Have you read the book that was the best-seller from the year that you were born? The most popular books give an insight to what people really cared about at the time, and while some of them are a bit strange, it is nice to have the ability to “go back in time,” even for just a few hundred pages.
1930 –Cimarron by Edna Ferber
1931 – The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
1932 – The Fountain by Charles Mogan
1933 – Anthony Adverse by Hervey Allen
1934 – Goodbye Mr. Chips by James Hilton
1935 – Green Light by Lloyd C. Douglas
1936 – Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
1937 – Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
1938 – The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan
1939 – The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
1940 – How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
1941 – For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
1942 – The Song of Bernadette by Franz Werfel
1943 – A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith
1944 – Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith
1945 – Forever Amber by Kathleen Winson
1946 – The King’s General by Daphne Dr Maurier
1947 – The Miracle of the Bells by Russell Janney
1948 – Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl a biography by Anne Frank
1949 – The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
1950 – The Cardinal by Henry Morton Robinson
1951 – From Here to Eternity by James Jones
1952 – The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
1953 – The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas
1954 – Not as a Stranger by Morton Thompson
1955 – The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson
1956 – Eloise by Kay Thompson
1957 – Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
1958 – Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
1959 – Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
1960 – To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1961 – Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
1962 – Franny and Zoe by J.D. Salinger
1963 – The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West
1964 – You Only Live Once by Ian Fleming
1965 – Herzog by Saul Bellow
1966 – Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
1967 – Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
1968 – Couples by John Updike
1969 – Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
1970 – Love Story by Erich Segal
1971 – The Exorcist by William Blatty
1972 – Johnathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
1973 – Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
1974 – Jaws by Peter Benchley
1975 – Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
1976 – Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
1977 – The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
1978 – Fools Die by Mario Puzo
1979 – Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
1980 – The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
1981 – Cujo by Stephen King
1982 – E.T. The Extra Terrestrial by Meilssa Mathison
1983 – The Color Purple by Alice Walker
1984 – The Sicilian by Mario Puzo
1985 – Secrets by Danielle Steel
1986 – The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
1987 – Patriot Games by Tom Clancy
1988 – The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice
1989 – The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
1990 – The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
1991 – The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brian
1992 – Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMilan
1993 – The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
1994 – Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
1995 – High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
1996 – The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard
1997 – Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
1998 – Paradise by Toni Morrison
1999 – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
2000 – The Rescue by Nicholas Sparks
2001 – The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
2002 – The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
2003 – The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
2004 – The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
2005 – The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
2006 – Marley and Me by John Grogan
2007 – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
2008 – Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
2009 – My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
2010 – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
2011 – The Help by Kathryn Stockett
2012 – Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
2013 – Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
2014 – The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
2015 – The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
And the predicted best-seller of 2016? Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton shining a light on the long-dead founding father.
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