It came pretty fast, the end of the oughts, or whatever we are calling the years from 2000-2009. 2010 is upon us, and the literary pundits are looking back to this most recent decade… I thought it could be fun to go back a century, to 1900 and see what was happening, by decade. A great site on American cultural history got me hooked, and in turn took me to this site, with bestsellers by decade. Aha! What would I come up with if I picked one book per decade? Here’s my list (I also added something from the most recent decade, from this list). Maybe reading them all will be this year’s resolution.
1900s: The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett: She wrote the children’s books The Secret Garden and A Little Princess and this is supposed to be as good.
1910s: The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams:
This is a critique of American culture of the 19th century, by a great-grandson of president John Adams.
1920s: Autobiography of Margot Asquith: While researching it, I found this quote by Dorothy Parker: “The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.” OK, I gotta read this book.
1930s: The Years by Virginia Woolf: I read a lot of Woolf but never got around to this one! The New York Times liked it; it was the la
st book she published in her lifetime.
1940s: Dinner at Antoine’s by Frances Parkinson Keyes:
A mystery set in post-World War II New Orleans, with loving descriptions of amazing food? I’m there!
1950s: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak: Two words: Omar Sharif. I know, he had nothing to do with the book, but still.
1960s: Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth: I need more humor on
this list! Also I feel a little weird that my parents had this famous book and I don’t know what’s in it.
1970s: Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene: What better book for the 1970s than one with the sentence, “What have we been smoking, Aunt Augusta?”
1980s: Lincoln: A Novel by Gore Vidal: I really liked his novels Julian and Kalki, and I love historical fiction, so this is a natural choice.)
1990s: Paradise by Toni Morrison: I’m told this is a 
challenging but rewarding read, and that she originally wanted to call it War but was overridden by her editors.
2000s: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova: Because, doesn’t the 2000s really have to be about vampire books?
Remember, these are bestsellers, not necessarily the most worthy from a literary standpoint! And, which decade turned out to be my favorite? It was hardest to choose just one book from the 1920s. I now have quite the list from that time; at the very least I’ll be checking out The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism by George Bernard Shaw.
Leave a Comment