Monsters,” “Brave New Worlds,” “What We Do for Love,” and, of course, “Being American.” In Fall 2018 seven new episodes will follow the quest to name America’s most beloved book.

  • 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 in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
  • Americanah by Chimamanda 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 Diaz
  • 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
  • The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
  • The 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
  • Doña 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 / Jerry B. Jenkins
  • The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  • 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 Stephanie Meyer
  • War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  • The Watchers by Dean Koontz
  • The Wheel of Time (Series) by Robert Jordan
  • Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
  • White Teeth by Zadie Smith
  • Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Tor.com

Author

Learn More About Tor.com
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
46 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments