1952

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1952

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1vpfluke
Editado: Ago 20, 2007, 3:51 pm

At least two classics this year.

1. The Silver Chalice by Thomas B. Costain has 178 owners, 1 review. I remember seeing this book in many people's libraries in the 1950-60's, and we have a copy. It was #2 in 1953. (medieval)

2. The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk has 420 owners and 9 reviews. It was #2 in 1951. (WWII, Navy)

3. East of Eden by John Steinbeck has 3,465 owners and 55 reviews. (California)

4. My cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier has 395 owners and 5 reviews. (mystery) I think we recently disposed of our copy. Her big work was Rebecca with 2,411 owners and 21 reviews.

5. Steamboat Gothic by Frances Parkinson Keyes has 40 owners (0) reviews. (Louisiana)

6. Giant by Edna Ferber has 99 owners and 1 review. (Texas)

7. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway has 3,847 owners and 39 reviews. We own. (fishing off of Cuba does describe this correctly)

8. The Gown of Glory by Agnes Sligh Turnbull has 10 owners (0) reviews. (about a minister in Pennsylvania Calvinist congregation) Her somewhat more known, Bishop's Mantle, has only 14 owners.

9. The Saracen Blade by Frank Yerby has 41 owners (0) reviews. (medieval) Yerby had the first African American bestseller in 1946 with The Foxes of Harrow - 35 owners.

10. The Houses in Between by Howard Spring has 10 owners (0) reviews. (19th cent romance) Somewhat better known is Fame is the spur with 14 owners.

2citygirl
Ago 20, 2007, 6:10 pm

vpfluke, we meet again. (flutters eyelashes, then trips over own toes)

How do you choose the year you're going to cover next?

Re this list: I've read 3, 4 & 7. I've heard of 2 & 6. Somehow I don't think the modern day bestseller lists will hold up as well. But maybe everyone thinks that of whatever "modern day" they happen to be living in.

3vpfluke
Editado: Ago 20, 2007, 10:37 pm

I thought I'd start off with 1945, the year of my birth, but the books looked boring, so I went to the beginning of the decade (I had printed off the lists by decades), 1940. Seven being a number of cycles, I thought I should do every 7 years from 1945 to present, then mix it up a little bit, and also went back in time, not a whole lot of logic. 1966 comes next.

4Pawcatuck
Ago 20, 2007, 10:41 pm

Interesting year. The last one, The Houses in Between, is the only one for which both title and author seem to have fallen into obscurity. I've never read anything by Agnes Sligh Turnbull, but I've seen about 3,000,000 of her books at sales. Same with Frank Yerby, who's still got a lot of shelf space at the local libraries; I'm surprised there aren't more of his books on LT.

5MarianV
Ago 21, 2007, 10:29 am

Frank Yerby, Faith Baldwin, Sidney Shellabarger, Agnes Sligh Turnbull, are the Danielle Steele, Belva Plain, Luanne Rice authors of he 1940's &'50's. Ms. Turnball usually added a religious element to her novels. Yerby & Shellabarger added a bit of action adventure a la Tom Clancy, tho not as technical. Anyone who enjoys daytime "soaps" will enjoy those authors. There have been accusations against Danielle Steele for "recycling" plots from Ms. Baldwin & Fannie Hurst. Also the fact of Frank Yerby being an African-American was kept secret from the public for a long time. It was not until the late 1960's that it was officially revealed. Frank G. Slaughter was another popular author of that time. All of those authors reliably churned out their adventure-romances with their happy endings & no "bad" language & Heaven forbid, no explicit sex - the Legion of Decency was checking every word -year after year during those decades. They were often Book-of-the-Month Club selections & accumulated on the bookshelves of our parents & grandparents until the houses were put up for sale . Now they appear at Goodwill & yard sales, their covers a bit faded, the pages slightly yellowed but still in their pristine, read -only-once condition.

6varielle
Ago 21, 2007, 10:32 am

This seems to have been a big year for books that became blockbuster movies. I haven't read any of the books, but believe I've seen all of the ones made into flicks.

7vpfluke
Ago 21, 2007, 12:05 pm

#5
Thanks for your further descriptions of these books, and the types of books that used to become bestsellers.

8vpfluke
Editado: Ago 21, 2007, 12:13 pm

I remember reading The Old Man and the Sea when I was in junior high school (8th grade?). It may have been the first adult more current fiction that I ever read. We were given poster board on which to draw the story. I wish I would have saved that.

I see in my note about this, I left out the word "not": (fishing off of Cuba does not describe this aptly).

9varielle
Ago 22, 2007, 10:54 am

I remember seeing Old Man and the Sea when I was a kid and being absolutely terrified when the sharks started attacking.

10usnmm2
Editado: Out 22, 2007, 7:03 pm

Read the 1952 pulitzer Prize winning novel The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk. I used to think this was the best modern Naval story written until I read Delilah by Marcus Goodrich who was married to Olivia de Havilland
at one time.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck which is my favorite book by him. It's the one he wanted to write and should have won another pulitzer for it.
1953 Pulitzer forThe Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway another book I had to read in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Turned me off to Hemmingwayfor 20 years until I read A moveable Feast and that book made me a Hemmingway lover.

11marise
Out 22, 2007, 6:56 pm

I, too had to read The Old Man and the Sea at that age and it turned me off of him for many years as well. Same with The Pearl for Steinbeck until I read East of Eden. Why did they pick those stories for children of that age to read?? Did they want to turn us off of good lit?? :)

12usnmm2
Out 22, 2007, 7:07 pm

marise,
I had to read the The Pearl also with the same results and read the same book to like him.
Maybe those teachers were planting seeds that they knew would germinate in later years. I'm inclined to give them the benifit of the doubt.

13Shortride
Out 23, 2007, 6:12 pm

Chalk me up as another one who didn't like The Pearl when I read it for school. I'm from Salinas, so I can understand why they assigned it, however.

I haven't read any of these, but I have seen the play adaptation of East of Eden.

14usnmm2
Out 23, 2007, 6:37 pm

If you only read one John Steinbeck book it should be East of Eden. The book is a retelling of the Cain and able story from the Bible. Starts in the civil war and ends up in Salinas valley. Steinbeck was not well liked for airing the family laundry
of the area.

15Shortride
Out 23, 2007, 9:58 pm

He wasn't particularly liked here since The Grapes of Wrath. The farmers of Salinas were rather grumpy about the portrayal of farmers in the book, and held a book burning in the center of town.

As for reading Steinbeck, I think East of Eden and Tortilla Flat are the only major ones I haven't read.

16usnmm2
Out 23, 2007, 10:45 pm

I didn't know that about TGOR. Live and learn
Tortilla Flat is good in a sad way.This is sort of a prequel to Cannery row. It's about a young man home from the war (WW2), He had no prospects before the war and none after. No matter what he tries or resovle he and his friends end up with a bottle wine and get drunk. As the book progresses it turns into a parity of The knights of the round table.

17ejd0626
Nov 26, 2007, 8:55 pm

I love East of Eden. It's the only one I have read.

18Storeetllr
Dez 8, 2007, 3:03 pm

The only one I read on this list is The Silver Chalice. I remember really enjoying it. I was probably around 12 or 13 when I read it.

19varielle
Editado: Mar 9, 2008, 8:06 pm

US N O N F I C T I O N

1. The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version 111 copies on LT

2. A Man Called Peter, Catherine Marshall 235 copies

3. U.S.A. Confidential, Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer 2 copies

4. The Sea Around Us, Rachel L. Carson 290 copies

5. Tallulah, Tallulah Bankhead 42 copies

6. The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale 389 copies

7. This I Believe, Edward P. Morgan, editor; Edward R. Murrow, foreword 30 copies

8. This Is Ike, Wilson Hicks, editor 0 copies

9. Witness, Whittaker Chambers 171 copies

10. Mr. President, the First Publication from the Personal Diaries, William Hillman 7 copies

20vpfluke
Mar 9, 2008, 11:09 pm

I can imagine our household having 1,2, 4, 5, & 6 in the 1950's. My mother thought Tallulah Bankhead was terrific. I think she was the daughter of an Alabama senator. I amsure we didn't get Rachel Carson's book until 1952 had come and well gone, but it was a seminal book preparing us to be more environmentally aware. I think the New Testament of the RSV came out in the late 1940's. It cleaned up the misleading translations in the KJV, but retained the older style phrasing to a great degree. The Revised standard version probably had large sales for a number of years, and it was widely used in the mainline churches.

I don't think my mother had "This is Ike", but she actively campaigned for Eisenhower in Memphis, Tennessee.And I think Tennessee went Republican that year.

21barney67
Abr 12, 2008, 8:54 pm

Well, quite a year. The top for me being Witness by Whittaker Chambers, former editor of Time, great prose stylist, and for years maligned in the Alger/Hiss case over communism in America. Extraordinary book even before the trial takes place. Chambers retired from the public eye to a farm in Maryland.

Old Man and the Sea, my favorite of Hemingway's and the one I usually ask about when people say they hate Hemingway.

Is this the Giant that was made into a movie with James Dean?

East of Eden, The Caine Mutiny. Yet all of them falling behind someone named Thomas B. Costain.

22keren7
Abr 23, 2008, 6:22 pm

Haven't read any of them

23shmjay
Jul 4, 2009, 7:36 pm

We had to read The pearl in Grade 8, but I don't remember too much about it.

24rocketjk
Set 4, 2009, 2:06 pm

I've read East of Eden and The Old Man and the Sea. I own The Grapes of Wrath but, embarrassingly, I haven't read it yet.

25adpaton
Jul 13, 2010, 7:37 am

I read East of Eden - one of the few books by John Steinbeck I've finished - and found it profoundly depressing. I have great trouble relating to the American classics. I really enjoyed My Cousin Rachel - in fact I think I preferred it to Rebecca - my favourite Daphne Du Maurier and the BBC adaptation was excellent.

26andyray
Jul 31, 2011, 11:31 am

at nine years old, this was the year i began noticing other books than edgar rice burroughs, zane grey, and the red ryder series. the bobbsey twins nurtured me into reading books and, fortunately, I had a mother who stayed at home with me drinking and reading. I learned to do both with approbation and delight. I remember seeing a few of the above-mentioned books in my sister's library at the time and saw them as worlds i could not yet enter and enjoy. I think english teacheers (professors) by their natujre are self-important pricks. I am such a one, I suppose. I only have to look at my college classes where they expected me to pass 80 to 90 percent of the students, and I only passed 50 percent, along with the cryptic notes given me as a teacher ("I know where he lives and, after awhile, he's going to hear from me and my .20 gauge Savage shotgun." is one example). I found out quickly that having a complete msentence within a logically developed paragraph on the way to making a solid logical point has nothing to do with what the coollege wants. they want you to pass the people whether they can do the work or not. oh well. that;s probably why we have such literary genuses today as Danielle Steele dominating the charts.