Top 20 Most Popular Items for April
Witness the return of the Top 20 List for April. Among the unsurprising "required reading list" items, an interest in the dark side of the American food industry and culture is showcased with Food, Inc. and Fast Food Nation. Another notable item is a hard to find collection of short stories entitled El Arrepentido y Otras Narraciones by Spanish author Ana María Matute, who became just the 3rd woman to win the Cervantes Prize for literature on April 27th.
1. The World Book Encyclopedia
2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
5. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders by the American Psychiatric Association
6. Python Essential Reference by David M. Beazley
7. Food, Inc. directed by Robert Kenner
8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
9. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
10. El Arrepentido y Otras Narraciones by Ana María Matute
11. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
13. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
14. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
15. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
16. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
17. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
18. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
19. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
20. Night by Elie Wiesel
On June 9, 2011 at 10:20 AM Victoria Adams said:
I’m more than a little surprised to see Twilight here. I’m not criticizing it at all; it just seems a little incongruous alongside books like Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird. But I suppose it’s important to have variety and besides, it’s turned a lot of young people on to reading, which is definitely a good thing. To Kill a Mockingbird did that for me when I was younger; it was the first real book I read, and it got me hooked to reading. I still love the simplicity of style, how clear and well developed the characters were and the fact that it carried a valuable lesson without coming off as preachy. But what really got me right away was the way it drew me deep into a society and time different from my own and made me feel like I was part of the entire story.