In a few hours it will be 2008. All through the year, I’ll be looking backward to novels that were top sellers 50 or more years ago.
The first bestseller list I’ll review is the hit novels of 1958. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak topped the list. Today the title is more familiar from the [...]
Archive for December, 2007
1958 Bestseller List
Posted in 1958 Bestselling Novels, Lists of bestsellers by year on December 31, 2007 | Comments Off
My Top Picks from 1937 Bestsellers
Posted in Lists of bestsellers by year, My Top Pics on December 22, 2007 | Comments Off
Novels that made the 1937 bestseller list have remarkably good staying power. Every book on the list is still readable, and several are superb entertainment even today.
Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, which topped both the 1936 and 1937 bestseller lists, is still a winner. Mitchell’s characters are unforgettable. Her picture of the [...]
Quick and Quirky Novella Has Cinematic Appeal
Posted in 1937 Bestselling Novels, Mystery, Psychological novel, Suspense, tagged , Britian, Gerrmany, murder, WWII on December 19, 2007 | Comments Off
James Hilton’s We Are Not Alone is so British and so visual that reading it is like watching Masterpiece Theatre in your mind.
Novel Puts Human Face on Flood Footage
Posted in 1937 Bestselling Novels, My Top Pics, Romance, tagged floods, India, natural disasters on December 12, 2007 | 1 Comment »
I was reading The Rains Came as TV news showed floods in the US, Brazil, and China that left thousands homeless. None of those pictures moved me as deeply as Louis Bromfield’s 70-year-old novel about a flood in India.
Mouse-Size Novel Probes Man-Sized Theme
Posted in 1937 Bestselling Novels, Psychological novel on December 4, 2007 | Comments Off
OF MICE AND MEN is a perennial on high school reading lists; it is short, easy reading, well-plotted, and gruesome. It’s theme, however, is anything but adolescent.
