It's not necessary to create great displays out of thin air yourself. Use ideas that vendors and publishers send you in their marketing emails and browse their sites for ideas. Barnes & Noble has a list of Great American Novel Picks From Our Favorite Authors up on their site. You can browse the list of suggestions and find the titles in your collection, add a note with which author recommended them, and watch them get checked out. Library patrons love celebrity reading suggestions which is why I have used Barack Obama and Bill Gates' reading lists to great success. Clearly, B&N knows this as well which is why they have asked a variety of popular authors for their picks. The list is heavy on classic novels like The Great Gatsby.
A more fluid display and one which would be easier to fill would be a display with a sign that reads Great American Novel Picks and have your staff fill it with their choices. The limitation would be that they need to be novels and by an American author. If you ask them to dig into your collection and avoid the obvious choices, you will have created a display that can be up for a month. The idea of a Great American novel is nothing that you need to clearly define. Pick diverse authors and avoid bestsellers and obvious classic novels.
Bring in genre fiction and titles from smaller publishers. Your entire staff, regardless of title can participate. Allow them to have fun and try to not police what gets added aside from watching for diversity and as few obvious choices as possible.
If you want to create something more innovative and a passive program, create a social media post and ask your readers what their choices for a Great American Novel. You can add some of those titles to the display. If you can't use social media for this, put a box up and ask patrons to write their choices down. There will be some degree of excitement as patrons come in to see which books made the display as they discover their next great read. At the end of the month, you can publish the list of entries on your website, blog, social media, or on a sign in your library.
