Newsweek Article

There is an article in the Newsweek of March 19, 2007 titled Our Books, Ourselves. The article concerns Baby Boomers and the books we have read. The following books are mentioned in the article:

The Greening of America
The Medium is the Massage x
Lord of the Rings x
Soul on Ice
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Slaughterhouse-Five x
The Whole Earth Catalog x
Our Bodies, Ourselves
On the Road x
Bright Lights, Big City x
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest x
The Feminine Mystique
The Autobiography of Malcolm X x
Understanding Media
The Catcher in the Rye
To Kill a Mockingbird x
Stranger in a Strange Land x
Catch-22 x
Johnathan Livingston Seagull x
Love Story
A Confederate General from Big Sur
Lord of the Flies x
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me x
The Martian Chronicles x
Divine Right's Trip

I was wondering how many of you have read which books from the list. Those with an 'x' beside them I remember reading. I enjoyed most of them and may yet read some of those I haven't read.

Did one or more of these books help define who you are now, did any change your life? I would have to say that On the Road, The Whole Earth Catalog, Lord of the Flies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Stranger in a Strange Land all had a definite influence on me. Others I found to be memorable were To Kill a Mockingbird, The Lord of the Rings, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, The Martian Chronicles and Catch-22.

The Medium is the Massage
LOTR+The Hobbit+The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse Five
The Whole Earth Catalog
On The Road
Bright Lights, Big City
The Catcher in the Rye
Stranger in a Strange Land
Catch-22
Martian Chronicles

I haven't seen the article, but it seems to me some things are missing. Now I am two years before the boomer generation, but many of us grew up learning to read with the same books. Where are the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys? Was there any mention of the first graphic novels, the Illustrated Classics? What about The Teachings of Don Juan, Black Like Me, Native Son? These were all very popular in the various places in which I lived. I am sure there are more others can come up with on a moment's notice that were widely read but didn't make the list.
Only a few of the books I read from the list had a positive impact on me. I liked The Medium is the Massage, Catch-22, On The Road, The Catcher in the Rye. I loved Heinlein's earlier stuff, but Stranger in a Strange Land nearly put me off Sci-Fi altogether. I thought it suffered from the same tone of irreverent self importance that Slaughterhouse Five suffered from. Maybe the fact that I had just returned from a year as an 11-b-10 in Vietnam and did not see much importance in these kinds of flights of fancy expressing their disenchantment with worlds filled with ennui. Ennui was not part of my emotional repertoire at the time. Life was hard, real, apparent, and temporary: boredom had no place. Maybe I missed the point of these "classics". I read Bright Lights, Big City at the height of the yuppie love affair with cocaine and just felt the whole thing was a waste of my time. I had minimal experience with cocaine and could not drum up any sympathy with or identify with the characters. If the message was cocaine will destroy you, I guess it accomplished its mission. Having seen what other drugs had done to friends of mine I didn't need to be instructed on their evils. As you can probably tell I bring a lot of myself to what I read.
What were some of your favorite reads from the fifties, sixties, and seventies that didn't make the above list, and what did you think of the ones that did?

Important books for me were:
Grapes of Wrath,Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, Tortilla Flat, and In Dubious Battle all by John Steinbeck
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
The Cancer Ward by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

This is a start, what about you?

The ones on the list that I read back in the sixties and early seventies:

The Medium Is the Massage
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Whole Earth Catalog
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Feminine Mystique
Understanding Media
Catcher in the Rye
To Kill a Mockingbird
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Love Story
Lord of the Flies

Except for To Kill a Mockingbird, I can't say that any of them remained very important to me.

I also recall Rachel Carson's Silent Spring stunning me. And Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls was very much a must read for young women of the time although I think it was more about young women who were older than most baby boomers (those born in the 1930s and early 1940s rather than those born in 1946 or after).

I associate Bright Lights, Big City with the group younger than me who came of age in the late 1970s and 1980s, though I see that MacInerney is a certified baby boomer (born in 1955). However, I just could not relate to that zeitgeist.

The Whole Earth Catalog
Our Bodies, Ourselves
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Catcher in the Rye
To Kill a Mockingbird
Love Story
Lord of the Flies

I would have to say the most influential book for me was Our Bodies, Ourselves. It was the first book that opened my mind up to the strength, beauty, and diversity of women and the value of female friendships, a value that many women of my generation (b. 1946) feel is deeper than that between a man and wife.

The drugs began just behind me, a year after I graduated college, so books featuring drugs were not as interesting as they may have been. As a pretty serious goal-oriented twenty-something, many of the books listed did not speak to me.

Just about everyone in the primary grades in the fifties first became acquainted with books through the comforting-like-mashed-potatoes series such as Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, Cherry Ames Student Nurse, and Dana Girls Mysteries. I think the only book I read then that my daughters also loved were the Anne of Green Gables books.

Leon Uris (Exodus, Mila 18, QBVII) was arguably more popular than even Erich Segal.

I think there is a significant difference, even in cultural references, between those of us born near the beginning of the Baby Boom (1946) and those born towards the end (1964). I seem to have little to nothing in common with anyone under 50. Is it just me?

kageeh, I read somewhere (I wish I could remember where) that a person can expect to relate best to others who were born in the range of five years before and five years after their own birthdate.

In other words, using my own birthdate of 1950, I will share a cultural identity mostly with those born from 1945 to 1955.

I've found this to be pretty accurate, especially with those just older than me but somewhat less so with those born in 1954 or 1955. Since your five-years-younger span would include those born in 1950 and 1951, I would fall in the group of perhaps not having so much in common with you. I know there are lots of variables, but generally do you think it holds true for you?

I know that there are certain types of books, films, television shows, music, and probably art and other things that came after my formative years that I just never developed an interest in or they never affected me much. An example: my kids (in their twenties) are bemused that I saw the first "Star Wars" and never bothered to see the rest of the series. Similarly, I don't get most postmodernism and magical realism, and frankly I don't feel I've missed much by not reading them. I realize that I've become just as much an old fogey as I accused my parents of being back in the sixties. :-)

Message 5: carminowe -- You're at the top of my list of members with the most shared books. (183) so we must have something in common!

But I believe you have made a good point with the five-year span before and after being the closest. My brother who is three years older is much more my soulmate than the brother who is nine years older and the same is true for my friends. When I find someone like that, it's almost as if we share a common heritage.

I also derive perverse joy from reminding my very young co-workers how much more demanding and interesting life was before they were born. You know, the 10-mile trek to school uphill both ways in the snow, the party-line telephones with real operators, being a Polio Pioneer, army-green postal boxes, milk delivery in glass bottles and paper stoppers . . . .

Kageeh ~ you forgot to add that we not only walked 10 miles to school, uphill both ways in the snow but we did it BAREFOOT. ;D

Anyway, I tend to agree on the whole with you and Carminowe about the age-group thing. I have close friends who are 10 and more years younger/older than me, and today I often read novels by dead classical authors as well as by younger authors of magical realism and postmodernism with much the same enthusiasm as I read the books on the list back in the 60s and 70s, but I do feel a special connection with friends who are right around my age that is somehow missing with others (ditto the books). Even chance-met strangers who are close to my age can engender that feeling of connection in me. I guess it has to do with the common shared experiences you mentioned (and thank you for the memories of milkmen and party-line phones and the first polio shots given in the school).

Anyway, I put an "x" next to the books I remember reading back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, when I wasn't reading Nancy Drew, John Fowles, Leon Uris, Aldous Huxley ... and where's Catch-22 on that list?

The Greening of America
The Medium is the Massage
Lord of the Rings XXXXXX ;)
Soul on Ice
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Whole Earth Catalog
Our Bodies, Ourselves X
On the Road
Bright Lights, Big City
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Feminine Mystique
The Autobiography of Malcolm
Understanding Media
The Catcher in the Rye
To Kill a Mockingbird x
Stranger in a Strange Land x
Catch-22 x
Johnathan Livingston Seagull x
Love Story x
A Confederate General from Big Sur
Lord of the Flies
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
The Martian Chronicles x
Divine Right's Trip

my brother & i read catch-22 at the same time & loved it. i can't find the film.
also read: lord of the flies, complete tales of poe, jane eyre, complete sherlock holmes, catcher in the rye, all of j.d. salinger. & others. thought jon. liv. seagull waste of time - imho.

When I posted the list of books I checked Lord of the Rings but I must confess that I did not read it until the 80's. The reason was that in the early 60's I heard LotR described as "a real cool book about fairies". To say that the description put me off the book is an understatement. I should have known that a preppie in bermuda shorts is not much of a literary critic.

i, too, discovered little in common with those under 50. most don't know who fdr was. (i was a young child when he was president, but my mother told me about him.) did anyone read eleanor and franklin? & that excellent book, hidden power - examines 10 presidents & their wives.

The ones from the list I read back then:

Slaughterhouse-Five
The Whole Earth Catalog
Our Bodies, Ourselves
The Feminine Mystique
The Catcher in the Rye
To Kill a Mockingbird
Catch-22
Love Story
Lord of the Flies
The Martian Chronicles

Agreeing with kageeh, Our Bodies, Ourselves was the most influential book on the list for me. I like to think it influenced my daughter, the Womens' Studies major, too (she likes to compare it with the current issue and refer patronizingly to "second-wave feminists.")

I didn't care for fantasy (never went on to LOTR after reading The Hobbit), but I liked science fiction very much--I especially remember being spellbound by Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. I'm still fond of Star Trek and occasionally read one of the novels.

And thanks for the memories of the milk bottles,(eek) polio shots, etc. Although he's a year younger than me, my husband, who was born on a Greek island in 1952, can annoy our kids by going even further back. He remembers his mother boiling unpasteurized milk ladled by the milkman into the family's own container, and the milk cooling in an icebox.

The story about FDR reminded me of a story that happened to me once in the '80's. I wasn't nearly as old then as I am now, but when I think about young people being out of touch with the past this always comes to mind.

I was coming back from a concert one night and had a tape of "Meet the Beatles" playing on my car's tape player when I saw two teens, a boy and a girl, hitchhiking from the same concert. I stopped to pick them up, the boy got in the front, the girl in the back. After a few minutes of driving the girl asked the boy who that was on the radio. He said, "The Beatles". Her response was, "Who's that?" The boy replied, "Paul McCartney's first back up band". I almost dropped my teeth.

Yikes, geneg, that's scary!

You had the same jolt I did in the 90s when I put a Paul Newman salad dressing bottle on our dinner table. My kids laughed at the picture of the guy in the gondolier's hat, and I told them how he donated his profts to good causes. They said how good that was of him, but then how did he make a living?

Off topic but it's hard to resist telling these stories. Old fogeyism, I'm there!

interesting idea about sharing cultural identity with age. i think i share it with almost anyone who is a voracious reader, of any age. one exception is a reader of only graphic novels (or whatever they're called).

#14 booksrmylife

I know i'm likely to be upsetting some folks, but I call them comic books. I got one as a Christmas present once, The Sandman. The main thing I remember about it is the words were too small to read. It distinctly had the feel of a looooonnnnnng comic book.

Remember the original "graphic novels", Classics Illustrated?

Hello: I am new to this group as well as to the site itself and find the who project remarkable. Almost a dream come true.

Anyway, I liked the idea of the list and am noting the ones that I read. I am most struck by how dated many of these pieces are - some have survived being time-bound but not too many. It outs much of what was so intense back then into a new perspective.

The Greening of America X
The Medium is the Message X
Lord of the Rings
Soul on Ice X
Slouching Towards Bethlehem X
Slaughterhouse-Five X
The Whole Earth Catalog X
Our Bodies, OurselvesX
On the Road X
Bright Lights, Big City
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest X
The Feminine Mystique S
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Understanding Media X
The Catcher in the Rye X
To Kill a Mockingbird X
Stranger in a Strange Land X
Catch-22 X
Johnathan Livingston Seagull
Love Story
A Confederate General from Big Sur X
Lord of the Flies X
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me X
The Martian Chronicles
Divine Right's Trip

ii've been working with a 24-year-old large male with an aggressive attitude who listens to groups like stoned clown posse and other "music" on a record label called Psychopathic Records. I was casually mentioning how I used to try to emulate Elvis Presley, and he stopped me cold with the question:

"Who's Elvis Presley?"

That's when I realized I may have lived too long.