Editing The Godfather (novel) (section)

==Reception==
[[File:Mario Puzo 1972 (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright|[[Mario Puzo]] in 1972]]
In ''[[The New York Times]]'', Roger Jellinek wrote that the book was "bound to be hugely successful, and not simply because the Mafia is in the news. Mr. Puzo's novel is a voyeur’s dream, a skillful fantasy of violent personal power without consequences. The victims of the Corleone 'family' are hoods, or corrupt cops – nobody you or I would actually want to know. Just business, as Don Vito would say, not personal. You never glimpse regular people in the book, let alone meet them, so there is no opportunity to sympathize with anyone but the old patriarch, as he makes the world safe for his beloved 'family.'"<ref>{{cite news| location=New York| work=The New York Times| first=Roger | last=Jellinek | title=Just Business, Not Personal| date=4 March 1969}}</ref> The novel remained on [[The New York Times Best Seller list|''The New York Times'' Best Seller list]] for 67 weeks and sold over nine million copies in two years.<ref>{{cite web | title="The Godfather" Turns 40 |work=CBS News|publisher=CBS Interactive Inc. | url=http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-godfather-turns-40/3/ | date=March 15, 2012 | access-date=July 15, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140717004801/http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-godfather-turns-40/3/ |archive-date=July 17, 2014 |url-status=live}}</ref>

The novel is #53 on the [[PBS]] The Great American Read list of "America's 100 most-loved books".<ref>[https://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/books/#/ The Great American Read. "America’s 100 most-loved books." PBS. Retrieved 15 January 2024.]</ref> In the UK, the novel was #91 on the 2003 [[BBC]] [[The Big Read]] list of the top 200 novels in the United Kingdom, based on the goal of finding the "Nation's Best-loved Novel".