I like books, and I like lists.  I like PBS, too.  So the PBS Great American Read list was irresistible.  One thing:  these aren’t necessarily American authors, though many are.  I am guessing I have read half of these.  Some of the usual suspects (The Great Gatsby, Catch-22, The Catcher in the Rye).   More than a few popular authors (Stepehn King’s The Stand, Agatha Christe’s  And Then There Were None, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, Michael Chriton’s Jurassiac Park).  Some nice surprises (John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders).  More than a few I never heard of, and a few on my list (like Things Fall Apart).