Will the Big Read be a big yawn?

Standby literary classics will receive more moments in the sun as the National Endowment for the Arts gears up to shell out substantial bucks to “encourage citizens to read for pleasure and enlightenment” as part of a program called The Big Read.

Pilot reading programs are underway at nine libraries and community institutions, where readers are turning the pages of one of the following: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

With preliminary success under its belt, the NEA has announced expansion of the program (100 grants from $10K to $40K in the next year alone) as well as the inclusion of four additional titles from which citizen reading groups may choose: Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.

All well and good, says Sara Nelson in Publisher’s Weekly: “No one wants to disrespect anything that champions literacy.… The NEA’s program has its heart in the right place. But what about its cojones? Where are the books by newer authors, The Kite Runner, say, or The Color of Water, both of which have fared well and inspired millions in local book groups?”

It’s an interesting question, and one that could get answered as the NEA’s Advisory “Reader’s Circle” begins to add new titles to the list. That circle includes Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl (author of Book Lust and the city librarian who inspired the program), writers Pico Iyer, Azar Nafisi, and Marilyn Nelson, and apparent Renaissance woman and singer-songwriter Aimee Mann.

What do you think should be on the list?