1961

US Fiction

1. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone 802 copies on LT

2. Franny and Zooey, J. D. Salinger 4,384 copies

3. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee 14,386 copies

4. Mila 18, Leon Uris 347 copies

5. The Carpetbaggers, Harold Robbins 88 copies

6. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller 2,053 copies

7. Winnie Ille Pu, A.A. Milne Alexander Lenard, trans. 280 copies

8. Daughter of Silence, Morris West 18 copies

9. Edge of Sadness, Edwin O'Connor 63 copies

10. The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck 982 copies

N O N F I C T I O N

1. The New English Bible: The New Testament 283 copies

2. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer 1,321 copies

3. Better Homes and Gardens Sewing Book 40 copies

4. Casserole Cook Book 18 copies

5. A Nation of Sheep, William Lederer 39 copies

6. Better Homes and Gardens Nutrition for Your Family

7. The Making of the President, 1960, Theodore H. White 195 copies

8. Calories Don't Count, Dr. Herman Taller 4 copies

9. Betty Crocker's New Picture Cook Book: New Edition 18 copies

10. Ring of Bright Water, Gavin Maxwell 153 copies

Obviously, a big year in fiction: 1, 2, 3, & 6. And I used to own Winnie Ille Pu. For this there is a disambiguation notice at the Alexander Lenard page, pointing to the fact that most people have cataloged this book under the original author, A. A. Milne

The New English Bible has lots of editions, many separately recorded in LT. My count of the New Testament is 170, and the whole NEB Bible 108 (issued later than 1981), the OT is 9, 25 people own parallel versionwhich contain the NEB, 57 own copies which specify they have the Apocrypha in their NEB also.

William Shirer's book was well known as was Theodore White's.

I don't remember Calories Don't count, but I've redone the Touchstone.

Redid Touchstones.

Mila 18 is a good WW2 novel, but now remembered as the title that caused Joseph Heller's publishers to change the name of Catch 18 published later in 1961.

I've read To Kill a Mockingbird and Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Ive read Franny and Zooey and To kill a mockingbird

To Kill A Mockingbird is such a significant classic at this point that it is really hard to wrap one's head around the fact that it was published as recently as 1961. (Yes, I know that's more than 40 years ago, but mentally, I'm somewhat fixated on the idea that this particular classic was published in my own lifetime.)

I guess we all read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school.

The Agony and the Ecstasy was turned into a great movie, with the late Charlton Heston as Michelangelo.

And of course, Franny and Zooey, a book that consumed much of my late college years when I wrote my thesis on Salinger. It would have been interesting to have lived during that time to discuss the book when it was current. To me, even after all the reading, Salinger remains something of an enigma. Which is probably how he wants it. I wonder if we will ever get to see his unpublished manuscripts.

I remember Ring of Bright Water I think I saw the movie as a kid, too.

Wow, what a blockbuster year for fiction, and the publication of Tropic of Cancer and The Carpetbaggers in the same year was pretty much the death-blow for censorship, as far as books are concerned. I've read all 10 on the fiction list, and 4 of them I've read twice.

Franny and Zooey was wonderful, the Salinger that has probably held up the best for me after 40 years. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was incredibly vivid. Unlike everybody else in the world, I never read To Kill a Mockingbird.

I read all of White's Making of the President books (four of 'em) and thought that 1960 was the most involving of the lot. He probably did a good job on 1968, but I was completely overwhelmed by An American Melodrama, which chronicled the same events.

I've read most of them. I remember reading "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich with its huge swastika on the cover while commuting from Bad Constadt through Stuttgart to Mohringen every morning and evening. On the strassebahn, of course. Always wondered what the individual Germans thought. The year was 1962 and they loved us then.

I've read Franny and Zooey, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tropic of Cancer, The Winter of Our Discontent and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I understand there are now some questions about Shirer's accuracy in some places, but all in all an important volume. A good year for best sellers!

I've read The Carpetbaggers and Tropic of Cancer really don't like Henry Miller and actually own Winnie ille P, given to me by my mother in an attempt to awaken me to the beauty of Latin. I was also given Asterix and Tintin in the original French. Sad to say, none of it worked...

The winter of our discontent
Finished reading: 31 March 2012



The winter of our discontent is the novel which won John Steinbeck the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was also his last novel.

Many readers consider The winter of our discontent a flawed or weak novel, particularly part one, seems to contribute little to the story. It is the author's provenance to express clearly in words what is difficult for others to describe. An adage remembered by many authors is that showing is better than telling. So, within the space of just under 300 pages, The winter of our discontent is a short novel, John Steinbeck shows us how a man starts doubting himself.

What are morals? Are they simply words? (p.186) Ethan Allen Hawley asks himself. Aren't people thinking anymore? Thinking about their actions, their motives, and whether what they do is moral or immoral, honourable or dishonourable. Ethan concludes that it all depends on whether they succeed or not. What a man thinks does not show in his face, and as long as they succeed, they can get away with anything. To most of the world success is never bad. (...) Strength and success—they are above morality, above criticism.(p.187).

At the beginning of the book,the Hawley family is a happy family. Chapter One starts with one of the lightest, happiest dialogues in literature. Ethan is content with his station is life. But his family members are not. Harking to a more glorious past, when Ethan's ancestors were rich, they want to improve their situation, and have a share in the riches of the world. All around Ethan, people are busying themselves making money or fame, in ways which are morally objectionable to Ethan. But as he is constantly battered by others, suggesting how to do such things and get away with it, Ethan starts contemplating and making steps to get on in life. He considers taking kick-backs, he plans and prepares to rob a bank, he betrays his boss and gets entangled into a business deal, where obstruction rather than cooperation reaps him wealth.

However, Ethan's new lifestyle shows in cracks. He is not as happy as before, and the lightness which characterized part one is gone. Doubt first arises, when his boss, Marullo, whom he has betrayed, bequeaths the grocery store to Ethan, honouring his boundless honesty, a thing Ethan would no longer believe of himself, the irony being that this all comes following his betrayal. However, what brings it all home to Ethan is his son's plagiarism in a National Essay Competition. His son receives favourable mention, and is chosen to appear on television, which is eventually cancelled as it is discovered, belatedly, that the essay is largely plagiarized.

Published in 1961, The winter of our discontent describes a process that Steinbeck saw happening in American society; a transition from the ethos of hard-working and honest citizens in the 1940s-1950s, to the greed and money-driven erosion or morals of the 1960s and subsequent era. The fact that so many readers dislike or fail to understand this book, shows how far we have drifted.



Other books I have read by John Steinbeck:
Burning bright
The acts of King Arthur and his noble knights
The wayward bus