Once Popular Books That Are Rarely Read Anymore

Mein Kampf.

The Green Mile.

Green Eggs and Ham

How Green Was My Valley

The collected works of Patrick Dennis. Sadly.

Lost Horizon

Lorna Doone

The Art of the Deal

Anne of the Green Briars

Disgraceful!

Forever Amber

The Robe

The Best of Everything

The Razor’s Edge

The Egyptian

The Song of Bernadette

Magnificent Obsession

The King Must Die

Raintree County

Inches or Honcho or Numbers.

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene

I loved to read. I was into people’s bookshelves as a child (1970’s) I remember my friends (& my) parents had tons of Mitchener, Helen Macinnes, Lawrence Sanders , Rosemary Rogers & Updike. They all had a copy of Gone With The Wind. Do people still read that? And they ALL had a copy of The Thorn Birds - the bright orange paperback. Anyone remember this?

The Bible

THE GREEN HAT???? Girl, how old are you? I mean, I'm up there, but....THE GREEN HAT???? Are you 150 years old????

R14, Seth Meyers loves The Thorn Birds. That’s been an ongoing theme of his at-home shows.

Do people still read stuff like Huckleberry Finn?

Forever Amber is a great example

I, the Jury

Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald - I think the current equivalent would be John Sandford novels.

Bobbsey Twins

Hardy Boys

Nancy Drew

Encyclopedia Jones

John Saul held his own briefly against Stephen King in the late70s/80s, but no one hears of him anymore.

I was shocked, absolutely shocked, to learn the other day that Danielle Steel was still alive, but I wonder who would read her now?

Barbara Cartland

Harold Robbins

Flowers in the Attic? Is that book still a rite of passage for kids like it was in the 80's and 90's?

The Happy Hooker and Fear of Flying were big pass around early sex reads for teens back in the 70s and into the 80s, but I guess young people these days with all the access of internet aren’t in need of smutty books like these to glean information and titillation from anymore.

The Clan of the Cave Bear -- Jean M. Auel

1984

R5 Thank you for mentioning Patrick Dennis! You reminded me I didn't get around to reading some of his other books, Now I have to get on Amazon and get to work!

Stranger in a Strange Land

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Fear of Flying

Peyton Place

Anything by Judith Krantz

Anything by Irving Wallace

The Users by Joyce Haber

Arthur Hailey's Hotel, Airport, Wheels, etc.

Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate, Prizzi's Honor, etc.

Lad, a Dog. By Terhune. Once required reading.

The Thread that Runs So True. By Jesse Stuart. Once required reading.

Misty of Chincoteague

Hey R11 -- The Razor's Edge is still read, and sells many copies in paperback every year.

Jonathan Livingston seagul

This one:

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

Clearly, people gave up reading it a long time ago.

R18 Huckleberry has been banned in schools for "racism". The heritage of the American heartland is now verboten.

Little Janey Green

Looking Good and Dressing Right

r40, it is still taught in plenty of schools. So go back to trying to remove gay-themed books from the schools like your fellow Republicans.

[quote]The collected works of Patrick Dennis. Sadly.

Funny you should mention that. I just finished reading Auntie Mame a few weeks ago - I had the book for YEARS - and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. While I thought the last chapter was weak, I was very glad I finally picked it up.

Bridges of Madison County. It was THE big book of the early 90s, but its a piece of crap in terms of writing.

R26 i couldn’t remember the title of the book & had to looked it up as a louis fletcher movie. Turns out it must still sell because a new sequel was released last year. Also i looked up the writer. V C andrews died early in her sucess. The last 35 years of her books are by some hack writer.

The World According to Garp

I really liked The Thornbirds too. I know it's trash but I like it. In the 90's there was an add on mini series and that got me into it. Maybe The Lost Years or something like that. The priest comes back to Australia for a visit and they have sex again. Pretty sure that was not in the book

I used to look though my sister's Clan of the Cave Bear and Judith Krantz books to learn about sex.

The books of Pearl Buck. She won the Nobel Prize too.

I'm OK - You're OK

Who reads books when you have Spark Notes. Leaves more time for texting.

[italic]The Elements of Style[/italic]

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

The Prophet

Siddhartha

Actually James Franco is making Jonathan Livingston Seagull into a major motion picture starring Danny McBride as JLS.

The Pilgrims Progress. How I loved that book.

Where the Red Fern Grows. I spent a lot of time crying over fiction?

Did anyone read Mr. God this is Anna?

DaVinci Code

The Shell Seekers

The Little Red Book

Is anyone still reading the story of Pickles, the Fire Cat?

The Nothing Book

Wanna make something of it?

R46 V.C. Andrews had a cameo as a window washing maid in the '87 film adaptation (which I love for many reasons...particularly Christopher Young's score, & the camp value), but died before it was released. I havent read any of the books since the 90s.

I will add "Memoirs of a Geisha", & Henry Miller's "Tropic Of Cancer", & "Tropic Of Capricorn" to this list.

Grew up in the 90s R14, but yes I recognize that book cover! It always stood out to me as a child. Of course, it was my mother’s book but I got my dirty little hands on it as soon as I could. She also had Gone With the Wind on the shelf and that awful “sequel” called Scarlett that just blared at you from the spine in a spectacular red font.

The Big Book Of Snack Cakes

All of them. Not even joking.

R11?

Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ

Madonna's Sex Book owns this thread.

The Godfather or anything else by Mario Puzo

Books? You mean you guys picked up paper and read it?

Cold Mountain

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

The Outsiders by SE Hinton; when I was in middle school, I loved that book. Now, no one reads it

Nancy Drew books; pop culture tried to bring back Nancy, but the kids just aren't having it.

R74 I have worked in private and public schools and the Outsiders is still taught regularly usually in 7th grade.

R55 I immediately thought of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress which was second only to the King James Version of The Bible for popularity in the Anglo world.

Does anyone read The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith now ? It was once considered a masterpiece.

Another 19th century best=seller was George Borrow's The Bible in Spain. I read it recently and highly recommend it as a lively read. There's nothing more gutsy for an English Protestant than trying to flog the New Testament in Spain where the Inquisition still holds sway.

East Lynne

The fabulous “Marjorie Morningstar” by Herman Wouk. .....On a reread a few years ago I was struck that it was clear that sexy difficult elusive Noel Airman had a raging undiagnosed case of bi-polar disorder..... Also Wouk’s “Youngblood Hawke,” “Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance.” .... Wouk died last year about one week after Doris Day - he was over 100 years old.

Quo Vadis

Green Mansions

Tom Swift series

Green Dolphin Street

Most celebrity tell-alls

[quote]The Outsiders by SE Hinton; when I was in middle school, I loved that book. Now, no one reads it

It's still assigned every year in LA Unified middle schools.

The Leon Uris books ~Exodus, QBVII, Mila 18

Tama Janowitz - Slaves of New York

Jack Kerouac - On The Road

Erma Bombeck's ouevre

Prozac Nation

The Official Preppy Handbook

Mrs. Bridge by Evan Connell

At least it seems like it to me?

Shogun, Taipan and other James Clavell novels

Uncle Tom's Cabin

It was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible.

A lot of James A Michener books

The Three Musketeers

Anything by Jules Verne

Anything by Jean Kerr

John Updike's Rabbit series

Thick hardcover military non-fiction about WWII battles -- I see these books in second-hand stores and wonder if there is still an audience for it.

R76 I graduated from high school in 1983 and since I was about 12 my mother had been preparing me that I would be reading Pilgrim’s Progress and suggesting I start it early. We never did, and I never did read it. She said the same thing about Silas Marner, and again, never read it.

I actually had to read Silas Marner in tenth grade and graduated in 1991, but I went to a kooky private school. No else I know (and I majored in English Lit) has ever read it.

I taught it, r93!

r94 at a kooky private school?

he Proud tonby Enid Blyton

I used to read a lot of mid-century novels. I’ve heard of and read a lot of these, they were best sellers, but my favorite pastime was going to the library and finding old books of that era by walking in the stacks—it was easy to pick them out by the binding or the style of illustration on the cover. Yes, I picked books by their cover. Read a couple pages and if it sounded good, I’d check it out. From the date stamps, often no one had for years. I found a lot of good books that way. Have bought many at library discard sales too but now those libraries have long been culled. None of these were well known authors.

Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria quartet.

In 1940, Silas Marner was assigned reading in my fourth grade class, R93!

Pillars of the Earth

The Far Pavilions

Sex and the Single Girl

Joy of Sex

Michelle Remembers

Not only does no one read Anthony Powell any more, no one can even pronounce his last name correctly.

Beautiful Joe

Black Beauty

Lawrence Durrell. I doubt the TV show with Keeley Hawes and Josh O’Connor has people reading the Alexandria Quartet.

Also Edna Ferber and Pearl S. Buck.

Anything by Fannie Hurst

Taylor Caldwell.

Clematis

A WWI-era children's novel. Both my older sister and I read it in the second or third grade. We enjoyed it.

The Catcher in the Rye

Most of Steinbeck, Dreiser, Cather

Fear of Flying

The Women's Room

Touch Not the Cat

Richard Halliburton

Jacqueline Susann

Grace Metalious

Anya Seton

The mention of Patrick Dennis made me think of another formerly popular humorist S.J. Perelman who wrote for the Marx Brothers. I always thought he was much funnier and more clever than Woody Allen. According to Amazon his collected works will be enshrined in a Library of America volume in 2021.

Lad, a Dog.

Pizza boy: he delivers- the fotonovel

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon Volumes I through VI.

For pity's sake, the truth is: all of them. Every single Hemingway, Faulkner, Updike, Hawthorne, Dreiser, Poe, Twain, Crane, Lewis, Mailer, Oates, Salinger, Fitzgerald,....the lot of them.

Don't even get me started on poets.

“The Cat in the Hat Comes Back”

"Mrs. Dalloway".

I only say this because I was never required to read it. Even in college. And I WILL admit that I picked it up after seeing "The Hours" (which I really enjoy, despite its overwhelmingly obnoxious writer, and the dreadful subject matter).

I can't stand Michael Cunningham, but I DO agree with him when he said "I didn't know you could do that with language." regarding Woolf's book. Anyway, I never hear anyone discuss it, which is kind of sad. Because it's one of my favorites. I need to read more Woolf.

“Your Erroneous Zones” by Dr. Wayne Dwyer, and other similarly dippy 1970s self-help books.

Sidney Sheldon’s “Bloodline”

Ah, that tangentially reminds me of "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus". It was EVERYWHERE twenty-something years ago.

And at one time (in the 1980s), Tom Wolfe's "The Bonfire of the Vanities" was very popular.

“Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)”

Coffee, Tea, Or Me?

Clan of the Cave Bear! I did eventually read it in my teens but I remember the film on HBO. It had R for rape in the listing and I was like ‘what is that?!’ Then my 7 or so year old self was real tripped out by that and also StrongSexualContent.. my godness! Then watching a cave man rapin Daryl doggy style!!!! What a trip

[quote] Tom Wolfe

"A Man in Full" seems to be one of the more ubiquitous and discarded books around. I've seen a copy in every used bookstore I've ever been to.

[quote]The Catcher in the Rye Most of Steinbeck, Dreiser, Cather

WRONG. Except for Dreiser

How about Daphne DuMaurier? Some still read Rebecca but what about some of her others. My Cousin Rachel, The King's General as an example.

Future Shock

“Rendezvous With Rama”

Do people still read The Corrections? I remember the dust-up around Franzen and being a pick for the Oprah book club but what legacy outside of that has it had?

Judging by the ever-increasing number of spelling mistakes I’m seeing, the Miriam-Webster Dictionary.

Anything by George Bernard Shaw

I read “Mr. God this is Anna” when I was about twelve. At the time, I wanted to be a misunderstood genius and I hated this fictional child with the heat of a million suns. Then, she died and I felt like a shit.

It was more embarrassing than hating Burger King heartthrob Mason Reese.

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn

Some once highly regarded and popular novelists no one reads anymore:

John Cheever

John Updike

Margaret Drabble

Fay Weldon

Anne Tyler

Catch - 22

In Cold Blood

Helter Skelter

I read Memoirs of a Geisha last year, and I am going to read Cold Mountain this year. My friend is currently reading The Corrections.

If any of you ever quits drinking all of a sudden, “To The Lighthouse” reads perfectly during acute withdrawal. Your memory will be hazy, but the trip is awesome.

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos

Hawaii by James Michener. Giant by Edna Ferber.

R121 Actually anything written by Sidney Sheldon.

Mandate Plwyguy

Skinflicks

The Old Man and the Sea and just about anything by Hemingway.

Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet

The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope. Hugely popular in the first have of the 20th century, there were several film adaptations as well.

R127, I read Salinger (on my own) age sixteen. Find me one high school kid today reading "Catcher in the Rye," and then I'll raise you a "Franny and Zooey."

R117 here. Beyond the American canon, does anyone even read Dan Brown anymore? Ken Follett, Paul Theroux, John Irving, Joe McGinnis, PD James, Michael Chricton, Tom Clancy, James Patterson, Patricia Cornwell, John Grusham, Elmore Leonard, Dave Barry, Erma Bombeck, David Sedaris...? I know books are still published.

Maybe it's just that I don't know any readers.

But I don't see articles about kids all hepped up about the Harry Potter books anymore.

Grisham.

Everybody Poops.

Eh, blockbusters die for the same reason they lived: they spoke acutely well to a particular era. Open Road Media has made something of a specialty of bringing out cheap ebook editions of old bestsellers, and while I sometimes get excited about seeing a book I LOVED forty years ago, rereading it makes me realize that the world and I have both moved on.

Anything by Sinclair Lewis. I always felt his writing style was stilted and in need of serious editing.

The Twilight series

Everybody was obsessed with it a little over 10 years ago. Now nobody talks about it at all anymore. It didn't stand the test of time like Harry Potter.

Thomas B. Costain: Silver Chalice, The Tontine, Below the Salt

. . .And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmeyer

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (thank god)

Most everything by John O'Hara

Anyone remember MISS MCINTOSH, MY DARLING?

Anyone read it?

The Celestine Prophecies.

James M. Cain --- Any of his novels. The ones made into movies like The Postman Always Rings Twice or Double Indemnity are an excellent place to start. Their endings will surprise you.

R132. Oh, the irony!

I know, R158, he wrote his own joke.

Novelizations of blockbuster movies like “The Towering Inferno”.

Does anyone remember The Black Stallion series? It was already outdated by the time I got to it, I read it in a 1950s edition! I learned a great deal about horse racing, but not about its dark side.

[quote]OP: Once Popular Books

Oh, dear.

[quote][R127], I read Salinger (on my own) age sixteen. Find me one high school kid today reading "Catcher in the Rye," and then I'll raise you a "Franny and Zooey."

I read Catcher in the Rye, not as an assigned book, in the early 1980's. I sought it out. Teens still seek this book-it is the same type of kids who read it today who read it back in the 1980's- kids who read.

I'll add:

Blueberries for Sal Veronica Ganz Mr. Poplars' Penguins And The Mixed Up files of Mrs.Basil E. Frankweiler

I loved to read as a kid. Sadly I think that's gone today.

I gave my goddaughter a copy of Blueberries for Sal. When she gets a little older I’m going to introduce her to The Boxcar Children series.

Thornbirds ..... A Town Like Alice

I gave my niece and my grandnieces (two families) Blueberries for Sal, as well as Raggedy Ann and Andy Dolls.

The Best of Everything

[quote]I'll add: Blueberries for Sal...

Plink, plink, plink.

AIRPORT

"Snow Falling on Cedars."

Allen Drury's novels

Kenneth Roberts historical fiction

Gone With the Wind

I'm joking. Is that the only popular novel that has lost none of its ability to draw readers?

This is actually a subject that fascinates me.....bestsellers from the past.

I grew up in the 1950s/60s and my mother was an avid reader who belonged to the Book of the Month Club. IN recent years I've tried reading some of the novels I remember on our bookshelves but I don't think I've really enjoyed any of them.

RAINTREE COUNTY

THE NUN'S STORY

EXODUS

ALL THE KING'S MEN

BACK STREET

THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

SHIP OF FOOLS

SOMETHING HAPPENED

DON'T STOP THE CARNIVAL

THE BALKAN TRILOGY

I finally read A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN last summer and you know what? The film is so much better.

OK, all of my older brothers’ friends had this in the later 70s early 80s:

Whatever Happened To The Class of 1965?

How scary that I've read almost every book mentioned here. "To the Lighthouse" by Woolf and "Sister Carrie" by Drieser were assigned reading in my school. i don't think we had Augie March though: the substituted the Victim as it was shorter. All the adults had Humboldt's Gift but I don't remember them reading it. We did have to read Studs Terkel, who was so boring he reported people's conversations.

Remember that boring-ass priest and "Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect up?" and similar fare?

All the cool kids in high school read Catch-22 even though it was not assigned.

Portnoy's Complaint was supposed to be the wickedest of the wicked!

Jerzy Kosinski' work was as good as porn

“Couples” and “Rabbit Run” were aspirations to the middle class; you saw the books everywhere up until the 80s. Then, nothing.

A Canticle for Leibowitz, Typee, anything by Edgar Allan Poe.

[quote] I read Catcher in the Rye, not as an assigned book, in the early 1980's. I sought it out. Teens still seek this book-it is the same type of kids who read it today who read it back in the 1980's- kids who read.

I'm sorry to report R163 that's just not true.

There have been several articles written over the past 10-15 years about how teens no longer find Holden relatable, but rather find him to be overpriviliged and whiny, unaware of his own good fortune.

Here's one:

And here;'s another, from The Guardian-- and there are many more if you google.

[quote] I’ve had conversations about Catcher with undergraduate students in creative writing classes I’ve taught, and every one has complained about disliking Holden. In my limited network of young people, Catcher is not only no longer beloved, it has become something even more tragic: uncool.

Kids are still reading:

“The Diary of Anne Frank” (elementary) “The Outsiders” (middle school) “Lolita” (high school)

In NYC public schools, anyway.

OUTSIDERS in middle-school? I think of that as a book for ten-year-olds.

FOREVER by Judy Blume was legendary when I was in junior high. Everyone was trying to get a copy. Secret copies were being traded around like something on the black market. It was so scandalous back then. Now there are tv shows and movies everywhere with teen characters fucking, and FOREVER seems tame.

Judy Blume is a national treasure.

"I'm OK--You're OK"

"Your Erogenous Zones"

"Everything You Alway wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask"

"Dyanetics"

R179---The author of that book wasn't a priest, just a guy who had 12+ years of catholic education. I think he name was John Power/s?

THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy

The novels of A.J. Cronin

LUST FOR LIFE

The novels of Bernard Malamud

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY

The Bell Jar was/is a better depiction of teen angst than Catcher in the Rye but wasn't recognized because of the overwhelming attention paid to Catcher. Also, the guy who shot John Lennon and the guy who shot Reagan were big fans of Catcher for whatever that's worth.

A true classic, r176!

Does anyone remember James Kirkwood's 1968 homo-erotic novel GOOD TIMES/BAD TIMES about a New England prep school? I read it in the mid-1970s when it was hugely popular with all young gays finding their identities.

Kirkwood also wrote the semi-autographical novel THERE MUST BE A PONY and was co-author of Broadway's A CHORUS LINE, as well as the off-Broadway hit P.S. YOUR CAT IS DEAD and the pre-Broadway tour of LEGENDS with Mary Martin and Carol Channing.

IIRC most of his books allude to a gay yearning without any explicit sex.

One of the first "adult" books I can remember reading in high school (late1960s) was Pat Frank's ALAS, BABYLON about the last survivors of nuclear war in southern Florida. It was written in 1959 but I think remained popular for a couple of decades, at least.

I bought a new paperback of it a few years ago and looked forward to re-reading it but was very disappointed. I think it comes off like a mediocre TV movie-of-the week script now. Couldn't even finish it.

Has anyone read ADVISE AND CONSENT lately? Always meant to read it and wonder if it holds up. Isn't there a gay sub-plot?

On the Beach by Neville Shute

The Story of O.

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

"Trilby" by George du Maurier, which was wildly popular in its day. It's the novel that enriched the English language with "Svengali," the "Trilby hat," and the expression "in the altogether" (i.e. in the nude).

Just about anything by Bennett Cerf.

"Are You There, God? it's Me, Margaret" by Judy Blume

R197, yes, there is a gay subplot. Allen Drury won the Pulitzer for it, and although it's been years since I read it, I suspect it holds up. It's a door stopper, though. If you want a briefer version, the film is excellent and contains an infamous scene in a gay bar.

Wikipedia's entry on Drury indicates he died at age 80 and never married.

R197, yes, there is a gay subplot. Allen Drury won the Pulitzer for it, and although it's been years since I read it, I suspect it holds up. It's a door stopper, though. If you want a briefer version, the film is excellent and contains an infamous scene in a gay bar.

Wikipedia's entry on Drury indicates he died at age 80 and never married.

I tried reading The Green Hat years ago after seeing the movie version on TCM. Lost interest.

Naked Came the Stranger

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud

ANDERSONVILLE by MacKinlay Kantor (Pultitzer winner)

NOT AS A STRANGER by Morton Thompson

O YE JIGS AND JULEPS by Virginia Cary Hudson

If the DL is any indication: Strunk & White, Elements of Style

The Art of the Deal

And yet millions of people continue to read Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Charles Dickens and Agatha Christie. Will they ever go out of style? What keeps them so popular?

A Town Called Alice was a good read. The miniseries was quite good, with Bryan Brown, Helen Morse and Gordon Jackson (Mr. Hudson).

We still have some books that "everybody" seems to read, though the most recent one was Shades of Grey, IIRC.

Anything by Sue Grafton. (Did she ever make it all the way to “Z”?)

Hunter Thompson. No great loss

Little Black Sambo

The Lee Iacocca autobiography.

R202---Preteen Sensations STILL read "Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret". Judy Blume's work around puberty and periods, never surpassed, lives on in eternity.

Dancer in the Dance. I read it when I was 17 and found it exciting and ultimately depressing. And then I was like, who has these values?

DANCER is a classic and always will be.

THE FRONT RUNNER by Patricia Nell Warren

Do young gays still read it?

Tractatus Logic-Philosophicus

Lord of the Flies

The Lord Won't Mind

Plain Speaking

Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

“Three Weeks” by Elinor Glyn.

“The Sorrows and f Satan” by Marie Corelli.

“The Sorrows of Satan”, that is and “Lady Diana”

The Young Diana. Time to go to bed...

[quote]I was shocked, absolutely shocked, to learn the other day that Danielle Steel was still alive, but I wonder who would read her now?

lol. My mom and several older female relatives are still loyal fans of hers. Her popularity has waned over the years.

“The Hite Report on Female Sexuality”

r229 , my elderly mother likes Barbara Taylor-Bradford, and mentions her frequently. No idea what she writes, or any of her titles, just that her readership must be somewhere around 80.

I’m probably dating myself, but do angsty teens still read Kerouac?

[quote]"To the Lighthouse" by Woolf and "Sister Carrie" by Drieser were assigned reading in my school.

They still are assigned all the time in college classrooms.

To the Lighthouse, in particular, is one of the most assigned of all college novels. Virginia Woolf is more popular in academia than ever.

r232: Yes, as a college English teacher I can say with authority that Kerouac (particularly On the Road) is still popular among college students. They read him in classes on the Beat writers, but they also read On the Road on their own.

Anything by Erma Bombeck.

[quote] For pity's sake, the truth is: all of them. Every single Hemingway, Faulkner, Updike, Hawthorne, Dreiser, Poe, Twain, Crane, Lewis, Mailer, Oates, Salinger, Fitzgerald,....the lot of them.

[quote] Don't even get me started on poets.

Well, I certainly won't, since so far you're extremely inaccurate.

You're right that John Updike, Sinclair Lewis, and Norman Mailer don't get read very much any more. But every other person you've listed is still regularly taught in English departments at the high school or the college level. Even Joyce Carol Oates has one story ("Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?") that gets taught all the time, although her novels don't get taught much. And Hemingway (albeit mostly only The Sun Also Rises), Hawthorne, Poe, Twain, Crane, Fitzgerald, and especially Faulkner remain staples of English departments at colleges all over the country.

Closeted Jock Is Pushed Off Of Tree Limb In Devon

Sybil and Alive

My Life, My Story, My Gaping Hole: An Autobiography by Helen Lawson.

R236: I think the OP may have been thinking about books that were once hugely popular with the general public, rather than read mostly by university students.

Agree, r240. There's a thread in the making for authors that were once university darlings, but aren't taught any more. John Barth and Donald Barthelme come to mind, but then again I am not completely up to date on college syllabi. And whatever happened to Richard Brautigan?

Jeez, someone mentioned Sidney Sheldon. That's a name I hadn't thought of in years. I don't think I've ever read any of his novels. Which genre do his books fall under? Thrillers?

One thing I can tell you as a teacher, though, is that kids interested in books will often try classics before they even come to college--several of my students will often have read particularly The Great Gatsby or On the Road in high school on their own (although some read it in h.s. classes) because they want to see what the fuss is about. And often when they read classics in college, they will enjoy them and go on to read more as adults: this happens particularly with Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner.

This does not mean these authors are perennial bestsellers; only that they are beloved by a small group of educated readers. But there are very few dead authors whom the general populace keeps reading long after their books originally came out. Among the canonized ones, Jane Austen, certainly, and Charles Dickens. And in the UK, Anthony Trollope. And among the genre authors, Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming and JRR Tolkien.

“By Myself” by Lauren Bacall. I loved Bacall, but I don’t think that book is even in print anymore, though it was super popular in the ‘70s.

[quote]My Life, My Story, My Gaping Hole: An Autobiography by Helen Lawson.

It was MISS Helen Lawson. And as an historical aside, it was the first time the word"prolapse" had appeared in American print outside of medical textbooks.

[quote]Whatever Happened To The Class of 1965?

I read that in jr high in the late 70's. I found it in my library.

"The Feminine Mistique"

Are Jean Auel's cave man/girl books still read? The Clan of the Cave Bear was a huge popular bestseller in the 1980s, as were its sequels. Is she still writing?

EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES ~Tom Robbins

The Happy Hooker

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

R244, Bacall's book was reissued in the early 2000s. She added some chapters about her career in the 1980s and 1990s, including her nominated role in The Theater Has Many Exits.

Watership Down.

All Things Bright and Beautiful.

Children's= Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Rikki Tikki Tavi/Jungle Book, Day of the Dolphin, Sounder, Treasure Island, Lord of the Flies.

"Fun with Dick and Jane"

"The Cat in the Hat"

"A Tale of Two Cities"

"Lady Chatterly's Lover"

"Giovanni's Room"

R23, who could ever forget such greats?

“Suffer The Children”

“Suffer the Children Some More”

“Are Those Children? Yes, Make Them Suffer Too!”

Bacall surprisingly won the National Book Award for her memoir.

Bacall's autobiography ranks among the top of any written by any celebrity. No surprise about the award. Shelley Winters' 2 autobiographies are also well-written and dishy, if not quite award-worthy. I think the two ladies were sharing Tony Franciosa at some time in their lives (initially unbeknownst to Shelley). Not sure if that's addressed in the Bacall but certain it's there in the Winters.

I'm reading WATERSHED DOWN right now!

Another vote for The Outsiders; I don't doubt it's still in some schools, but I remember as a kid being so in love with Ponyboy & how conflicted he felt about his family and wanting something better for his life and I was so disappointed when my nieces hadn't even heard of the book, much less read it.

I also think that while Wuthering Heights/Heathcliff is very much a part of popular culture, kids don't read WH like they used to. Same with Little Women. Okay, you saw the movie - but did you read the book? Probably not

Eight Cousins

Rose in Bloom

"Dress Your Family in Denim and Corduroy" by David Sedaris.

Wuthering Heights is one of my favorite books, R258.

R257. I just finished WATERSHIP DOWN and lived it. Apparently Ursula K. leGuin hated it and wrote a scathing review of it. That’s okay—never a big fan of LeGuin’s thudding prose.

That Was Then, This is Now by S.E. Hinton and Moviola by Garson Kanin.

Bertrand Russell

Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries used to be right up there in popularity with Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot stories. But she seems to have fallen completely out of favor in the last 25 years or so. Does anyone still read Dottie? Are she worth exploring?

As I remember, Sayers' plots are more complex, her prose more sophisticated, than Christie's. And usually longer, They take more effort, in other words. Plus, Christie has been kept alive by endless films, docs, TV adaptations, etc. Poirot and Marple are almost household names. The cinematic adaptations of the Lord Wimsey novels are few and far between. But yes, aficionados of mysteries still love Sayers, and she's definitely worth exploring. She had a fascinating life to boot.

JULIE

Youngblood Hawke by Herman Wouk - they almost never show the movie on television - it starred James Franciscus and Suzanne Pleshette. I love Herman Wouk, but this one is a long slog.

The Julia Child book

When I was in school, I remember Nathaniel Hawthorne's books (Scarlet Letter) and short stories being a standard part of American Literature curriculum; those books seem to less popular these days in school curriculum - which I don't necessarily think is a bad thing - but I remember AL being full of puritan angst.

Forever Amber. It was considered so salacious back when it was published in the 1940s that it was banned in 14 states. So of course everyone read it.

Frances Parkinson Keyes. Dinner at Antoine's, anyone?

The Bible.

All the old time one-book-a-year literary bestseller authors: Harold Robbins, the Durants, John Jakes, James Michener

Manhattan White Pages.

Cass Timberlane by Sinclair Lewis - later turned into a lush MGM movie with Spencer Tracy and Lana Turner ...... Lamb in his Bosom by Caroline Miller “A sweeping novel of Birth, Death, Love and Betrayal a family’s struggle in the Georgia backwoods in the Civil War Era” - it won the 1934 Pulitzer Prize and was a favorite of Margaret Mitchell pre GWTW.

My Story: Lindsey Graham

Titillating, Stimulating, and Enchanting!

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

Anthony Adverse, by Hervey Allen.

Tony Curtis loved it so much he was buried with a copy of it.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig

Anything by Thomas Costain. The Silver Chalice, Below the Salt. Costain was a darling of the Book of the Month Club. At least once a year, his novels were featured. Now...feh!