"Outside a dog a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it is too dark to read!" -Groucho Marx========="The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -Jane Austen========="I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."-JK Rowling========"I spend a lot of time reading." -Bill Gates=========“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” -Jacqueline Kelly=========

Friday, July 1, 2016

Books representing my lifetime

Earlier this week I posted a list of the 75 best books of the last 75 years. The list was put together by Ann Pratchett for the 75th anniversary of the PARADE magazine. At the end of the post I challenged myself and my readers to create a list of best books read in our lifetime. The following is my attempt to cover my life with books. As you will see, I did not read the books during the given year necessarily, they were just published in that year. 

Creating the list was way harder than I thought it would be. For one thing, I have not gone back and read many books published during my childhood, hence the high number of (C) children's titles without an (A) adult title. I discovered a few things along the way, too. Little Bear was not written by Maurice Sendak, as I always thought. He was just the illustrator of my first childhood book. In 2008 there was a shift in publishing and more YA titles than adult titles were sold that year. That trend continues. One more note, many of the books I have listed were books I liked fine but in no way represent the best books I've ever read. Often I included them on the list because they were memorable in some way and I continue to think about them even now.

Here is my original post about the Parade Magazine 75 best in past 75 years. I challenge you to create a list of books which represent your lifetime. Good luck!

Books I’ve read and enjoyed over the course of my lifetime;
 published 1957-2016
A=Adult titles; C=Children’s or YA titles
1957
A-On the Beach by Nevil Shute
C-Little Bear by Elise Holmelund, ill. By M. Sendak
1987
A-Beloved by Toni Morrison (tied)
A-The Shell Seekers by Rosamund Pilcher
1958
A-Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
C-Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
1988
A-Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
C-The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo
1959
A-Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
C-The Birthday Book by Dr. Seuss
1989
A-The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
C-Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
1960
A-To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
C-Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
1990
A-The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
C-Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss
1961
C- Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
C-The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (Tied)
1991
A-The Firm by John Grisham
C- If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numberoff
1962
C- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
1992
A- Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
C- Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park
1963
A-The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
C-Where the Wild Things Are by M. Sendak
1993
A- The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
C- The Giver by Lois Lowry
1964
A- A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
C- The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
1994
A- Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres (tied) 
A-Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
1965
A-In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
C-The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary
1995
C-The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (tied)
C-Sabriel by Garth Nix
1966
None
1996
A-Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
C- Lily's Purple Purse by Kevin Henkes
1967
A-One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
C-The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
1997
A-The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
C- Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone by JK Rowling (first pub. in UK, series complete 2007.)
1968
A-The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough
C-Ramona the Pest by  B. Cleary
1998
A-The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
C-Holes by Louis Sachar
1969
A- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelo
C-The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
1999
A-Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Letham
C-Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
1970
A-The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
C-The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White
2000
A-In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson
C-Because of Winn-Dixie by DiCamillo
1971
A-The Hiding Place by C. ten Boom
C-Mrs. Frisby & the Rats of NIMH by O’Brien
2001
A-Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (tied)
A-Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
1972
A-All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
C-My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
2002
A- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
C- Feed by M.T. Anderson
1973
C-The Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Green
2003
A- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
C- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
1974
A-All the President’s Men by Woodward and Bernstein
C-There’s a Wocket in My Pocket by Dr. Seuss
2004
A- The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
C- The Race to Save the Lord God Bird by Philip Hoose
1975
C-Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit
2005
A-The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
C-Looking for Alaska by John Green
1976
A- Roots by Alex Haley
C-The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter
2006
A-The Worst Hard Time by T. Egan  
C-The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
1977
A-The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
C-Miss Nelson is Missing by Allard and Marshall
2007
A- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
C- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows by J.K. Rowling
1978
A- The World According to Garp by John Irving
C- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett
2008
A-The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Barrows and Shaffer
C- The Hunger Games by S. Collins
1979
A- The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
C-The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
2009
A-The Help by Kathryn Stockett (tied)
A- Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

1980
A-A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
C-The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash by Noble
2010
A- Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
C- Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson
1981
A-When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold Kushner
2011
A-Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
C-Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
1982
A- The Color Purple by AliceWalker 
A-Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally (tied)
C-Jamberry by Bruce Degen
2012
A-Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
C- The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
1983
A- The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
C-The Berenstain Bears and a Messy Room by Stan Berenstain
2013
A-The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
C-Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
1984
A- Cold Sassy Tree by Olive A. Burns
C-The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear by A. Wood and D. Wood
2014
A-All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
C- I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
1985
A- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
C-The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg
2015
A-Circling the Sun by Paula McLain
C-Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman
1986
A-Maus I  by Art Speigelman
C-The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
2016
A-My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
C-The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater (4th in Raven Cycles eries)


11 comments:

  1. This was very interesting to look at! I've read some of the titles, but no where near as many as you. :)

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    1. It was a lot harder to create this list than I thought it would be because I don't really know when books are published and had to rely on lists created by someone else, usually based on sales. I bet if you embarked on this task you would find that you have read at least one book per year of your life which you enjoyed.

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  2. Wow - so it's books published every year of your life, not read in each year? Cool thing to do.

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  3. Since I was born in 1956, I could use your list as a starting point...

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    Replies
    1. Deb, that is a great idea. Grab my list and add and subtract from there. Help yourself.

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  4. Wow, that is a ton of work to figure out what year the books you liked were published and to ensure you found books for every year. Looking through the list brought a smile to my face as I remembered books that I also enjoyed (1965, the year I was born: The Mouse and the Motorcycle!). Great list and a fun activity!

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    1. What I did was used the Internet and typed "Books published in 1957" and then looked through the list of books offered up by google or goodreads. What I missed doing it this way were books I loved which were not best sellers. So then I went back and plugged in special titles to find out their publishing dates. I finally decided to include both children's and adult titles because I was having such a tough time deciding or choosing for some of the years. Feel free to grab by list and then adjust from there. Leave me a link if you do create a list so I can see it.

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  5. Love this idea so much! I'm not sure I've read a book published every year since my birth, but I do like the idea of seeing the evolution of literature over the course of a lifetime.

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    1. Hey, feel free to grab my list and then change it around to fit what you have read. Hope you join in. As you see from my list. I couldn't find a single book published in 1966 that I've read. It is my only hole. (But now I am going to choose something from that year and read it!

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  6. Oh my gosh, this is such a neat idea! Ellen and I may have to steal/borrow this from you :)

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    1. I hope you do. It was an instructive activity, and fun.

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