1984 by George Orwell

Book 2 of 100 on the Great American Read list

In 2017, the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, we first heard the phrase “Alternative Facts” and the classic dystopian novel 1984 became a bestseller once again. According to Amazon 1984 was the 17th bestselling book of 2017, in 2016 it was the 94th best selling, in 2018 it has yet to show up on the 100 bestselling books. Maybe now we’re all too busy living in 1984 to read about it.

At the time, I remember thinking that reading 1984 wasn’t the best choice of preparation for resisting Trump and his party. I’d never read the book, but I knew it was based on the paranoid semi-socialist ideology of Stalinist Russia. I felt that there were more pertinent dystopias out there, either The Handmaid’s Tale or The Hunger Games would have been closer to the oppressive despotism we had been promised by the president’s campaign speeches.

But now I’ve read it and I’ve lived under the Trump administration for a while and I can definitely see some parallels. Mostly in the use and abuse of the facts. Donald Trump has a famous disregard for the truth. If a lie suits his current narrative then he will not only use that lie, but repeat it and defend it. And his supporters will repeat that lie too. The truth no longer matters, what’s important is the belief in the lie. Which is exactly the point of 1984.

Winston Smith lives in an oppressive society under the control of The Party and Big Brother. His life, like the lives of all his comrades, is closely watched for loyalty and conformity. But he privately questions the reality presented by The Party of constant war and successful three year plans. He finds a temporary escape through an elicit relationship with a young woman called Julia. Almost a third of the book deals with his arrest, torture and reprogramming to make him a loyal party member who believes every lie of The Party.

Is it any good? The short answer is yes, it’s compelling, disturbing and an accurate indictment of humanity at it’s worst. Orwell also managed to invent some terms in 1984 that are now commonly used in the English language and that’s no small feat. Big Brother, Room 101 and SexCrime are all with us now because of this book. However, 1984 does have flaws, the biggest being that it’s a work of political philosophy wrapped in an adolescent love story. So, perhaps not the best novel ever written.

Why is it on the list? I think the main reason 1984 is here is High School reading lists. The book is short, packed with teachable content and there’s a wealth of resources to help bring the book to life for teenagers. But it’s worth thinking about why this is such a popular book with American teachers. The Party is modeled on soviet Russia and this ideology has long been in opposition to all that America stands for. It’s important to remember that 1984 was published in 1949, just in time for McCarthyism and the Red Scare when the US government went after anyone who might have any communist/socialist/non-capitalist sympathies, in a way that would put Big Brother to shame.

America’s relationship with socialism may continue to be fraught and complicated. America’s relationship with 1984, seems to be much more comfortable.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Book 1 of 100 on the Great American Read list.

(In which I begin this endeavor with something I know very little about.)

When I first came to America ten years ago, I worked for a charming neighborhood bookstore in San Francisco. Over time I started to know which authors were popular and which classic books sold well. What I couldn’t figure out was why a book by a prominent Third Reich Nazi was such a popular title.  So I googled “Siddhartha Hesse” and discovered that Rudolf Hess and Hermann Hesse were NOT the same person.

And while I’m sharing embarrassing misconceptions. I always thought this was a book about Buddha in his youth, when he was Prince Siddhartha. Turns out I had that wrong too.

It’s actually the story of a lifetime’s spiritual journey, undertaken by a man named Siddhartha. It begins with Siddhartha as a boy learning Hindu teachings and rituals with his Brahman father, then he hitches a wild ride with the aesthetics as a traveling pilgrim, giving all that up for a rich life of sex and money and finally finding peace in a simple middle way as a ferryman who listens to and understands the river. Along the way he often interacts with his best friend from boyhood Govinda and tangles with Buddha himself.

Is it any good? Yeah, it’s alright. It’s stacked high with flowery imagery and as a fictionalization of a religious ideology it does a great job getting across the central idea of Buddhism that the enlightened must live in the world, without becoming consumed by it. It’s also got some good sexy bits in it.

Why do I think it’s on the list? Well, it’s definitely a favorite for AP World Literature lists and I think that’s important. High school students with their futures ahead of them might read this and identify with the protagonist who searches for spiritual answers while he also searches for a physical place in the world. I understand why this would leave a lasting impression on students.

There are some obvious cultural issues here which I can’t ignore. Siddhartha is a work of fiction based on teachings and legends from the Buddhist religion, but it was written by a white European author. Religious texts are not included in the Great American Read list, otherwise perhaps we’d see The Sutras or The Bhagavad Gita in this list. But this is the only example of Eastern philosophy on the list and it isn’t written by someone native to that culture. I think Siddhartha is an excellent example of Orientalism, a long-standing tradition in the West to use Eastern culture as inspiration, in a mostly patronizing way.

A more generous interpretation is that Siddhartha makes Eastern philosophy accessible to Westerners, particularly Americans, because the book is vastly more popular in the US than in the UK. There are only 16 editions of Siddhartha available on Amazon in the UK, but 35 in the US (normally there are similar numbers of editions published in the two countries). I think this popularity can be explained by the American inclination toward religion and self-determination.

According to the Pew Research Center 3% of Americans identify as Atheist and although new research shows that the actual figure may be higher, it’s still lower than the roughly 50% of non-believers in the UK. I think it must be difficult to be an American atheist. Perhaps Westernized Buddhism as described in Siddhartha serves as an actual middle way between organized religion and nothing. Mindfulness and meditation are incredibly popular and can be arranged into a loose set of philosophies to attract those who want to be spiritual (because spirituality is important in America), but want to determine their own path to enlightenment (because self-sufficiency is also a key American character trait).

I might be making this too complicated, so here’s something simple Siddhartha sells in California. It promotes the idea of self-discovery through experience of life and nature, which aligns happily with the hippy and surfer cultures for which California is famous.

The Great American Read

I am a Brit. I'm also an immigrant, non-citizen living in California and I spend way too much time trying to understand America and Americans.

What does it mean to be American? I have no idea and a million ideas:

Apple Pie, cowboys, racism, Independence, Hollywood, freedom of speech, guns, social justice, Disney, country music, confidence, straight teeth, eagles, slavery, ignorance, innovation, incarceration, money, Jesus.

That doesn’t answer the question. But it does demonstrate that America is all things to all the people living in it and those people are massively different.

So when I saw that PBS had commissioned YouGov to poll Americans and find their 100 favorite books I was instantly intrigued. The resulting list is the basis of a tv show called The Great American Read which producers hope will spark reading and conversation about books. This is a noble cause and one for which (as a bookseller), I am grateful.

Then I read the list.

The list makes NO sense at all. British and Russian classics sit next to contemporary YA series while second tier works by great contemporary authors vie with Christian and Buddhist morality tales. And then there’s Ghost, by Jason Reynolds. I love it, but I don’t know how it got here. The list is exactly like the random list of Americana above.

I have a degree in English Lit. from a UK university and I’ve been an bookseller for 15 years, but at the time the list was published I’d only read 24 of these 100 titles.

So I’m going to read the list, (or at least most of the list).

This isn’t an attempt to enrich my life by reading more. I already read 10-20 books per month. Instead I hope this will help me understand America through reading what Americans love, or at least, what they claim to love.

Every time I finish reading a book from the list, I’ll write a little something about my gut reactions to it and my thoughts about how it got on the Great American Read list.

Wish me luck, I’m going in.

Picture Books starring Change-Making Female Characters

Some excellent and entertaining picture books that star female characters with ambition and agency who change their worlds. These books were all published in America within the last year, except for one that's a notable re-print of a 25-year-old classic.


Bloom by Doreen Cronin and David Small

This looks like a pretty fairy story, there's a king and queen and a sparkly glass kingdom anda green winged fairy. It's actually a story about Maker Women changing the world for the better. The last line always blows me away. "And then an ordinary girl rebuilt a kingdom."

Ada Twist Scientist
by Andrea Beatty and David Roberts
Ada Twist uses the scientific method to find the source of a disgusting smell. She may not succeed, but it's the process that's important, as well as her parents' growing understanding of Ada's passion.

One Word From Sophia
by Jim Averbeck and Yasmeen Ismail
Sophia wants something special, but she needs to clear it with an adult in her family.
She presents some compelling and targeted arguments, but keeps using the wrong words. Until her Grandmother puts her right.

The Worst Princess by Anna Kemp
Originally published in the UK, this is a fabulous madcap rhyming picture book starring a "royal twit" of a prince, an indignant dragon and a princess who's not willing to go from one overly protected tower to another.


Be a Friend by Salina Yoon

A little kids book about empathy. Where a girl named Joy reaches out to another child who's lonely in his silent world.

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman
Grace loves stories and she loves to act and perform. But she comes up against opposition when she auditions for the part of Peter Pan in the school play because Peter is a white boy and she is a black girl. A determined black girl opens minds. It's amazing to me that this 25 year old book is still relevant.

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

Oh, those indie kids, always dying beautifully of cancer or being the chosen one. But we can't all be indie kids, it would be too exhausting. Luckily, this book is all about non-indie kids, ordinary kids, very much on the edge of the supernatural and with no interest in that dangerous world. The Rest of Us Just Live Here is very clever, slightly funny, but mostly just very familiar in it's realism in the face of the unbelievable.

Published by Harper Collins October 6, 2015

The Doldrums by Nicholas Gannon

If you look up Doldrums in a dictionary, you will find that it's a state of inactivity, a sad sort of stuckness, the opposite of a daring adventure. And that is how this story begins. Three children who have been confined to their homes for various reasons meet on a rooftop to plan a daring adventure. They really don't expect to get very far, but they all agree they're "in it for the friendship".

The Doldrums is mostly very understated, a gentle and slyly comic exploration of the release that friendship can bring to the lonely. There is a final adventure, which is absolutely extraordinary, but the appeal of this book is found in the quiet small joys that can chase away the doldrums, without ever leaving home.

For ages 8+

Published by Greenwillow books September 29, 2015

Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon

Madeline is literally allergic to the world. She's confined to her hyper-sterile house with her loving mother and her nurse Carla. She works very hard not to want more, not to press her head against the window and dream of being outside, of meeting other people. This all falls apart when a new family move in next door and a boy her age, named Olly, refuses to let her ignore him. 

Everything Everything is a clever romance with an ending that's an eye-opener for the characters, but also for readers. A book about, love, danger and freedom that kids and adults should all read.

Published by Delacourt Press September 1, 2015