conuly | The Sad But Inevitable Trend Toward Forgotten SF

First, go read this link. One of the commenters there referenced this ST quote, which seems apropos. (Though I think Spock was being sarcastic, or at least the writers were.)

Now that you're primed, I'm heading over here to find the bestsellers the week I was born.

Fiction

1 SPACE, by James A. Michener.
The story of the American space program told through fiction.

2 MISTRAL'S DAUGHTER, by Judith Krantz.
The art world of the 20's and the fashion industry of the 80's. 3

3 2010: ODYSSEY TWO, by Arthur C. Clarke.
A continuation of the tale begun in ''2001: A Space Odyssey.''

4 MASTER OF THE GAME, by Sidney Sheldon.
The hidden truth behind a woman business tycoon's rise to power.

5 THE VALLEY OF HORSES, by Jean M. Auel.
A continuation of the saga of human survival at the dawn of civilization begun in ''The Clan of the Cave Bear.''

6 FOUNDATION'S EDGE, by Isaac Asimov.
The struggle to keep civilization alive in a crumbling empire: science fiction.

7 LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING, by Douglas Adams.
On a journey through space, two men find answers to all their questions about existence: science fiction-fantasy.

8 CROSSINGS, by Danielle Steel.
A clandestine trans-Atlantic romance survives the stresses and strains of World War II.

9 E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL STORYBOOK, by William Kotzwinkle.
Abridged, profusely illustrated version of the novelization of the current film.

10 GOODBYE, MICKEY MOUSE, by Len Deighton.
World War II pilots in military and romantic encounters.

11 DIFFERENT SEASONS, by Stephen King.
Four novellas with mainly nonhorror themes by a modern master of horror.

12 DEADEYE DICK, by Kurt Vonnegut.
Comments on contemporary life made through the story of a youthful criminal who grows up to be a playwright.

13 LIFE SENTENCES, by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey.
Old college chums come to a woman's aid in her time of crisis.

14 SECOND HEAVEN, by Judith Guest.
An emotionally battered man and woman are healed through the act of healing an emotionally battered runaway boy.

15 MAX, by Howard Fast.
The birth of the American film industry in New York at the turn of the century

I mean, it could be worse. I've at least heard of several of these writers, and I've read three of these books - books 5, 6, and 7.

Highlights of the nonfiction list include Shel Silverstein's "A light in the Attic" and two different books entitled "Jane Fonda's Workout Book", except the one crediting Fonda herself as author is vanilla edition and the other one is for pregnancy recovery and written by somebody else.

Edit: Putting aside from the fact that I culled that from the NYTimes hardcover bestseller list, which automatically cuts some books out of the running, another commenter at the original article points out that the older lists had some serious selection bias towards whatever booksellers said was selling rather than what objective data showed was selling.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

potofsoup

Interesting lists to browse through! I'd love to see what was on the bestseller list for when my parents were in their 20s, but unfortunately I don't think there was an equivalent of this for China in the 1970s (ahahaha). The one for my birth week had Pet Sematary, which is kind of funny because there was a recent movie of it?

From:

wpadmirer

My list:

1 BEYOND THIS PLACE, by A.J. Cronin. (Little, Brown.)

2 TOO LATE THE PHALAROPE, by Alan Paton. (Charles Scribner's Sons.)

3 DESIREE, by Annemarie Selinko. (William Morrow.)

4 TIME AND TIME AGAIN, by James Hilton. (Little, Brown and Company.)

5 THE UNCONQUERED, by Ben Ames Williams. (Houghton Miflin.)

6 BATTLE CRY, by Leon Uris. (G.P. Putnam's Sons.)

7 THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY, by Ernest K. Gann. (William Sloane Associates.)

8 THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH, by Saul Bellow. (Viking Press.)

9 COME, MY BELOVED, by Pearl S. Buck. (John Day Co.)

10 THE DEVIL'S LAUGHTER, by Frank Yerby. (Dial Press.)

11 THE LADY OF ARLINGTON, by Harnett T. Kane. (Doubleday.)

12 THE FEMALE, by Paul Wellman. (Doubleday.)

13 FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, by James Jones. (Charles Scribner's Sons.)

14 THE HEART OF THE FAMILY, by Elizabeth Goudge. (Coward-McCann.)

15 THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI, by James A. Michener. (Random House.)

16 THE DEEP SIX, by Martin Dibner. (Doubleday.)

From:

shadowkat

Read the Bridges of Toko-Ri in high school -- it's notable for being the shortest novel James Michener ever wrote. Michener was notable for getting all his novels turned into either movies or television mini-series.

From:

wpadmirer

Yeah, he's a classic. I read the condensed version of Hawaii (I was a kid, and I would have never gotten through the full version.) I haven't read the Bridges of Toko-Ri. But I can see why it was taught instead of any of his others!

From:

shadowkat

There's actually a decent movie version of the book -- with Charlton Heston out there somewhere. I saw that.

I had an English Prof who assigned us to read a certain number of pages every semester in high school. He said we could read Michener, but only Bridges of Toko-Ri. We weren't allowed to read any books over 200-300 pages to make our target. So most of Michener was out.

From:

wpadmirer

I remember the books on your list, because I was an adult. I've read some of them, and love some of the authors.

From:

mommy

I was shocked to see Frank Herbert, Dr. Seuss, and Stephen King on my list. Surely these three were not publishing books at the same time? And yet there they are.

From:

konsectatrix

That's a neat overlap. For some reason I always think Dr Suess books have to be older than they actually are, because classic books = really, really old.

From:

shadowkat

I've either read or actually heard of yours...here's mine:

THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA, by Robert Crichton. (Simon and Schuster.)

CAPABLE OF HONOR, by Allen Drury. (Doubleday and Company.)

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, by Jacqueline Susann. (Random House.)

THE CAPTAIN, by Jan de Hartog. (Charles Scribner's Sons.)

THE BIRDS FALL DOWN, by Rebecca West. (Viking Press.)

THE ARRANGEMENT, by Elia Kazan. (Stein and Day.)

THE MASK OF APOLLO, by Mary Renault. (Pantheon.)

ALL IN THE FAMILY, by Edwin O'Connor. (Little, Brown and Company.)

TAI-PAN, by James Clavell. (Atheneum.)

THE FIXER, by Bernard Malamud. (Farrar, Straud and Giroux.)

Outside of Tai-Pan and Valley of the Dolls, I haven't heard of any of them and did not know they existed. It's oddly reassuring in a way. I mean I published a book, 98% of the public has not heard of it...and hey, I'm in good company.

From:

conuly

There you go!

From:

greghousesgf

I've read the Secret of Santa Vittoria!
I have no idea if the book All in the Family has anything to do with the TV show of the same name.

From:

shadowkat

Wondered the same about "All in the Family" -- and nope. The book is about an Irish business tycoon and his family. Nothing like the television series. It appears to be out of print and is only available through third party sellers.

From:

konsectatrix

Ooh, you have a good list. I've only heard of a few of the authors on mine. Out of the ones on my list, I've read the Sanders book because my mom had the whole series in hardback; I have not read that specific Vonnegut.

1 THE HOLLOW HILLS, by Mary Stewart. (Morrow.)

2 THE HONORARY CONSUL, by Graham Greene. (Simon and Schuster.)

3 THE BILLION DOLLAR SURE THING, by Paul Emil Erdman. (Scribner Book Company.)

4 WORLD WITHOUT END, AMEN, by Jimmy Breslin. (Viking.)

5 BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS, by Kurt Vonnegut. (Delacorte Press.)

6 THE SALAMANDER, by Morris L. West. (Morrow.)

7 THE FIRST DEADLY SIN, by Lawrence Sanders. (Putnam.)

8 ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH, by Jacqueline Susann. (William Morrow and Company.)

9 HARVEST HOME, by Thomas Tryon. (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.)

10 CURSE OF THE KINGS, by Victoria Holt. (Doubleday.)

From:

greghousesgf

your list is very close to my roomie's list

From:

konsectatrix

There appears to be a lot of forgettable writing going on in the early 70's. Alas, it wasn't restricted to books. :p

It does make me wonder what we have here and now that will still be considered worth remembering down the road, though.

From:

greghousesgf

I wouldn't call Kurt Vonnegut forgettable.

From:

conuly

He's just one writer - and not all of his works spring readily to the mind anyway.

From:

konsectatrix

He'd be the sole exception. Of the handful of writers I do know on my list, I'd have to admit I haven't seen those names in years.

From:

shadowkat

I've actually read five of those, and two of them are by writers that are studied in school (Graham Green and Kurt Vonnegut).

"Harvest Home by Thomas Tyron" is one of the best psychological horror novels I've read. But you really have to hunt it down -- it's out of print. Was made into a television mini-series in the late 1970s with Bette Davis of all people. The new movie "MidSommer" sort of reminds me of it, as does "The Wicker Man", but it was creepier.

"The Hollow Hills" is book two of Mary Stewart's King Arthur trilogy -- one of the better ones out there. Although Crystal Cave is the best. Read them in the library as a kid.

"Breakfast of Champions" - I read in college.

"The First Deadly Sin" -- I read in the 70s or 80s, because parents had it.

"Curse of Kings by Victoria Holt" -- Holt was a decent gothic mystery romance writer, similar to Phyllis Whitney and Mary Stewart. No sex, just mystery/thriller/romance.

From:

konsectatrix

Harvest Home sounds like something I'll have to track down, thank you for the rec!

I had the same experience with Sanders--his books were in my parent's bookcase and I read everything I could get my hands on. I actually still have his Timothy Files duology on my bookshelf from when they cleaned out their house before moving. I preferred those to the Deadly Sins, but I was probably in the minority there.

Holt would be one of the names I know, despite not being a big romance reader (there was maybe a 2 summer stint of reading romances out of a big cardboard box at a friend's house, but I wouldn't be able to tell you authors or titles of anything I read at that point). Greene was another, though I don't recall ever reading a book by him.

From:

shadowkat

Harvest Home is really hard to find. I found it in a used book store ages ago. Tyron was an actor who became a horror novelist way back in the 1960s and 70s apparently.

I don't remember any of Holt's books -- but my mother and grandmother had a stack of them that I devoured as a kid. I tend to binge read books as well.
But I can't remember half of them.

From:

konsectatrix

I'd have a hard time even being able to find a brick and mortar used book store to start--the last I remember closed down a few years ago. I was able to snag a copy via abebooks.com though -- I highly recommend the service, it's a great source for older/out of print stuff while supporting used book dealers.

*nodnod* Yup. For various reasons I've unpacked several boxes of books that I didn't have access to for close to 10 years. I know I've read them at some point but I simply do not remember anything about most of them. I'll give them a re-read before I decide if they're worth keeping or if I'm donating them to make more space--someone's bound to appreciate a pile of 90's-early 2000's fantasy series.

Edited Date: 2019-05-26 05:43 pm (UTC)

From:

shadowkat

The discount book store that I picked it up from? Long gone. I think I got rid of the book eventually too -- can't remember? Actually I may have kept it -- it took me forever to find it.

Discount brick and mortar stores are hard to find. I live in NYC -- so yes, we can find them here. We can find anything here, if you want to badly enough that is.

Amazon does have things available through third and fourth party sellers though. If it's out of print, you can often get a used copy from someone who is trying to get rid of it.

I have more books than I know what to do with. I really need to stop buying them. There's free tiny libraries on every block, free books in the basement of my apartment building, and that's not including the books in my coffee table, shelves, and Kindle.

From:

flexagon

I've read four (3, 5, 6 and 7), which doesn't seem too bad. Do I get credit for reading #5 more than once, for the sex scenes, as a teenager?

I've only even heard of three from my list, but that's all right.

From:

conuly

No extra credit, you should've found a book with better written sex.

From:

alatefeline

I am extremely peeved by one of the nonfiction bestsellers in April of 1988. The fiction is mostly vaguely familiar names and subjects which would not have interested me 10 or 15 years later had I run into then at the library. Nowadays I'm curious about a few of them.

Entropy chews up many things. Some beauty lasts for a while. Look, look. The sun is out; or the moon; or the rain is falling; or the dust.

From:

greghousesgf

curious; which book are you peeved by?

From:

shadowkat

Hmmm...I've read quite a few of the books on your list, don't remember that well, but did read them.

I remember liking "Max" -- Fast was sort of the Jeffrey Archer of his time, better writer too.

Different Seasons -- I'm not positive but I think one of the novellas was turned into the film Stand by Me ("The Body").

From:

elenbarathi.livejournal.com

I was born two years before that writer, and Winnie The Pooh is the only book on that list I've read. Tbh, mainstream fiction doesn't much interest me.