Earlier this month, Publisher's Weekly set out to find "The Great American Novel".
The results are in and here is a snippet of what they found:
5. The case can be made for The New Literary Canon to include Kavalier & Clay(2000), Infinite Jest (1996), and Beloved (1987)–they were the only books written in the last 30 years to secure more than 2% of the vote.
7. Were the books that received the most votes also the most read? Here are the number of ratings the top seven books have on Goodreads:
To Kill a Mockingbird: 1,356,936 The Great Gatsby: 1,077,481
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: 677,916
The Grapes of Wrath: 256,087
Moby-Dick: 249,884
Gone with the Wind: 436,591
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: 86,148
The book with the fewest ratings on Goodreads? That would be Play It as It Lays (7,246).
