The Great American Read - What We Do For Love

Name: The Great American Read - What We Do For Love
Uploaded: 2025-09-06T16:13:27+00:00
Duration: 52 min 19 s
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Documentary, The Great American Read - What We Do For Love

How do our favorite novels reflect what we do for love? From classic romance to family dramas, from unrequited passion to unforgettable first love, we take a look at our best-loved books that feature the most important emotion in our lives. And we examine why we are drawn to these stories.
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00:00Love is the driving force behind everything that we do.

00:09So I think reading about all these different types of loves and the ways in which they present,

00:13you know, is one of the great human questions.

00:15I love a good love story.

00:17I think everybody wants it, and if you don't want it, you're trying to get it,

00:21and if you have it, you're trying to keep it.

00:23Every book on this list is about love and death, and finding love that transcends death.

00:27I mean, who's not going to love a love story?

00:31Welcome to The Great American Read, everyone.

00:33I'm Meredith Vieira, here at the Library of Congress.

00:36Well, with our grand finale coming up, it is more important than ever for you to vote for the novels you most love.

00:42And love is actually our focus this week.

00:45Many of the books you've chosen explore the lengths we go to in the name of love.

00:51Who wins? Who loses? Who lives happily ever after?

00:54Who is doomed to despair and loneliness?

00:58What would we do for the sake of our nearest and dearest?

01:02The novel is such a good fit for families, because every family is a story.

01:07Family love can come in so many different forms.

01:10Why do classic tales of romance still thrill us?

01:13Love stories offer us a chance to feel that feeling of falling in love again.

01:19And being in love is wonderful, but falling in love, man, it's just magic.

01:24Everything feels more intense, and it's exhilarating, and it's uncharted territory.

01:31And how do novels help us navigate our own relationships?

01:35The process of learning who somebody really is, I think all of that is very romantic.

01:40It's finding who you truly connect to in your heart.

01:44I'm most excited about stories that find two people who become different people and somehow still maintain that love.

01:53That's very evolved. That's really cool.

01:56What do these stories tell us about the role of love in our own lives?

02:01We want to see that things last. We want to know that you can't just throw love away as human beings, as readers.

02:09We want something to be that important that you would stick with it forever.

02:14Which of your favorite novels, like True Love, will stand the test of time?

02:19I'm voting for Anne of Green Gables, and you should too.

02:23I hope that you will read Call of the Wild.

02:25My vote? Little Women.

02:27I love the book Americana.

02:29Looking for Alaska? Number one vote.

02:31Please read Pride and Prejudice. It is the best book ever.

02:49This is The Great American Read.

02:54Tonight we examine the novels currently trending in the competition that reflect the most important emotion in our lives.

03:01Love in all its many forms.

03:04From the platonic to the physical, from the innocence of puppy love to obsession and destructive passion,

03:10what are we looking for between the covers of these books?

03:14When you're talking about love, you're talking about everything.

03:17You're talking about gender. You're talking about race. You're talking about history.

03:21It's a great crucible for a lot of stuff coming together.

03:23Part of the reason we indulge in romantic tales is we're looking for guidance about love.

03:28What is healthy and what feels good and what is right, we turn to the books.

03:32Love is as individual as each one of us.

03:35This is a great canvas for an author. It's an extraordinary opportunity.

03:40The course of true love never did run smooth.

03:46It's as true in today's literature as it was when Shakespeare wrote those words over 400 years ago.

03:52And your votes confirm that American readers are not just looking for happily ever after.

03:58Many of the novels you've chosen are about unrequited or even destructive love.

04:03What can we learn from these painful stories about romance gone wrong?

04:08I think you can look at stories about destructive love both as warnings about what not to do,

04:16but I think also as sort of a way to better understand some of the things that happen in relationships.

04:24Sometimes it's just looking in someone else's window, just like, look at that, you know? What's going on there?

04:32There's a lot of love stories that are about a kind of destructive love that wrecks your life.

04:38People who are in love make terrible choices, and they're often in love for reasons they don't fully understand.

04:45We are fascinated by the fact that things can go wrong in love because, you know, we don't want to go there.

04:53We don't want this sort of thing to happen to us.

04:57The danger of obsessive love is at the heart of F. Scott Fitzgerald's enduring classic The Great Gatsby,

05:04which has been one of America's best-loved novels for decades.

05:11The story follows Nick, who moves from the Midwest and is swept up in a life of parties and romance

05:17in the picture-perfect world of wealthy Long Island in the early 1920s.

05:22He befriends the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby, whose obsession with Nick's cousin Daisy leads to a catastrophic series of events.

05:31Is The Great Gatsby a romantic novel?

05:34Does Gatsby actually love Daisy, or does he love some idea of her that he has concocted in his own mind?

05:43You can debate that for a long time. It's a novel of love or a novel of obsession.

05:49I read The Great Gatsby in my early 20s when I was just coming off the sad ending of the first great love of my life.

05:58And I read this book and it spoke to me so powerfully because it's all about that.

06:04Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy and his yearning for her and the fact that he remakes his entire life and indeed remakes his personality to try to win her after he has lost her.

06:19Men are in love with her, but they're also in love with everything that's a fantasy about her, a fantasy of money, of wealth, of beauty.

06:28All these things are not really real and they lead to choices that are reckless and careless and irresponsible.

06:37That was very much what I was feeling, I mean, at that exact time in my own life.

06:43I was like, why did I lose this woman that I love? How do I get her back, you know?

06:48Do I have to reinvent myself like Gatsby? Do I have to change my name and you become incredibly rich?

06:54Will that change things? And of course, for Gatsby, it was a bittersweet journey and a doomed pursuit.

07:04In writing The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald took a page from his own life.

07:10The love affair between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre was so defining, I think, in Fitzgerald's life as an author.

07:19I mean, here was a quiet man, but he happened to fall in love with a woman who was super extrovert.

07:28You could see the ruin happening to Fitzgerald in his life as he goes through pursuing this woman who is the dream of his life,

07:36but is leading him down the wrong path. This is what I think he captured so well in Gatsby.

07:42It's an amazing book. Fitzgerald was an incredible stylist. And one of the things that's always lingered with me over the years is the image he came up with.

07:52The green light at the end of Daisy's dock that Gatsby stares at.

07:57Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter.

08:08Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further, and one fine morning.

08:13So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past.

08:20I love The Great Gatsby because I can picture it so clearly. I think there are things about The Great Gatsby that are totally universal.

08:28The idea of being able to fit in to a culture that you weren't born into, faking your way into a world that you once hated and thus sort of becoming what you used to hate yourself.

08:41That pursuit becoming so much more important than being true to yourself.

08:45And also the kind of obsession with nostalgia and youth and money and capitalism, all of that is in Gatsby.

08:55I mean, in many ways it's one of the most American stories ever told.

08:59Gatsby sold fewer than 25,000 copies while Fitzgerald was alive.

09:05But its popularity soared after it was reissued as an armed services edition for soldiers during World War II.

09:12It has since gone on to sell more than 25 million copies.

09:17The Great Gatsby.

09:19It's a great book by a great writer, a book that I go back to every few years and read again.

09:27And if you've never read it at all, do yourself a favor and read it.

09:32And vote for it.

09:35The Pain of Unrequited Love is also the focus of one of your favorite young adult books.

09:42Looking for Alaska.

09:46In John Green's 2005 debut novel, protagonist Miles Halter is infatuated from the moment he meets the beautiful and mercurial Alaska Young at boarding school.

09:57But no amount of love can save this one-sided romance from its tragic end.

10:02A lot of first novels are fairly autobiographical, I think, and Alaska is no exception.

10:12I did draw a lot on my own experiences as a kid who lived in Florida and then seeking a kind of grander life ended up going to a boarding school in Alabama.

10:22When I was writing Looking for Alaska, I was thinking about the early romantic experiences that I had as a teenager.

10:30The intensity of emotion that accompanies that time of life.

10:34I was also thinking about the first time I really fell deeply in love.

10:40I absolutely love John Green. I think he is a voice of a generation.

10:46Being in love for the very first time, it's something that sort of blinds you.

10:49John Green has this really beautiful way of, like, capturing exactly how devastating and addicting and fun and wild and beautiful first love really, really is.

11:02It's just a really uncomfortable and therefore really rich time of life to write about.

11:10I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating.

11:16So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

11:24I think the great appeal of John Green is that there's something so humane in his writing.

11:33You are actually feeling in the most kind of granular way the emotions of first love.

11:42He's called a YA novelist, but in fact, I think he has a wide range of appeal.

11:49America, this book is incredible. I'm going to vote for this book because it's worth it.

11:55You should totally vote too. Looking for Alaska, number one vote.

12:01As a writer, it's important to be sensitive to the idea that everything that happens in a first love is brand new.

12:11And it's the first time that these characters are ever experiencing these emotions.

12:15You just go into it with a full open heart and I think that's hard for us as we get older and have been hurt by love to do that again.

12:25We've all fallen in love and we've all lost loves. We don't always get to find them again.

12:31We don't always get to explore the enormity of what that love could be. We don't always get second chances.

12:37The power of a first love to stay with us in spite of heartbreak and separation is a theme in one of your favorite novels,

12:47Americana by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

12:50The story follows Ofemolu, a promising student from Nigeria. She wins a scholarship to study in America, but she must leave behind a first love, her classmate Obinze.

13:05Ofemolu stumbles from one failed relationship to another and along the way she discovers what it means to be a black African in America.

13:13He was already looking at their relationship through the lens of the past tense. It puzzled her. The ability of romantic love to mutate. How quickly a loved one could become a stranger. Where did the love go?

13:30There's this moment in the book where they were young and in love and their relationship falls apart for one decision that she makes and yet they're both thinking of each other from a distance for the majority of their lives through the book.

13:47And I love that sort of sad, beautiful notion of when you're young, you don't you don't know where your life is going to go and how it's going to play out.

13:55I would say that Americana has a universal love story, but it is a very specific love story told from the perspective of two beautiful, talented, amazing, worldly, broken African people.

14:15But we can all relate to their journey to love.

14:17I think a lot of people responded to Americana because yes, it's a book about first love, but it's also a book about returning to the person as Ifemolu returns to Obinze, her sort of first childhood love.

14:32And they come back together and they say, can we do this now with a little bit of experience now with even more psychic.

14:39What kind of relationship can we have together? And there's a realism there. There's a there's a there's a bit of fatigue.

14:48There's a little bit of hope, but that the combined sort of flavor of all of that felt very interesting and satisfying and new.

14:54A love story like Americana puts you in really close contact with characters who may or may not be like you and you see how they interact with the world and how they change.

15:09And it's really powerful when that's featuring characters that are different than you.

15:13To read this tale by a Nigerian woman, not quite being African anymore once you're American, but not quite being American because you'll always still be kind of African and following her on that journey.

15:26It was so touching and it was so educational without feeling like I was being educated and it was just really well done.

15:34I am Barbara Bush and I love the book Americana and I hope you will read it and get to know the two main characters in their love story.

15:43And I hope you'll vote for it.

15:47Which book are you passionate about?

15:50It's all up to you to decide America's best love novel.

15:54Head over to our website for lots more on pbs.org slash Great American Read.

16:00While you're there, check out our social hub and tell us why you love your favorite book.

16:09Love stories aren't only about romance.

16:11The books you've chosen also reflect the importance and influence of family love, of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters.

16:21What impact do these relationships have on our lives?

16:25I think we're drawing the tales of family and family love because family is our first teacher.

16:32It's probably our most important social group and club.

16:36There is no perfect family.

16:39There's no such thing as this harmonious, you know, completely unified, wonderful family.

16:45But I do think that we like to see or imagine what that might be like since none of us actually have it.

16:53One of the most famous American novels about family love is also capturing many of your votes.

17:02The 1868 classic Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

17:07Little Women is one of our shared joys.

17:12Yes, and we read it together growing up.

17:14With our mom.

17:15With our mom.

17:16She would read it to us.

17:17And one of the incredible things was her mom read it to her.

17:20So I remember when she first cracked open Little Women.

17:24She was like, this was my favorite book growing up.

17:26And Grammy read it to me.

17:28And there was something so impactful about thinking of our mom as a little girl laying in her mom's arms.

17:35Little Women follows the adventures of the tightly knit March sisters as they come of age in New England around the time of the Civil War.

17:45The story centers around the second oldest sister, Jo, who dreams of being a writer.

17:50There was this group of sisters who loved each other and stuck up for each other even when tragedy struck or even when romance sort of got in the way.

18:05And reading it with my sister was pretty cool.

18:09I can't wait to read it to my girls.

18:11Reading was important to me as a little girl because I lived in Ankara, Turkey from first grade to sixth grade and we didn't have television.

18:19You know, my library card was one of my favorite possessions.

18:24Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

18:27I can remember that as being one of the first books I read that I thought, wow, there's a book that's kind of like us.

18:33No matter who you meet in your life, nobody is going to be closer to you than your siblings.

18:38So in Little Women, I love the relationship and the dynamic between the four sisters.

18:43And I think that's why I gravitated to that book.

18:46In writing Little Women, Alcott drew inspiration from her own life, for better or for worse.

18:53Unlike the compassionate and gentle father in the novel, her real father, Amos Bronson, was said to be intense and overbearing.

19:01But Alcott was close with her three sisters, and she reflected that in the character she created.

19:07The thing that really struck me was the role of female friendship and the love of female friendship.

19:14That's a portrayal of love we don't often see done positively in books or TV or media.

19:22But Alcott's voice gave way, and clinging to her sister, she cried so despairingly that Joe was frightened.

19:31Where is it?

19:32Shall I call mother?

19:33No, no, don't call her.

19:36Don't tell her.

19:37I shall be better soon.

19:39Lie down here and pour my hand.

19:42I'll be quiet and go to sleep.

19:45Indeed I will.

19:46Joe obeyed.

19:47But as her hand went softly to and fro across Beth's hot forehead and wet eyelids, her heart was very full, and she longed to speak.

19:58In Little Women, the thing that's so interesting about the family is that each person plays a very different role.

20:05And it's a kind of primer on human personality, and especially in women, and the notion of strength and vulnerability in women.

20:18I'm Gayle King. My vote, Little Women.

20:21Family Love also speaks to the concept of legacy, and how a parent can affect the course of their child's life.

20:32One of your favorites to explore this idea is Marilyn Robinson's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, set in the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa.

20:41A novel like Gilead shows how there's many different kinds of love.

20:45It's a novel about compassion, where a man who is at the end of his life looks back on generations worth of his family.

20:55Gilead is written as a series of letters from a dying preacher to his young son.

21:01And it examines the lives of three generations of men, all named John Ames.

21:06You have a man of the cloth who knows that he's dying, that family love, that sort of an almost spiritual love that this man has in setting down this life story for this son who is only seven years old.

21:26This tremendous sense that something must be passed.

21:30To see what Ames himself is trying to leave for his son to read is nothing short of stunning.

21:39He is able to actually talk to his son in a beautiful, open, full way, and to speak of his fears, of his jealousies, of his own history, and his family history in a way that will allow his own son to take a different path.

22:00I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am.

22:10Former President Barack Obama lists Gilead as one of his favorite works of fiction.

22:16Marilyn Robinson's novel could connect to everyone out there in America who is trying to figure out how to live a better life, who is trying to contend with the great challenges of family.

22:35I'm Rob Casper, the head of the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress, and I love Gilead.

22:44It gave me something that I will have with me for the rest of my life, and I believe it can do that for you, too.

22:50If there is a book on this list that has changed your life, we want to know.

22:55Share your story on social using hashtag GreatReadVBS.

22:59From fathers and sons to mothers and daughters, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan shows how love shapes a family in a particularly American way.

23:12Books like The Joy Luck Club, it's an immigrant love story.

23:16It involves really looking at the family you come from and asking yourself,

23:21which parts of this do I want to carry with me into my new world, and which parts of it do I want to leave behind?

23:28It's about these four women who got together, formed a mahjong group, and then it goes into their stories of their childhoods back in China,

23:40and how that history has impacted their relationship with their daughters in America.

23:48We as human beings are always just trying to find the validation and the love from our parents.

23:57And I think the universality of that overcomes the specifics of it being a Chinese-American story.

24:07I think the universal appeal of The Joy Luck Club, specifically in America, is we're a nation of immigrants.

24:13The novel is enormously powerful and still feels, you know, very rare in our conversations,

24:19our national conversations about immigration, or our literary conversations about immigration.

24:23The Joy Luck Club was a bestseller upon its 1989 publication, which was groundbreaking for a novel featuring Asian-American characters.

24:33Like Louisa May Alcott before her, Amy Tan wove autobiographical elements into her fictional work.

24:41Tan was a first-generation American, born to immigrant parents.

24:45Tan was born to immigrant parents.

24:49I was, I think, honeymooning at that time.

24:51And I read this book, and for the first time in my life, I felt like someone was actually talking about my own life.

25:01And I remember laying on that beach, reading that book, and going, if they ever made this book into a movie, I want to be a part of it.

25:11I identified with June in the book because she was struggling with her self-worth.

25:23She had trouble finding her voice and her purpose because she kept thinking that she couldn't live up to her mother's expectations and hopes for her.

25:33The one scene that still impacts not just me, but I think anyone who reads the book, between June and her mom, after this dinner where June chose the worst quality crab,

25:51she always felt her mother wasn't proud of her.

25:54And the mother finally said to June,

25:57you chose the worst quality crab because you have the best quality heart.

26:03And that's what was her mom.

26:07Her mom was most proud that she was able to raise a daughter that had the best quality heart.

26:14And for all of us, I think, knowing that it's not about what we've achieved, but who we've become.

26:25That, I think, is the greatest love that a parent can give to their child.

26:29I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose.

26:36She will fight me because this is the nature of two tigers.

26:41But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.

26:49What's so great about reading a book like The Joy Luck Club when I was younger

26:54and relating more to the daughters at that time is now that I am a mom, I relate now to the mothers, too.

27:03I recommend that you read Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club.

27:07I love this book. It had such an impact on me. It will have an impact on you.

27:11It will make you cry and laugh and hopefully be able to relate to your parents better.

27:16It's a great book.

27:20Family stories of love, loyalty, betrayal and forgiveness feature heavily in many of your favorite books.

27:27And this next novel incorporates all of these familiar tropes with a twist.

27:33The Godfather is extraordinary in terms of family, much different, I think, than The Joy Luck Club,

27:39which is more about love and about respect and about a kind of generational difference.

27:44In The Godfather, it's, you know, what is my obligation to my father? What is my obligation to this family?

27:50In Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Michael Corleone, the youngest son of a mafia boss,

27:58finds that despite his best intentions, his family loyalty draws him into a life of crime.

28:04And he ultimately commits murder to protect his father, Don Vito Corleone.

28:09I think that The Godfather is an interesting hybrid of what an American family is.

28:17You've got this forging a whole new identity.

28:20And you've got someone trying to escape their family history and legacy and expectations and chart their own path.

28:27I'm Sal Scognomillo. We're at Patsy's Italian Restaurant.

28:32We've been here for over 74 years now. I'm the third generation chef.

28:37Mario Puzo was a friend of my father and my grandfather's, and he was a customer here for many, many years.

28:44Mario Puzo always told my father and my grandfather that he based the character of Don Corleone

28:50on seven people he met at Patsy's Italian Restaurant.

28:53And don't ask me who, because I don't remember. I don't remember.

28:58The Godfather, it's about family, of course, and how families evolve and how families love each other.

29:05When Michael sees his father in the bed after he's been shot in the hospital, that was where it solidified the family is there for each other.

29:15He heard his father's voice from the bed, hoarse but full of strength.

29:20Michael, is it you? What happened? What is it?

29:27Michael leaned over the bed. He took his father's hand in his.

29:31It's Mike, he said. Don't be afraid.

29:34Michael, he was someone who never thought he was going to go into the family business.

29:39But obviously he saw that he was so needed for it.

29:42Michael doesn't have to do what he does, but he ultimately decides to do it.

29:47Michael kills him in the name of family. It's a decision he's making to protect what he feels he belongs to.

29:53It's also about the ways in which legacy sort of translates into a different generation.

29:58It's about the ways in which family tries to preserve itself in an ever-changing landscape.

30:03And I think that's why the book is so big.

30:06Every answer to every question in life is in The Godfather.

30:11And there's so many of these things that have become part of the American lexicon.

30:15You know, keep your friends close, your enemies close.

30:18Vote for The Godfather.

30:20Or we'll make you an author you can't refuse.

30:25We need to hear from you.

30:27Go to pbs.org slash Great American Read and check out all 100 books.

30:33You can cast your vote right there or on our Facebook page, on Twitter, via text message, or toll-free call.

30:40There are lots of ways to make your voice heard.

30:47Among the best-known books on your list of 100 are ones that center on romance.

30:52I think when people read romance novels, like, it's partly like satisfaction and vicarious pleasure and excitement and things.

31:01But it's also partly that, you know, being loving is virtuous.

31:04And so there's this sort of moral aspect of sort of hopefulness to the idea of a love story.

31:12I think it's really human to yearn for love.

31:15And so no matter where we are in our lives, we want to explore that.

31:19And books provide such an infinite number of ways to explore that feeling.

31:26Some of the classic love stories you've chosen have stood the test of time because they change the way we look at courtship.

31:34And because they feature confident heroines who are well-matched to their male counterparts.

31:40One of your all-time favorites is Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's 1813 masterpiece that redefined the blueprint for romance to this day.

31:51I love Pride and Prejudice because Jane Austen is one of those writers who, in a humorous and really modern way, looks at relationships.

32:00It's romance at its core.

32:03Pride and Prejudice centers on Elizabeth Bennet, who has four sisters and a mother who's obsessed with marrying them all off.

32:11But strong-willed, sharp-tongued Elizabeth wants love on her own terms and ends up facing off against the filthy rich and handsome Mr. Darcy.

32:21Elizabeth Bennet is a modern heroine in her time.

32:27She's anxious to be free of some of the constraints of her family and doesn't want to marry who she's supposed to marry and is an independent spirit.

32:39She is really smart. She's self-aware. She has this amazing, breathtaking confidence in herself and her value and her worth.

32:52I think that's why Elizabeth is so amazing to many readers.

32:57Mr. Darcy and his $10,000 a year. It's very hard to separate those two.

33:03From him, we get this idea of the wealthy, inscrutable, and powerful hero.

33:10Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mean, and the report, which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having $10,000 a year.

33:26The gentleman pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man. The ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust, which turned the tide of his popularity.

33:41Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy hate each other when they first meet. Elizabeth thinks Darcy's full of himself. Darcy thinks that she's from a family who all they want is money. You have that tension in the beginning.

33:54In romance, we call this the enemies-to-lovers trope. We see their story go from completely enemies to finally becoming friends, but then it becomes a friends-to-lovers story where he falls deeply in love with her.

34:10Darcy's just very reserved. He's just so inward, and I think, you know, that's like a lot of men in the world. They're so taught to, like, keep everything in, and they're hard to read.

34:23So Darcy's like that, but Elizabeth gets through to him.

34:27You know, the courtship process in a book like Pride and Prejudice, it's unromantic, actually, because it's not about love at first sight. It's not about the idea that you just met this person and instantly there was this deep connection.

34:38It's actually about the idea that over a protracted period of time, you are investigating them to find out whether they are relationship material. So there's just this almost mercenary side to it. And in Pride and Prejudice, that's a big part of the story.

34:54The reason why it's such an enduring book and the reason why it's had this influence is because it has this kind of spine of extreme realism.

35:03Jane Austen, like other female writers of the time, did not publish under her own name. But today, more than 200 years later, she is a legend.

35:13Our billion-dollar romance novel industry today is a direct descendant of Pride and Prejudice. And it's a story that has been told and retold and retold so many different ways and in so many different time periods.

35:29Why does Pride and Prejudice become a story that becomes 18 other movies or spinoffs for things?

35:35Everybody wants enough obstacles that love feels hard won and few enough obstacles that it happens at the end and that there's a wedding.

35:44But I think that the actual story of Pride and Prejudice is compelling because it's exciting. Will they, won't they?

35:50People like to see that back and forth. It's one of the things about storytelling that just catches us up in it.

35:57Jane Austen's novel is still so popular that people around the world gather annually to celebrate her work.

36:06All the themes that are covered in there are relevant to today that you can see. Male privilege, class difference, income inequality, economic insecurity.

36:17If you really want to understand what a young woman might be thinking, take a look at what Elizabeth Bennet is thinking.

36:25I had to read in high school. I went to an old boy military school and it was cool.

36:30Vote for Pride and Prejudice.

36:32You should pick and vote for Pride and Prejudice.

36:34Please read Pride and Prejudice. It is the best book ever.

36:40Like Jane Austen, Margaret Mitchell wrote one of the strongest and most memorable heroines in all of literature.

36:50In the 1936 epic Gone with the Wind, in which the main character survives a series of heartbreaks.

36:57It's the story of the life and loves of Southern Belle's Scarlett O'Hara during and after the Civil War.

37:04Her romantic affairs, including her first sweetheart, Ashley Wilkes, and the scoundrel, Rhett Butler, go wrong more often than not.

37:13Scarlett is making a lot of romantic decisions for all the wrong reasons.

37:20Ambition, social standing, all of these things that have nothing to do with love.

37:25And we as readers know what love is and know where it should go.

37:30Scarlett O'Hara has one ridiculous love interest after another and she's sort of burning with love for Ashley Wilkes,

37:36this completely limp, sort of shadowy, hazy, ineffectual figure.

37:41The pining for Ashley is that pining for things to be the way they used to be that will never happen.

37:47And it's just as unobtainable as her love for Ashley. You can't go backwards.

37:53In the character of Scarlett, Margaret Mitchell put her own spin on the traditional female role.

37:59We think of Scarlett as a very, a font of Southern femininity, the Southern Belle.

38:05She's incredibly masculine. She breaks all the rules of what women are supposed to do.

38:10Scarlett doesn't have time for that. Scarlett's got work to do. She's doing things. She doesn't care.

38:15It's all about her goal and her single-mindedness.

38:20The real love story in Gone with the Wind is Scarlett and the land. Scarlett and home.

38:27Tara is the great love of Scarlett's life. It's the land. It's the earth. The pillars of the house.

38:34There's nothing that she works harder to save in this book than that house.

38:39Scarlett's most important relationship is established in an early conversation with her father.

38:45Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, he shouted, his thick, short arms making wide gestures of indignation.

38:57For it is the only thing in this world that lasts. And don't you be forgetting it.

39:03It is the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for.

39:10Gone with the Wind frames the idea of survival through the lens of a female protagonist, which is rare for that time.

39:17I'm Andy. Please vote for Gone with the Wind, a beautiful novel about endurance and survival.

39:24You've chosen many more books about love in all its forms.

39:28Be sure to check out these titles and more on our website, pbs.org slash greatamericanread.

39:35While you're there, you can track which books you've read from the list of 100, fill out the scorecard, and share the results with your friends.

39:50We've examined love's beginnings, its delights, and its miseries.

39:55But the best is yet to come.

39:58This final group of your favorite novels reflects the many kinds of love that stay with us throughout our lives.

40:06One of the great themes of American literature, of course, is enduring love.

40:13There is this desire, I think, fundamental to us as human beings, but certainly as readers, that we want something to last and be that important that you would stick with it forever.

40:26Readers nationwide are inspired by the love that lasts a lifetime.

40:31In the 1996 breakout hit, The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks.

40:36It's a story of enduring love between Noah and Ally.

40:43She can move away.

40:44He loves her.

40:45They cannot talk for years.

40:47He loves her.

40:48She can get engaged to another guy.

40:51He loves her.

40:53And we can go all the way through life.

40:56And even when she doesn't remember him, he loves her.

41:01There's elements that speak to what I think most people yearn for in life.

41:09And it's this feeling that they'll be loved no matter what.

41:15The original inspiration for The Notebook really came from a family story.

41:20You know, I had married a woman named Kathy, and we went to visit her maternal grandparents.

41:27And I just saw the love between this couple who were struggling with the ailments of old age.

41:34And I remember thinking to myself that that was wonderful to behold.

41:39The Notebook is a love story if I was a very mature couple.

41:42And the husband is trying to jog the memory of the wife who has Alzheimer's to remember him.

41:49Every day in which he does that, it becomes harder to remind her of what made them fall in love.

41:56Or even who he is to her.

41:58But every day, he does it anyway.

42:00So for me, what The Notebook is about, making the decision every day to love someone,

42:06regardless or not if they decide to ever love you back.

42:09I think people want that feeling of unconditional love.

42:12I love you, Ali.

42:15I am who I am because of you.

42:18You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I've ever had.

42:23And no matter what happens to us in the future,

42:26every day we are together is the greatest day of my life.

42:32I will always be yours.

42:35Nicholas Sparks' take on love has won him the devotion of his readers.

42:41He's written 20 novels on the subject, which have sold over 105 million copies globally.

42:48The Notebook was an interesting process to write.

42:52I was selling pharmaceuticals at the time, so I had a full-time job.

42:55And my day job, though, required me to call on physicians.

43:00And I would sit in the lobby and wait until the physician was ready to see me.

43:06So I would write bits and pieces of my story.

43:09Then if it was good, I would take these pages and then type them in that night

43:15and then begin to edit them and work on them.

43:18And little by little, I just accumulated all these pages of notes.

43:24The very first line I ever wrote for The Notebook was the beginning of Part 3.

43:29I finished the story, closed the notebook, and wiped my eyes.

43:34Ali and Noah's love story is the story that we're all hoping for.

43:38We're all hoping that we'll meet that person that wants to go through the highs and lows of life with us.

43:43And that till the very bitter end, they will be sitting with us,

43:48reading us a passage out of our favorite book or remembering a time past.

43:52Hi, I'm Anita.

43:55The Notebook and Its Enduring Love Story is one of my favorite books.

43:59I'm going to vote for it, and I hope you do too.

44:01Enduring Love takes a very different form in this next one of your favorites, Jack London's The Call of the Wild.

44:15When I was in junior high school, we read Call of the Wild, and I remember it so vividly being positioned as a book that the boys would probably really like,

44:26which of course meant that I went home and read all 100 pages of it that night.

44:31I wanted to have something that a girl could say in class the next day.

44:35I remember the boys in the class just wanted to talk about how awesome it was that he was like at the front of the pack and like he was such a great hunter.

44:42And I was like, yeah, yeah, we can talk about that.

44:44But let's not lose sight of the fact that this is a really beautiful love story in some ways, too.

44:48The Call of the Wild centers around a dog named Buck, who is kidnapped from a cozy life in California and forced to be a sled dog fighting for his life in the cold, frozen Yukon.

45:01Late in the novel, abused and close to death, he is saved by the patient and caring love of the gold prospector, John Thornton.

45:10Buck blossomed under Thornton's love. And what I remember so clearly was how after Thornton was killed, Buck returned every year to kind of pay homage to his memory.

45:26How much are we kind of shaped by either the presence or absence of love and nurture in our lives?

45:32I think we certainly see that at the end of Call of the Wild in a really profound way.

45:37how kind of love really is eternal in its purest form.

45:44I think that the story, too, is one about sacrifice.

45:47And so in that way, Buck is sort of a stand-in for almost a child type of a character,

45:54that the love towards Buck there is the love of a father to a son.

46:01And if you read it that way, then it makes total sense that he would put himself on the line to make sure this dog survives.

46:10It is just such an extraordinary distillation of these questions around kind of what role does nature versus nurture play?

46:18Kind of why it is so important to treat each other with compassion, kindness, respect, decency, love.

46:28I'm Chelsea Clinton. I hope that you will read Call of the Wild.

46:32I hope that you will love it as much as I do.

46:34And I hope that if you do love it, you will vote for it.

46:37Of course, we love all of our books equally.

46:41But this final novel truly reflects all of the attributes and themes we've examined tonight.

46:47We're talking about one of your all-time favorites, the Anne of Green Gables series by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

46:58In the first novel, an elderly spinster named Marilla and her brother Matthew decide to adopt a boy to assist on their farm.

47:06But instead, they are sent Anne, an unruly, unpredictable redheaded girl with a heart of gold.

47:14As the series of books progresses, Anne grows up and falls in love with a neighbor boy named Gilbert.

47:20And together, they share a lifelong romance.

47:23Anne of Green Gables was an inspirational book.

47:32A girl orphan succeeds in winning over Marilla the older woman who was at first against having a girl because she's not going to be any use.

47:42And she undergoes a personality change much more than anybody else in the book.

47:48In Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote the happy family that she herself never had.

47:56When you know about the life of the author, you see it in quite a different way because she was stuck with these elderly relatives.

48:04She never converted them to this moment in which they said they loved her.

48:10They were always strict and mean with her.

48:13And you can see her writing this story.

48:16You know, this is what I wish would have happened.

48:19I wish that they had had this Marilla moment and finally accepted me.

48:26But that never happened.

48:28I'll read you one of the conversion moments of Marilla.

48:34Matthew has died.

48:36And Anne says,

48:37Oh, Marilla, what will we do without him?

48:40And Marilla, this crusty old spinster, says,

48:44We've got each other, Anne.

48:47I don't know what I'd do if you weren't here.

48:49If you'd never come.

48:51Oh, Anne, I know I've been kind of strict and harsh with you maybe.

48:55But you mustn't think they didn't love you as well as Matthew did for all that.

49:00I want to tell you now when I can.

49:03It's never been easy for me to say things out of my heart.

49:06But at times like this, it's easier.

49:09I love you as dear as if you were my own flesh and blood.

49:12And you've been my joy and comfort ever since you came to Green Gables.

49:18The Anne of Green Gables books really have it all.

49:27They have family love.

49:29They have first love.

49:30They have romantic love.

49:32You see friendship love in these stories.

49:35And then you have Anne and Gilbert's enduring love.

49:38Gilbert isn't as famous as Mr. Darcy, but he is one of my favorite heroes in literature.

49:45The minute he tugs her braid and calls her carrots and she smashes her slate over his head.

49:51And it starts out with this intense hatred at first.

49:55Only on her part, though, he, you know, he loves her from the beginning.

49:59I love Anne of Green Gables.

50:01It is full of surprises at every turn, but also things that you know you're going to find and things that you're anticipating.

50:08There's so much in this story that I think is relatable and fresh and modern still.

50:14I'm Siobhan Adcock.

50:16I'm voting for Anne of Green Gables, and you should too.

50:19Love stories provide this framework to explore these enormous ideas.

50:25Your family, who you are, money, you know, the economics of partnering with other people about mortality.

50:32Love runs through everything.

50:35It's a fundamental part of the way that we tell stories about ourselves and the way that we process and explore the big old catastrophe that is life.

50:45When I was a kid, I asked my mom why every pop song was about love, and she said it was because it's the one thing that everyone can relate to.

50:52And I think that's true of books as well.

50:55The subject of love, it just opens out onto all of these deeply interesting subjects.

51:02They're a doorway into this, you know, very large space.

51:07We read these novels because it's among the most genuinely interesting subjects in our lives.

51:16We've seen tonight why love plays a vital role in so many of your favorite novels.

51:20These stories help us navigate our complicated family relationships.

51:24They give us hope for the happy ever after that we all dream of.

51:28They help us heal from heartbreak, and they just make us feel alive.

51:33If you've fallen for one of these books or any other title on our list, head over to pbs.org slash Great American Read and check out all 100 books.

51:42Read, share your thoughts, and vote every day for your favorites.

51:47Remember, it's all up to you to choose America's best-loved novel.

51:54We'll see you next time.

52:19Bye.

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52:27Bye.