Via Bookslut, this online gadget will tell you the NY Times bestsellers for the week you were born, at least if you weren't born before 1950 (old folks just get annual lists).
# 1 in the week of TBA's origin were Portnoy's Complaint and a biography of Churchill's mom. Hm. Masturbation and British biography. ... No, not seeing anything here.
The fiction list is relatively distinguished -- Roth, Vonnegut, le Carré, plus The Godfather and Airport. Books were just better back then.
Nonfiction, we get Salisbury's 900 Days, Manchester's Arms of Krupp, and perhaps most significantly, a screed entitled The Trouble with Lawyers.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
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Lolita, Zhivago in 4th.
ReplyDeleteDrury's "Advise and Consent" tops the fiction list for me, foreshadowing I know not what; much preferred is #4, "Poor No More", Ruark. Lower down, Faulkner was in the game with "The Mansion". Odd to think that WF still had a few years in him when I was newly minted.
ReplyDeleteNon-fiction, slot 7: "The Elements of Style". I can rest easy.
There may be something to this ... bibliomancy?
ReplyDeleteI don't think much of anything can be learned from the list from my birthday:
ReplyDelete1MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR Herman Wouk
2AUNTIE MAME Patrick Dennis
3THE TONTINEThomas B. Costain
4THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUITSloan Wilson
5SOMETHING OF VALUERobert Ruark
6BONJOUR TRISTESSEFrancoise Sagan
7THE DEER PARKNorman Mailer
8BAND OF ANGELSRobert Penn Warren
9THESE LOVERS FLED AWAYHoward Spring
10CONFESSIONS OF FELIX KRULL
We can learn that NMC is old enough to have Thomas Mann on his natal bestseller list!
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, he died a few months before I was born.
ReplyDeleteThe only one of these books I've read is Marjorie Morningstar, which I read in high school. I think I have a partially read copy of Band of Angels at home but am not sure.