Reading in the 20th century

A blog for fellow book lovers ...

I've read a few articles lately, all on the same topic: Selecting the favourite books of each decade of the 20th century. I guess this is the 'in thing' at the moment. One of the articles discussed the books themselves (Best Books of the Twentieth Century) and those that are still popular today, while another (Reading through the Decades) ran it as a survey and encouraged people to send in lists of their favourite books. 

So I thought - why not make my own (very personal) list? Lists are notoriously annoying as they are solely the list-maker's ideas. So as you read my list, think of your favourite books and see whether I've included them or missed them out. And yes, I have missed out a lot of books because I limited myself to selecting one favourite and three runners-up for each decade.

I have to say that this endeavour was a challenge as most of my very favourite books were written in the 18th and 19th centuries - all of Thomas Hardy's doom and gloom novels (especially The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the D'Urbervilles), all of Jane Austen's and the Bronte sisters' novels, Wilkie Collins' classic The Moonstone, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, as well as Little Women, Madame Bovary, Alice in Wonderland...

Favourites from another century.

At the beginning of each decade I have mentioned the books that were published and what was popular (taken from a range of websites in case you think I have a brilliant memory). However, many of my favourite books never made the 'Best of the Decade' lists I consulted, although they remain indelibly in my mind nonetheless. I've also included a couple of non-fiction books that are as thrilling and brilliantly written as any of the fiction books.

1900s

I've read many of the books from this decade (Brideshead Revisited, Passage to India, Raffles, The Scarlet Pimpernel) and as a teenager I went mad for Edith Wharton novels. But I've never read Anne of Green Gables, The Railway Children or The Wizard of Oz. 

Favourite: Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Graeme. Who can forget Mole, Ratty and Badger, or indeed Toad tootling down the open road in his jaunty car?

• Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. I can still recite passages from The Elephant's Child and How the Camel Got His Hump. 

'.. by the great, grey-green greasy Limpopo River all set about with fever-trees. '

• Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. The entire series are a delight but none more so than the very first one. Mum read them to me. I read them to Sharon and Kate.
• Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle. This set me off on mysteries which I still enjoy to this day.

1910s

A decade that is rich in classics, though I haven't read them all. Forster's Howards End, The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, the first of the Tarzan stories, Kafka's Metamorphosis, H G Well's A History of Mr Polly (a book from my high school English reading list but one I did not warm to), Pollyanna ...

Favourite: The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. 

A novel set for our high school English class that I loved for its intrigue and tension, and the 'innocent man caught up in events outside of his control' plot that is now a staple of spy and film noir stories.  This cover on the left is typical of the 1950s - certainly not the original which I believe may be this one.

• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - wonderfully emotional - and a forbidden garden!
• Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is a small novella that has the most beautiful images and heartbreaking events.
• My Man Jeeves. PG Wodehouse is in fine form introducing me to Jeeves, a lifelong relationship.
• Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs is a true Australian classic and must go on my list.

1920s

Authors who have stood the test of time were well represented in the 1920s - Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, DH Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, TS Elliot, James Joyce. Their novels remain much-loved: A Farewell to Arms, The Great Gatsby, Lady Chatterley's Lover, To the Lighthouse and Ulysses. 

Favourite: All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque - a powerful anti-war story that resonates to this day. Beautifully, sparingly written. Banned by the Germans, of course.

• Winnie the Pooh by A A Milne - Christopher Robin, Heffalump, Eeyore, Tigger, the 100 Acre Wood ...
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie; the book that introduced us to Poirot.
• The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I had to include this as it was a staple in the 1960s with its gentle philosophising and heartfelt sayings. It did become too commercial though and not a wedding went by without quotes from the book. Despite this, I still remember these quotes today though my copy of the book is missing in action. 

1930s

What a group to pick from - Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Dorothy Sayers and their detective novels, the Little House on the Prairie series, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath), Daphne du Maurier (Jamaica Inn), Aldous Huxley (Brave New World), J R R Tolkein (The Hobbit), George Orwell (whose Burmese Days I read while holidaying in Myanmar a few years back) and Noel Streatfield's Ballet Shoes, a much loved book when I was 9. Another book published in the 1930s (that I read in the 1960s) was Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain, her memoir of experiences as a nurse in World War 1.  And a few years ago I discovered author Arthur Upfield and his many crime books; each one placed in a different Australian state. I especially enjoyed this one, published in 1937 and set in a small Western Australian wheatbelt town.

Favourite:

The Valley of the Assassins by Freya Stark is a non-fiction book that reads as a girls-own adventure. It chronicles Stark's travels in the mountainous area between Iraq and Iran, describing the people she meets, the forbidding terrain and the history of the region. This book was hailed in 1934 as ' a highly readable travel narrative'. I agree. Once I read this one, I devoured all of Stark's travel books. The caption under the photo that appeared at the beginning of the book reads: Hujjat Allah - guide from the Assassins' valley with my mule and saddle bags. 

• Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell was a grand epic. I was 16 and I was Scarlett.
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. An intriguing mystery which never fails to grip me - those opening lines 'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...'.
• Murder in the Cathedral by TS Eliot because I was in this play when I was 14. It was performed for the Festival of Perth in 1962 in the Sunken Garden in the University of WA.  A huge experience for me performing alongside noted Australian and English actors. I include this commentary on the play because I was one of the four women in the Chorus.  

'The play begins with a Chorus singing, foreshadowing the coming violence. The Chorus is a key part of the drama, with its voice changing and developing during the play, offering comments about the action and providing a link between the audience and the characters and action, as in Greek drama.'  

1940s

Quite a few well-loved books here. Orwell's 1984; Pippi Longstocking; I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith; Albert Camus' The Plague; Animal Farm; Brideshead Revisited; For Whom the Bell Tolls. Enid Blyton began her series The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Five Findouters and Dog, all of which I devoured as a child. 

Favourite: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. 

 

There was something about this gentle fable and the illustrations that I loved. I remember buying it for friend's babies, hoping the mothers would read it to them when they grew older. I wonder whether any of them did?

• The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank - still a powerfully moving story.
• Brett Farrar by Josephine Tey. A favourite author of mine. I have all her books.
• Five Go to Treasure Island by Enid Byton - the very first of her Famous Five stories. I'm such a fan.

1950s

A variety of genres during the 50s.  Lolita; Farenheit 451; The Old Man and the Sea (another high school book); Breakfast at Tiffanys; Lord of the Flies. Dr Seuss began his series with Cat in a Hat; Nevil Shute was riding high with A Town Like Alice and On the Beach. C S Lewis began the Narnia series (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe being a huge favourite of mine; not so much the rest of the series); Enid Blyton continues with her series; and Ian Fleming had his first James Bond book published - Casino Royale (which I've never read). 

Favourite: Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger. I read this years and years after it was published, when I wondered what all the fuss was about and why people either liked it or hated it - and I certainly wan't a teenager. I loved the writing, the characters and all that teenage angst. I followed it up with reading a wonderful biography of Salinger.

• The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham  (first edition cover) - creepy walking plants.

• My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
• Charlotte's Webb by E B White

1960s

Old favourites were still publishing (Agatha Christie, Roald Dahl) and new authors were emerging (Ken Kesey with One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest). Mario Puzo decided to write a novel that was different to his first two and came up with The Godfather; Arthur C Clarke continued with his science fiction and wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey; and the phrase Catch-22 has entered our lexicon from Joseph Heller's 1967 novel of the same name. My children and I loved A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle, one of a number of 'time-travel' children's books popular at this time.

Favourites: 

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee still stands the test of time and changing tastes. First edition cover (book estimated to sell at $33,000 and my 2004 edition).

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote established the genre of 'novelistic non-fiction' by describing the murder of a family by two young killers as part journalism and part crime thriller.  

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl is a perennial favourite of mine
• Could not separate these books - I used them a lot in my teaching years: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendack

1970s

The 70s saw the rise of thrillers (John le Carre's Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Frederick Forsythe's The Day of the Jackal; scary stories (Peter Betchley's Jaws; The Exorcist by William Blatty; Stephen King's Carrie) plus big sellers such as Watership Down by Richard Adams; Jonathon Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach; and Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. None of these really appealed to me. 

Favourite: A non-fiction book by traveller extraordinaire Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts, chronicling (when he was in his 70s) the adventures he undertook as an 18 year old in the late 1930s.  Walking from Rotterdam to Istanbul, he encounters adventure after adventure which are told so vividly, poetically and vividly you feel you are with him as he shelters in barns, visits monasteries, meets the locals, eats unfamiliar food, traverses raging rivers and clambers over rugged mountains. 

In between the adventures Fermor enthrals and beguiles the reader with descriptions of the architecture, culture, history, languages and peoples of the areas he travels through. This book was introduced to me by my friend Michael fairly recently and I've since read the sequels plus a biography of Fermor - each one enormously entertaining.

• The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
• Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl
• All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot. 

1980s

'Airport' books were big (literally) with John Grisham, Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum favoured authors. The Colour Purple by Alice Walker, Salamon Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez  and Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club were huge Book Club favourites. I must confess to never reading any of them! 

Books I did read.

• The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes - a bestseller describing Australia's early history.
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Attwood continues to resonate 30 or so years later. 

• A is for Alibi, the first of Sue Grafton's popular alphabet murder series. Sadly, she died before beginning 'Z'.

1990s

It's getting difficult for me here. Amazingly, I have never read many of the books published in the 90s, but I have seen the movies made from these books: Sophie's Choice; The English Patient; Jurassic Park; Girl With a Pearl Earring. I think by now I was so busy with life that I was turning away from prize-winning books and seeking those for relaxation and entertainment. However, two popular books I actually read I thought were trite and full of clichés. What a surprise to see them turned into wonderful movies: Robert James Waller's The Bridges of Madison Country and Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook.  

No favourites.

• The Shipping News by Annie Proulx - an atmosphere-laden story of second chances and beginning over. That Newfoundland scenery is still in my mind.

•  No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall - the first of an entertaining series.
• Possession by A S Byatt - I read a number of her books. This one was a fascinating account of two modern-day students studying the lives of two Victorian Romance poets. 
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver was a thick tome unlike any I'd read in a while but which drew me in - it followed the lives of an American missionary family in the Belgian Congo in the 1950s; the story alternated between telling the story of each of the four daughters as they mature and adapt to life in an African village.  

CONCLUSION

I quite enjoyed this project of mine. It was fascinating to see how the publishing industry changed with the times and how social, political and cultural events and issues affected the books we read. There were a number of books I'd forgotten about but which I remembered when I saw their titles. Many of the books listed are classics and remain much-loved to this day; the Beatrix Potter series, Peter Pan, and Alice in Wonderland being prime examples as well as unforgettable characters in Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes and Christopher Robin. 

My research has encouraged me to read some of the books I missed out on or dismissed as 'not to my taste'. I realise that there are hardly any Australian novels mentioned so that's something I must fix.  I wonder how my list matched yours?