North Carolina’s Only Local Literary Television Series Returns with “The Top Ten!”
J. Peder Zane Kicks Off the 10th Anniversary Season
Of North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, July 6 at 9:30 PM

Click here to access an image of J. Peder Zane.

Each year, North Carolina authors publish hundreds of books of all types and for the past nine seasons UNC-TV’s local literary series North Carolina Bookwatch has brought the best and brightest of these southern scribes to the small screen—shedding light on their works, their lives, and the indelible imprint that the state has left upon them.

It is only fitting then, that for the premiere of the 10th anniversary season of North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, July 6 at 9:30 PM, award-winning columnist and Raleigh News & Observer book-review editor J. Peder Zane presents to series host D.G. Martin his extraordinary new look at the world’s greatest literary works entitled, The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, in which acclaimed authors name the ten books that have meant the most to them.

In the premiere episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, Zane suggests to D.G. Martin that these lists, as referred to in the book itself, are "detailed road maps to the land of literary possibilities…Part Rand-McNally, part Zagat's . . . [taking] the anxiety out of bibliophilia by offering a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the world's best books."

“I think part of the inspiration for this project came from a very happy occurrence: with the rise of the Internet, any book is just a click away. The problem is that all of that possibility can lead to paralysis and all of that choice can lead to confusion when it becomes hard to know what to read next,” says Zane. “So what you’ve seen in this culture is people asking for guidance, and people like Oprah and her book club and book review pages in newspapers become increasingly important. So I asked myself, who knows most about books…and what I wanted to create was a book that I would want to own, and that book was a book about books.”

Operating under the theory that no one knows more about great books than great writers, Zane solicited 125 British and American writers (local authors Clyde Edgerton, Reynolds Price and Lee Smith, among them) to "provide a list, ranked, in order, of what [they] consider the ten greatest works of fiction of all time."  The resulting book provides summaries of 544 books—each of which is considered to be among the ten greatest works ever written by at least one leading writer.

“The draw of determining what are the ten greatest books of all time is the ‘focusing’ aspect of the project…so you can read Lee Smith’s list, Clyde Edgerton’s List, Alan Gurganus’s list; then we printed those lists and tabulated the results to create a ‘super top ten list’ with not only the best fiction, but also the best mysteries & thrillers, the best comic works, and writers with the greatest number of works mentioned,” says Zane. “I think we got it right.”

Already sparking debate, The Top Ten will help readers answer the most pressing question of all: What should I read next?

J. Peder Zane is the book-review editor and books columnist for the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina. His national awards include the 1999 Distinguished Writing Award for Commentary from the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Don’t miss DG Martin’s all-new interview with J. Peder Zane on North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, July 6, at 9:30 PM, with an encore episode airing Sunday, July 8, at 5 PM, only on UNC-TV!

During the 20-week, 10th anniversary season of North Carolina Bookwatch, guests will also include: Gov. Mike Easley (Look Out College, Here I Come!), Michele Bowen (Holy Ghost Corner), Neal Thompson (Driving with the Devil), Joseph Bathanti (Coventry) Joanna Catherine Scott (The Road from Chapel Hill), James Dodson (Beautiful Madness), Dan Heath (Made to Stick), Margaret Maron (Hard Row), James Peacock (Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World), Tim Madigan (I’m Proud of You), Melton McLaurin (The Marines of Montford Point), Kathryn Stripling Byer (Coming to Rest), David Guy (Jake Fades),  Georgann Eubanks (Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains), Zelda Lockhart (Cold Running Creek), Mike Lassiter (Our Vanishing Americana: A North Carolina Portrait), Joe and Terry Graedon (Best Choices from the People’s Pharmacy), Fred Hobson (Off the Rim), and William Powell (Encyclopedia of North Carolina).

For additional information about series guests and airdates, plus links to the Bookwatch blog and online book club, please visit: www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

Funding for North Carolina Bookwatch is provided by UNC-TV members and by Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh’s independent, full service bookstore, bringing readers and writers together since 1984.

North Carolina Bookwatch is part of UNC-TV’s ongoing commitment to produce programs for and about North Carolina. UNC-TV is the statewide 11-station broadcast network of the University of North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

For more information about North Carolina Bookwatch and UNC-TV’s other original productions, please visit our website at www.unctv.org.