I finally finished my reading list for 1964. As most of you know, in 2005 I began what I call My Big Fat Reading List. It entails reading the top 10 bestsellers, the award winning novels, and a selection of authors I chose to follow through the years. It is a huge, possibly impossible to complete, project which is the major part of my research for writing a book about my life as it relates to the literature of the years I have lived.
This list is one of the longest so far and it took me from April 2018 to January 2020 to get through it. I post the list for you here because I know some of my followers are interested in my project. In 1964 I finished my junior year of high school and began my senior year. It was a momentous year in the United States as well as around the world, but fiction tends to lag behind the news because it takes longer to write. So, no books about the Beatles yet!
BESTSELLERS
1. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John
le Carre
2. Candy, Terry Southern and Mason
Hoffenberg
3. Herzog, Saul Bellow
4. Armageddon, Leon Uris
5. The Man, Irving Wallace
6. The Rector of Justin, Louis Auchincloss
7. The Martyred, Richard E Kim
8. You Only Live Twice, Ian Fleming
9. This Rough Magic, Mary Stewart
10. Convention, Fletcher Knebel and Charles W
Bailey II
OTHERS
1.
PULITZER: No award
2. NEWBERY: It’s Like This, Cat, Emily
Cheney Neville
3. CALDECOTT: Where the Wild Things Are,
Maurice Sendak
4. NBA: The Centaur, John Updike
5. HUGO: Way Station, Clifford Simak
6. EDGAR: The Light of Day, Eric Ambler
7. Arrow of God, Chinua Achebe-Nigeria
8. Black Hearts in Battersea, Joan Aiken
9. The Bloody Sun, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. The Book of Three, Lloyd Alexander
11. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald
Dahl
12. Clans of the Alphane Moon, Philip K Dick
13. The Drought, J G Ballard
14. Encyclopedia Brown Boy Detective, Donald
J Sobol
15. Farnham’s Freehold, Robert A Heinlein
16. Flight of a Witch, Ellis Peters
17. Flood, Robert Penn Warren
18. For the Good of the Cause, A Solzhenitsyn
19. The Garrick Year, Margaret Drabble
20. Girls in Their Married Bliss, Edna
O’Brien
21. The Glass Cell, Patricia Highsmith
22. Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh
23. If Morning Ever Comes, Anne Tyler
24. The Italian Girl, Iris Murdoch
25. Julian, Gore Vidal
26. A Kind of Anger, Eric Ambler
27. Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby, Jr
28. Little Big Man, Thomas Berger
29. The Little Girls, Elizabeth Bowen
30. A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
31. The Old Boys, William Trevor
32. The Old Man and Me, Elaine Dundy
33. A Personal Matter, Oe Kenzaburo
34. Queen’s Play, Dorothy Dunnett
35. The Ravishing of Lol Stein, Marguerite
Duras
36. Ribsy, Beverly Cleary
37. The Shadow of the Sun, A S Byatt
38. Shepherds of the Night, Jorge Amado
39. The Silence of Herondale, Joan Aiken
40. Sometimes A Great Notion, Ken Kesey
41. The Spire, William Golding
42. Star Watchman, Ben Bova
43. The Two Faces of January, Patricia
Highsmith
44. A Very Easy Death, Simone de Beauvoir
45. The Wapshot Scandal, John Cheever
46. Web of the Witch World, Andre Norton
47. With Shuddering Fall, Joyce Carol Oates
48. The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe
What were you doing in 1964? Were you even born yet? Have you read any of these books?
This is a fascinating and worthwhile project that you have embarked upon. That is some list of books! Your “other” list seems to have a lot of science fiction on it. That is very neat!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Brian. While sci fi had what they like to call their Golden Age in the 1950s, I think the genre became popular among mainstream readers in the 1960s. It also got a boost from the space age which went full tilt with JFK pronouncing we would put a man on the moon!
DeleteI was around in 1964 and I remember many of those books from that time. I think I even read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold around that time. I've read a few of the others as well, some with my kids when they were little. It is quite an impressive list. Congratulations on completing it.
ReplyDeleteI think I have more books for children on this list than on earlier lists. They were all good!
DeleteI wasn't even born yet!! My parents were still both in high school at that time and didn't marry until 1968.
ReplyDeleteThat's quite a list of books you've read for 1964... And two books by Patricia published in one year!! I've read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl and numerous times at that as a child.
It will be interesting to see your picks/reads for 1965.
Ha! I got married (the first time) in 1969. You could be my daughter? I had never read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and enjoyed it. I still have a couple Patricia Highsmith books to catch up on but will eventually read all of them.
DeleteWhat an interesting idea!! Where do you get your recommendations from? In 1964 I was pre-school, having fun with no responsibilities.... [grin]
ReplyDeleteIt is a great challenge for me. I get recommendations from everywhere, as I have been working in and around the book business for a long time. Now I am retired and having fun with way less responsibilities...[grin]
Deletecongratulations!
ReplyDeleteIn 1966, I was -2!!
I have only read 4, your #1. Then 30, 44, and 48 in the 2nd list.
If I were to read one more book of these, which one would you recommend?
Thanks, Emma. I will give you two and you can look them up and choose:
Delete#24. The Italian Girl if you like Iris Murdoch or #41 The Spire, historical and slightly creepy.
I've heard of a few of these! I was born for another 30 years. My father wasn't even born for another year and my mother followed in '66.
ReplyDeleteGirlfriend, you are making me feel old! But glad to know you still.
DeleteWow, I'm in awe. This is the kind of project I would love to do - massive, involving lots of research, lots of reading, and lots of writing. Kudos to you. I hadn't heard about this before but I'm definitely going to be following along. Isn't it interesting to look at the themes and patterns across different books in a year or decade?
ReplyDeleteThe project has certainly held my interest and my enthusiasm for quite some time!
Deletei read a lot of Ballard and Dick around that time. i graduated high in '61. remarkable that you kept lists that long ago... i was a wild man then with no organizational skills whatsoever...
ReplyDeleteActually I did not keep reading lists back then. I have made them since. I have quite a few P K Dick books to fill in but I am having a great time! Those were the days to be wild and I was too. And now I know your age...
Deleteblush... 76
DeleteI read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in 1968 - the year I started Grade 10. I'm guessing that books stayed popular longer then, because it was one of the books that all the "cool readers" (intellectual and pseudo-intellectual) kids were reading that year.
ReplyDeleteI have The Rector of Justin and The Moveable Feast on my shelves TBR. I don't remember reading Encyclopedia Brown as a kid but my daughter, who was born in 1973, loved him, as well as Harriet the Spy.
And, of course, who hasn't read the Dahl and the Sendak? Is Where the Wild Things Are REALLY over half a century old?
I loved hearing about what you remember of these books. The Rector of Justin was not a huge favorite for me though it sure did show the passing of much of the 20th century. Yes, WTWTA is really that old!
DeleteI was -1 in 1964, but have read most of the children's books on your list. Those are good ones! I also really liked A Moveable Feast. Good luck with your endeavor & project this year!
ReplyDelete-1. I love your way of putting that. So I can see how you have read so many of the children's books. I was just a little too old for those in 1964 but was happy to read them over the past year or so.
DeleteDid you summarize your impressions of that year in literature? I'm curious about your conclusions since you did it last year for 1963.
ReplyDeleteNo, I have not done that yet. Thanks for reminding me!
DeleteMy mom was four, and I would not make my first appearance for another 19 years!
ReplyDeleteWhere the Wild Things Are remains one of my all time favorite books. When I was pregnant with Eleanor, as soon as she was able to hear things in utero, I began reading this book to her. I read it daily, sometimes multiple times a day. For three months straight, she heard it constantly. As soon as I got her home from the hospital, it is the first book I read to her and wouldn't you know, she was trying to lift her head and turn toward the sound of my voice. She recognized it, and stared at me the entire time I was reading it (my mom was holding her). I will never forget that moment as long as I live.
Wow, we really have some generations gathering here! I love your Where the Wild Things Are story.
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