1957

F I C T I O N

1. By Love Possessed, James Gould Cozzens 52 copies on LT

2. Peyton Place, Grace Metalious 366 copies

3. Compulsion, Meyer Levin 55 copies

4. Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, Max Shulman 31 copies

5. Blue Camellia, Frances Parkinson Keyes 35 copies

6. Eloise in Paris, Kay Thompson 143 copies

7. The Scapegoat, Daphne du Maurier 283 copies

8. On the Beach, Nevil Shute 982 copies

9. Below the Salt, Thomas B. Costain 75 copies

10. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand 5,886 copies

N O N F I C T I O N

1. Kids Say the Darndest Things!, Art Linkletter 67 copies

2. The FBI Story: A Report to the People, Don Whitehead 25 copies

3. Stay Alive All Your Life, Norman Vincent Peale 29 copies

4. To Live Again, Catherine Marshall 71 copies

5. Better Homes and Gardens Flower Arranging 6 copies

6. Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing, Robert Paul Smith 29 copies

7. Baruch: My Own Story, Bernard M. Baruch 27 copies

8. Please Don't Eat the Daisies, Jean Kerr 119 copies

9. The American Heritage Book of Great Historic Places 23 copies

10. The Day Christ Died, Jim Bishop 158 copies

My sixth grade teacher read On the Beach to us and scared us all to death. I tried to slog through Atlas Shrugged, but just couldn't do it.

If it weren't for On the Beach A lot of us might not be here today Since the end of WW2 the public was fed stories of life in a world where everything was powered by atomic energy that eliminated all the drudge work. Neville Shute showed us the danger of letting atomic energy run lose & fall into the wrong hands. Until On the Beach most people believed that atomic weapons used in, say, Asia or Africa would only do damage in those areas. The novel explained the wind currents that carry danger around the earth, but in way that entertained as it enlightened. Laws began to be passed regulating atomic power & the use of atomic weapons, which 10 years after WW2 had become much more powerful.

I did read Atlas Shrugged: I loved Ayn Rand's description of the steam locomotive running down the tracks, but didn't care much for the philosophy.
At the time, many more people talked about Peyton Place than Atlas Shrugged, but the latter is the one that people will really remember.

The Day Christ Died seems to be one of a number of books that rewrote the Christian message in either fiction or non-fiction form in the post-WWII period. Now the 'Christian' fiction that appears on bestseller lists has a more extreme message, like The Left Behind series. Maybe this is a sign of the times. And religious non-fiction books that appear today on bestseller lists try for a more ecumenical or interreligious appeal.

I read Atlas Shrugged. Seems like everyone has. I liked it when I was 16. And then got over it early in college. It still might make a good miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel. Just cut out all the speechifying and didactic stuff.

Cozzens has really disappeared. For many years I've meant to read him, after reading Joseph Epstein's essay about him.

Ditto Atlas.

I have 3 books by Cozzens, and By Love Posessed is the only one I have read so far. It is much better than the movie, of course!

I really enjoyed The Scapegoat by Du Maurier. The film with Alec Guinness is ok, but harder to follow.

Haven't read On the Beach but I think I will look for it.

I did read a book about Grace Metallious, Inside Peyton Place that was interesting, but somehow the book itself doesn't entice me.

Think I may have read Atlas Shrugged, although it could have been The Fountainhead. (It was a looong time ago, and the late 60s intervened to make vague quite a few of my earlier memories.) I think I also read Peyton Place; I know it was in my mom's library. What I did read (and still have in my library) is Where Did You Go? Out. which I think I really enjoyed, though I don't remember specifics. Other books I may or may not have read or perused that we had in the house were the one by Art Linkletter and Please Don't Eat the Daisies.

This is the year I was born, and my brothers and I loved Kids say the Darnedest Things. I also read Atlas several times in my teens and twenties-- liked the book, hated the philosophy -- and Please Don't Eat the Daisies.

I've read 6 of the fiction titles, and have a remarkably well-preserved copy of Cozzens' By Love Possessed which I've not read yet. Peyton Place is great fun uber-trash, but Compulsion, rMeyer Levin's fictional take on the Leopold and Loeb murder case, is terriffic stuff.

I have read One the Beach. This was one of my mom's favourite books and she used to urge me to read it. It was a very chilling read.

Finally a book I own! Haven't read it yet, though....Atlas Shrugged

#9

I'm going to see if I can get the a better Touchstone for "On the Beach": Shute Beach by Nevil Shute. Well I got a real wonky one, but it is probably closer to what we would like to link to than Sex on the Beach.

Well, I went to the work to get a link:
http://www.librarything.com/work/3478181

#11 speak for yourself!

I read Atlas Shrugged during college days, I think. I've never shared the mania about Rand.

I've read Peyton Place and On the Beach - the later a ground breaking classic from an unlikely author and certainly still popular in the late 70s when I read it.