Meredith Vieira celebrates power of books in PBS' 'Great American Read'

Meredith Vieira is happy to help the nation get back to reading.

At least, that's the veteran television personality's aim in hosting the PBS series "The Great American Read," premiering Tuesday, May 22. It presents survey results naming the country's 100 favorite books ... from George Orwell's "1984" to Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights." Morgan Freeman, Sarah Jessica Parker, Gayle King, Seth Meyers and Wynton Marsalis are among featured celebrities who discuss books they love. Authors including John Irving, Diana Gabaldon and George R.R. Martin also appear.

"I have been a big fan of novels," confirms "Today" and "60 Minutes" alum Vieira, "but since I got into this crazy business of ours as a journalist, I've found most of the reading I do is nonfiction - just to keep up with what's going on - or opinion pieces. This was a wake-up call for me, a reminder that I want to get back into reading some wonderful fiction.

"The whole idea of the series," Vieira adds, "is to celebrate books and to better understand what they say about us as individuals and as a country, in terms of our cultural being. People like lists, and it's a good way to get some sort of judgment of what they connect to. Seven thousand-plus people were in this survey (conducted by data company YouGov), so in that way, it's very democratic."

It's sometimes emotional, too, since Vieira explains the show (which will resume this fall) also profiles people "whose lives were changed because of a book they read. We feature one African-American woman who's probably in her 20s now, and she was a bookworm. She connected to Hermione in the 'Harry Potter' series, and it didn't matter to her whether (the character) was black or white or whatever. Hermione was considered different because her parents weren't wizards, and the woman said, 'I can relate to being different.'"

Other "Great American Read" titles are as classic as Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" and Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind," and as contemporary as E.L. James' "Fifty Shades of Grey" and Gillian Flynn's "Gone Girl."

As she hopes viewers will be, Vieira is inspired to revisit particular books included in "The Great American Read." She counts Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" among her own favorites, and she also cites Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca": "I don't totally remember the plot, but I know I loved it, and I think I might go back to that. I'm planning to spend my summer reading some of the ones on the list that I have not read, and that people rave about."