If you read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, you will definitely encounter a lot of uncomfortable stereotypes. Some of them will make your skin crawl. The book leaves you feeling raw at times both because of the stereotypes and because of the frankness with which slavery is described. That is simply unavoidable, but I think you really hit the nail on the head with your comment: it was progressive for its time. Actually, this is probably an understatement. It was revolutionary for its time.

I haven’t read Huck Finn, but I absolutely loved To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s an extraordinary novel, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading it. That may have been the best book I was ever assigned to read, which is saying something because having an assignment associated with reading usually made it harder for me. I would also strongly recommend The Great Gatsby. All of the books you mentioned would be good candidate novels. It’d be great to see the other books you would pick in the challenge. I’ve really enjoyed reading the other reviews in the challenge thus far, particularly for books that didn’t come immediately to my mind as Great American Novels like the Last of the Mohicans or Lonesome Dove.

It’s so cool that you started with “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” I read that back in 8th grade, because that was the year my school’s Social Studies curriculum got to American History and I wanted to read the book that started the Civil War. For years afterward, my fiction was wooden and preachy.

If only I’d found this post back in July. Oh well – October 4th’s coming up, and I can’t wait to see what you’re reading next! Just a tip: Huck Finn’s quite an amusing and sharp satire of the rural antebellum South, if you can get over seeing the n-word used so many hundreds of times. Also, Jim’s character is uncomfortably stereotypical and minstrel-y. I’m sure the book was very progressive for its time, but parts of it make me squirm now. I’d probably have felt the same way about “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” had I not been a sheltered, white, 13-year-old suburbanite.

Excellent idea. Especially for those of us that just don’t read fiction.