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shadowkatFirst go HERE -- The Sad But Inevitable Trend Toward Forgotten Sci-Fi.
The go to find the books that were listed on the NY Times Best-Seller List for the Week of Your Birth. (ganked from conly and wendalh)
Next, list the books for the week of your birth, bold the one's you've read and italicize the ones that you've actually heard of.
Here's mine:
Fiction:
1 THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA, by Robert Crichton. (Simon and Schuster.)
Available through Amazon - apparently made into a movie starring Anthony Quinn and directed by Stanley Kramer. Near as I can figure it is about a secret cache of win in an Italian village during WWII.
2 CAPABLE OF HONOR, by Allen Drury. (Doubleday and Company.)
Available.
- Third book in Drury's Advise and Consent trilogy. I read Advise and Consent and saw the movie. Haven't read this one.
3 VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, by Jacqueline Susann. (Random House.) -
Available on Kindle. Made into a television mini-series and a movie. The movie starred Patty Duke, Susan Hayward, and Sharon Tate. "Valley of the Dolls is considered to be a roman à clef, with its characters based on famous figures such as Judy Garland, Carole Landis, Dean Martin, and Ethel Merman. In 1973, after publication of her third novel, Susann said, "They can keep calling it that [roman à clef]. It'll only make my books sell. I don't care."Susann insisted that she began each book with a theme: "Then I start asking, what kind of a personality? And because I have a good ear, I unconsciously pick up certain people."
4. THE CAPTAIN, by Jan de Hartog. (Charles Scribner's Sons.) - no longer in print, but can get from third party sellers, apparently. The writer specialized in sea-faring tales.
5. THE BIRDS FALL DOWN, by Rebecca West. (Viking Press.) - available on Kindle, this is a thriller that was apparently turned into a movie and a British television series.
6. THE ARRANGEMENT, by Elia Kazan. (Stein and Day.) - No longer in print, only available through third party sellers, later made into a movie by the author.
7. THE MASK OF APOLLO, by Mary Renault. (Pantheon.) - Available on Kindle, a historical novel about ancient greece.
8. ALL IN THE FAMILY, by Edwin O'Connor. (Little, Brown and Company.) -
No longer in print, but you can get from third party sellers. Not available at the library. "It has nothing to do with the television series.Set in Ireland, Italy and the corrupt old city of "The Last Hurrah" and told by an observant and sympathetic narrator (Jack Kinsella), cousin to a conspicuous Irish-American family whose name means power, influence and fabulous riches...all these, the achievement of one man. Jack's Uncle Jimmy is a tough, irascible little tycoon whose pride in his sons is matched only by his determination to get them what he wants: high political office! "
9. TAI-PAN, by James Clavell. (Atheneum.)
Available at the Library and third party sellers on Amazon, part of the series that featured Sho-Gun. "Set in the turbulent days of the founding of Hong Kong in the 1840s, Tai-Pan is the story of Dirk Struan, the ruler - the Tai-Pan - of the most powerful trading company in the Far East. He is also a pirate, an opium smuggler, and a master manipulator of men. This is the story of his fight to establish himself and his dynasty as the undisputed masters of the Orient. " Also a movie in 1986 with Bryan Brown.
10. THE FIXER, by Bernard Malamud. (Farrar, Straud and Giroux.) -
Available electronically, in paperback and at the library. "Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit. " Was turned into a 1968- British film by John Frankenheimer, starring Alan Bates.
Non-Fiction
1 EVERYTHING BUT MONEY, by Sam Levenson. (Simon and Schuster.) -
Available at library and elsewhere. Not sure what it is about -- seems to be a comical novel about money lending.
2 MADAME SARAH, by Cornelia Otis Skinner. (Houghton Mifflin Company.) -
This is about the life of Sarah Bernhardt. Appears to be out of print.
3 PAPER LION, by George Plimpton. (Harper and Row.) -
This was turned into a movie with Alan Alda. Basically it's the story of how journalist, George Plimpton became a member of the National Football League as a Sixth String Quarterback. It's rather funny actually -- the movie, not the book. "In the mid-'60s, Plimpton joined the Detroit Lions at their preseason camp as a 36-year-old rookie quarterback wannabe, and stuck with the club through an intra-squad game before the paying public a month later. The result is a literary masterpiece about professional football that not only elevated the art of participatory journalism to an art form, but also remains one of the most insightful and hilarious books ever written on the game." I've never read the book. It is available at the library, but doesn't appear to be still in print otherwise and no e-book version appears to be available.
4 GAMES PEOPLE PLAY, by Eric Berne. (Grove Press.)
Still in print, available in the library and on the kindle. (I read it, do not remember it -- my parents had it.) It's among the first of the "self-help" or social psychology pop non-fiction books out there. " More than five million copies later, Dr. Eric Berne's classic is as astonishing & revealing as it was on the day it was first published. We play games all the time: sexual games, marital games, power games with our bosses, & competitive games with friends. Detailing status contests like "Martini"; (I know a better way), to lethal couples combat like "If It Weren't For You"; & "Uproar,"; to flirtation favorites like "The Stocking Game"; & "Let's You & Him Fight,"; Berne exposes the secret ploys & unconscious maneuvers that rule our intimate lives. Explosive when it first appeared, Games People Play is now widely recognized as the most original & influential popular psychology book of our time. It's as powerful & eye-opening as ever."
5 THE JURY RETURNS, by Louis Nizer. (Doubleday and Company.)
Out of print, available from third party sellers on Amazon, but nowhere else. According to the reviews -- it's a collection of legal cases that the author worked on and litigated.
6 RUSH TO JUDGMENT, by Mark Lane. (Holt, Rinehart and Winston.)
Still in print and available. "Rush to Judgment is Mark Lane’s seminal work on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This groundbreaking number one bestseller opened the eyes of the people of the United States to the possibility that their government was involved in a cover-up of monumental proportions. "Also was a documentary film. First of the JFK conspiracy theorists.
7 INSIDE SOUTH AMERICA, by John Gunther. (Harper and Row.) .
Out of print, not in the libraries. "This, the eighth "Inside" book, a brand new, full scale "Inside" study of South America, is an eye-opening book about the ten South American republics. Twenty-five years ago, most of South America was, in Mr. Gunther's words,"frozen into a kind of derelict immobility...today nearly the entire continents in a state of active flux, grasping for a future, with fundamental, yeasty impulses for change apparent almost everywhere."
8 DIVISION STREET: AMERICA, by Studs Terkel. (Pantheon.) Available via the library and Kindle. "Studs Terkel’s first book of oral history, established his reputation as America’s foremost oral historian and as “one of those rare thinkers who is actually willing to go out and talk to the incredible people of this country” (in the words of Tom Wolfe).Viewing the inhabitants of a single city, Chicago, as a microcosm of the nation at large, Division Street chronicles the thoughts and feelings of some seventy people from widely varying backgrounds in terms of class, race, and personal history. From a mother and son who migrated from Appalachia to a Native American boilerman, from a streetwise ex–gang leader to a liberal police officer, from the poorest African Americans to the richest socialites, these unique and often intimate first-person accounts form a multifaceted collage that defies any simple stereotype of America."
9 THE BOSTON STRANGLER, by Gerold Frank. (New American Library.) - Not available in the library but available on Kindle. "Drawn from hundreds of hours of personal interviews, as well as police, medical, and court documentation, this is a grisly, horrifying, and meticulously researched account of Albert DeSalvo—an American serial killer on par with Jack the Ripper." - I think the film version starring Tony Curtis was based on this book.
10 HOW TO AVOID PROBATE, by Norman F. Dacey. (Crown Publish) Available at the Libary but not electronically. "The book that revolutionized estate administration has now been fully updated for the 1990s. Still containing the well-known detachable forms that enable you to avoid the delay, expense and publicity of probate, it also covers the changes wrought by the 1986 Tax Reform Act."
Needless to say? I only read one (can't remember it) and only recognize about three of them. Most? Never heard of.
It's weirdly reassuring. Also interesting which ones are still available, in print, and we know about.
It would be nice to believe that a great book can survive entirely on its merits… but this is not the case. Even a printed book can be erased from history, thanks to any number of things that are in no way the fault of the author or the book. The author could die without a proper will, leaving their work in the hands of people actively hostile to their career. Publisher bankruptcies can lead to rights nightmares. When a series is spread across several publishers, some books might fall out of print. Personal tragedy could distract the author from maintaining their fan-base. Ill-conceived marketing schemes—marketing a Gothic fantasist as a horror writer just as the horror market collapses, again—could convince an entire continent’s worth of publishers that there was no more market for that author. And there are many more ways for things to go wrong.
We might not have a publishing industry at all if humans weren’t terrible at judging comparative risk.
[ETA: Apparently even if the books aren't available in the World Catalogue or the Brooklyn Public Library, they are in the LA Public Library...which, hmmm, LA is doing better with books than I thought?]
The go to find the books that were listed on the NY Times Best-Seller List for the Week of Your Birth. (ganked from conly and wendalh)
Next, list the books for the week of your birth, bold the one's you've read and italicize the ones that you've actually heard of.
Here's mine:
Fiction:
1 THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA, by Robert Crichton. (Simon and Schuster.)
Available through Amazon - apparently made into a movie starring Anthony Quinn and directed by Stanley Kramer. Near as I can figure it is about a secret cache of win in an Italian village during WWII.
2 CAPABLE OF HONOR, by Allen Drury. (Doubleday and Company.)
Available.
- Third book in Drury's Advise and Consent trilogy. I read Advise and Consent and saw the movie. Haven't read this one.
3 VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, by Jacqueline Susann. (Random House.) -
Available on Kindle. Made into a television mini-series and a movie. The movie starred Patty Duke, Susan Hayward, and Sharon Tate. "Valley of the Dolls is considered to be a roman à clef, with its characters based on famous figures such as Judy Garland, Carole Landis, Dean Martin, and Ethel Merman. In 1973, after publication of her third novel, Susann said, "They can keep calling it that [roman à clef]. It'll only make my books sell. I don't care."Susann insisted that she began each book with a theme: "Then I start asking, what kind of a personality? And because I have a good ear, I unconsciously pick up certain people."
4. THE CAPTAIN, by Jan de Hartog. (Charles Scribner's Sons.) - no longer in print, but can get from third party sellers, apparently. The writer specialized in sea-faring tales.
5. THE BIRDS FALL DOWN, by Rebecca West. (Viking Press.) - available on Kindle, this is a thriller that was apparently turned into a movie and a British television series.
6. THE ARRANGEMENT, by Elia Kazan. (Stein and Day.) - No longer in print, only available through third party sellers, later made into a movie by the author.
7. THE MASK OF APOLLO, by Mary Renault. (Pantheon.) - Available on Kindle, a historical novel about ancient greece.
8. ALL IN THE FAMILY, by Edwin O'Connor. (Little, Brown and Company.) -
No longer in print, but you can get from third party sellers. Not available at the library. "It has nothing to do with the television series.Set in Ireland, Italy and the corrupt old city of "The Last Hurrah" and told by an observant and sympathetic narrator (Jack Kinsella), cousin to a conspicuous Irish-American family whose name means power, influence and fabulous riches...all these, the achievement of one man. Jack's Uncle Jimmy is a tough, irascible little tycoon whose pride in his sons is matched only by his determination to get them what he wants: high political office! "
9. TAI-PAN, by James Clavell. (Atheneum.)
Available at the Library and third party sellers on Amazon, part of the series that featured Sho-Gun. "Set in the turbulent days of the founding of Hong Kong in the 1840s, Tai-Pan is the story of Dirk Struan, the ruler - the Tai-Pan - of the most powerful trading company in the Far East. He is also a pirate, an opium smuggler, and a master manipulator of men. This is the story of his fight to establish himself and his dynasty as the undisputed masters of the Orient. " Also a movie in 1986 with Bryan Brown.
10. THE FIXER, by Bernard Malamud. (Farrar, Straud and Giroux.) -
Available electronically, in paperback and at the library. "Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit. " Was turned into a 1968- British film by John Frankenheimer, starring Alan Bates.
Non-Fiction
1 EVERYTHING BUT MONEY, by Sam Levenson. (Simon and Schuster.) -
Available at library and elsewhere. Not sure what it is about -- seems to be a comical novel about money lending.
2 MADAME SARAH, by Cornelia Otis Skinner. (Houghton Mifflin Company.) -
This is about the life of Sarah Bernhardt. Appears to be out of print.
3 PAPER LION, by George Plimpton. (Harper and Row.) -
This was turned into a movie with Alan Alda. Basically it's the story of how journalist, George Plimpton became a member of the National Football League as a Sixth String Quarterback. It's rather funny actually -- the movie, not the book. "In the mid-'60s, Plimpton joined the Detroit Lions at their preseason camp as a 36-year-old rookie quarterback wannabe, and stuck with the club through an intra-squad game before the paying public a month later. The result is a literary masterpiece about professional football that not only elevated the art of participatory journalism to an art form, but also remains one of the most insightful and hilarious books ever written on the game." I've never read the book. It is available at the library, but doesn't appear to be still in print otherwise and no e-book version appears to be available.
4 GAMES PEOPLE PLAY, by Eric Berne. (Grove Press.)
Still in print, available in the library and on the kindle. (I read it, do not remember it -- my parents had it.) It's among the first of the "self-help" or social psychology pop non-fiction books out there. " More than five million copies later, Dr. Eric Berne's classic is as astonishing & revealing as it was on the day it was first published. We play games all the time: sexual games, marital games, power games with our bosses, & competitive games with friends. Detailing status contests like "Martini"; (I know a better way), to lethal couples combat like "If It Weren't For You"; & "Uproar,"; to flirtation favorites like "The Stocking Game"; & "Let's You & Him Fight,"; Berne exposes the secret ploys & unconscious maneuvers that rule our intimate lives. Explosive when it first appeared, Games People Play is now widely recognized as the most original & influential popular psychology book of our time. It's as powerful & eye-opening as ever."
5 THE JURY RETURNS, by Louis Nizer. (Doubleday and Company.)
Out of print, available from third party sellers on Amazon, but nowhere else. According to the reviews -- it's a collection of legal cases that the author worked on and litigated.
6 RUSH TO JUDGMENT, by Mark Lane. (Holt, Rinehart and Winston.)
Still in print and available. "Rush to Judgment is Mark Lane’s seminal work on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This groundbreaking number one bestseller opened the eyes of the people of the United States to the possibility that their government was involved in a cover-up of monumental proportions. "Also was a documentary film. First of the JFK conspiracy theorists.
7 INSIDE SOUTH AMERICA, by John Gunther. (Harper and Row.) .
Out of print, not in the libraries. "This, the eighth "Inside" book, a brand new, full scale "Inside" study of South America, is an eye-opening book about the ten South American republics. Twenty-five years ago, most of South America was, in Mr. Gunther's words,"frozen into a kind of derelict immobility...today nearly the entire continents in a state of active flux, grasping for a future, with fundamental, yeasty impulses for change apparent almost everywhere."
8 DIVISION STREET: AMERICA, by Studs Terkel. (Pantheon.) Available via the library and Kindle. "Studs Terkel’s first book of oral history, established his reputation as America’s foremost oral historian and as “one of those rare thinkers who is actually willing to go out and talk to the incredible people of this country” (in the words of Tom Wolfe).Viewing the inhabitants of a single city, Chicago, as a microcosm of the nation at large, Division Street chronicles the thoughts and feelings of some seventy people from widely varying backgrounds in terms of class, race, and personal history. From a mother and son who migrated from Appalachia to a Native American boilerman, from a streetwise ex–gang leader to a liberal police officer, from the poorest African Americans to the richest socialites, these unique and often intimate first-person accounts form a multifaceted collage that defies any simple stereotype of America."
9 THE BOSTON STRANGLER, by Gerold Frank. (New American Library.) - Not available in the library but available on Kindle. "Drawn from hundreds of hours of personal interviews, as well as police, medical, and court documentation, this is a grisly, horrifying, and meticulously researched account of Albert DeSalvo—an American serial killer on par with Jack the Ripper." - I think the film version starring Tony Curtis was based on this book.
10 HOW TO AVOID PROBATE, by Norman F. Dacey. (Crown Publish) Available at the Libary but not electronically. "The book that revolutionized estate administration has now been fully updated for the 1990s. Still containing the well-known detachable forms that enable you to avoid the delay, expense and publicity of probate, it also covers the changes wrought by the 1986 Tax Reform Act."
Needless to say? I only read one (can't remember it) and only recognize about three of them. Most? Never heard of.
It's weirdly reassuring. Also interesting which ones are still available, in print, and we know about.
It would be nice to believe that a great book can survive entirely on its merits… but this is not the case. Even a printed book can be erased from history, thanks to any number of things that are in no way the fault of the author or the book. The author could die without a proper will, leaving their work in the hands of people actively hostile to their career. Publisher bankruptcies can lead to rights nightmares. When a series is spread across several publishers, some books might fall out of print. Personal tragedy could distract the author from maintaining their fan-base. Ill-conceived marketing schemes—marketing a Gothic fantasist as a horror writer just as the horror market collapses, again—could convince an entire continent’s worth of publishers that there was no more market for that author. And there are many more ways for things to go wrong.
We might not have a publishing industry at all if humans weren’t terrible at judging comparative risk.
[ETA: Apparently even if the books aren't available in the World Catalogue or the Brooklyn Public Library, they are in the LA Public Library...which, hmmm, LA is doing better with books than I thought?]
no subject
Date: 2019-05-26 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-26 11:13 pm (UTC)The Arrangement for instance was at the top of NY Times Best Seller list for months, possibly two years, yet I've never heard of it. While books that were much further down, I had heard of.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-26 08:35 pm (UTC)I've read the George Plimpton book. I've read a bunch of his books. He was the most famous amateur athlete, and also one of the founders of the Paris Review.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-26 11:11 pm (UTC)I saw the television mini-series of Valley of the Dolls, but didn't see all of the movie. And yeah, it was scandalous at the time. This was before we had HBO. It was the predecessor to Judith Krantz.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-26 08:43 pm (UTC)And yeah, a LOT of books vanish into the mist of time. And that article only looks at (US-centric) anglophone fiction. If you look at languages that aren't spoken by over a billion people, the situation is even more depressing. The vast majority of books ever published in Swedish, to take what I know, were published, printed, sold a few hundred copies or so, and then... Successful books get reprinted, a select few stay in print indefinitely; the rest simply disappear. A lot of them deservedly so, but still, it's a bit bittersweet. Digitization solves some of that - you can make a book available as an ebook at a fraction of the cost of doing an entire print run - but even then, the publisher needs to figure out who holds the rights, negotiate a deal with the author or their children or grandchildren etc, scan and proofread, and then give it some sort of marketing and metadata to make sure it doesn't just sit untouched on a server somewhere...
no subject
Date: 2019-05-26 11:07 pm (UTC)Oh, I saw that list -- I read five of those. That's the one with Tom Tyrone's Harvest Home? Harvest Home was the best book on that list -- but it's sadly out of print and impossible to find. I hunted it down and found it in a discount book store (since gone out business) in the 1990s.
Harvest Home is sort of like the movie "Midsommer" but creepier, and "Wicker Man" but in the US, and a lot creepier. It had a television miniseries made in the 1970s with Bette Davis. Tyrone was a C list movie star who became a horror novelist. One of the best cult oriented psychological horror novels that I've read. But, hard to find.
I also read Breakfast of Champions, but I can't remember it. The only ones I remember are Welcome to the Monkey House, Slaughter House Five, and Sirens of Titan (and that's a vague memory).
And that article only looks at (US-centric) anglophone fiction
It's referencing the New York Times Best Seller List -- which, well, foreign (non-US centric) novels do get on it -- but only if they've been translated to English and American distribution rights. The Captain for instance is not a US-Centric book, I think the writer is Dutch. And it was a translation. But that's a rarity.
I'm admittedly not crazy about the NY Times Bestseller List -- this notes novels sales via brick and mortar book stores in the US, which isn't necessarily indicative of the sales worldwide or outside of book stores. I rarely take it seriously -- but this meme is sort interesting in how it shows how so many books just disappear regardless of how well they did for about a year or so. The Arrangement by Elia Kazan? It's on the NY Times Best Seller list for two years, and a movie was made, yet I've never heard of it.
If you look at languages that aren't spoken by over a billion people, the situation is even more depressing. The vast majority of books ever published in Swedish, to take what I know, were published, printed, sold a few hundred copies or so, and then... Successful books get reprinted, a select few stay in print indefinitely; the rest simply disappear. A lot of them deservedly so, but still, it's a bit bittersweet
So very true. I've grabbed translations of a lot of books that most people haven't heard of over the years. Swedish books rarely get grabbed unless they become wildly popular and some acquisitions editor in the US picks up the rights. Helps if they are made into successful movies first. (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo comes to mind.) A lot of foreign mystery/thriller novels get grabbed by the US. Also science fiction. Romance...not so much, although I have read a Swedish Romance Novel. Literary? Less so. Genre for some reason is more likely to get grabbed and recognized in other countries than a lot of contemporary or non-genre fiction.
Digitization has changed things a bit. It's easier if you self-publish though -- because you can do what I did which is open up the rights to foreign distributors. I wanted everyone to have access -- so I allowed it to be distributed internationally. Although I didn't give translation rights, it's the internet, not a lot you can do to prevent it.
And Asia is a nightmare when it comes to copyright and distribution rights. Intellectual property law as we conceive of it? Does not exist in Asia. China doesn't recognize it at all -- unless something major has changed in the last ten years.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-27 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-27 01:08 pm (UTC)Also books stay in print longer because of this, even if they have low sales and are self-published. Say what you will about e-readers and audio, they've saved a lot of books from total obscurity.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-27 04:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-26 09:42 pm (UTC)The LA Public Library claims that they have everything on your list, including three different editions of "Madame Sarah," and four editions of "Paper Lion," one of which was published in 2016. They must have a warehouse the size of several football fields because they're not all sitting in the stacks at Central Library. They can't possibly be.
This is like the best meme ever for book geeks.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-26 10:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-26 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-26 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-27 06:04 am (UTC)