What we were reading in 1962

On the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair, we look back at that year’s popular books, music, movies and TV shows. This week: what we were reading in 1962.

Although it was a forward-looking time, the single bestselling novel that year was a glance backwards: Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools, an allegorical novel set aboard a cruise ship bound for Germany as it teeters on the brink of fascism. Porter had set pen to paper way back in 1940, so this was a much anticipated release and opinions differed widely on the book, some lauding it as a masterpiece while others called it a disappointment. A Book-of-the-Month club selection and easily the most talked-about novel that year (Betty Draper read it), it has remained steadily in print from that day to this.

Time has not been as kind to the most popular non-fiction title that year, Dr. Herman Taller’s Calories Don’t Count, and the runners up fared little better. Anyone remember Virginia Hudson’s Oh Ye Jigs & Juleps!, #4 bestseller in 1962, holding steady at #5 for 1963? Perhaps Happiness is a Warm Puppy is more familiar, if only for the Beatles’ twist on this title six years later. Far more lasting was the impact of Rachel Carson’s watershed title Silent Spring, which exposed the devastating effect of pesticides — most notably DDT — on our environment, awakening millions of Americans to the fragility of our world and its ecosystems.

On a lighter but no less influential note was Helen Gurley Brown’s smash hit, Sex and the Single Girl. With chapters advising women about how advance through the ranks at work, turn men on, and get what they want out of an affair on their own terms, this runaway bestseller was the opening volley in the sexual revolution, redefining the rules of play for American women and later providing an inspiration for such series as Sex and the City and Mad Men. 1962 also saw the publication of Doris Lessing’s landmark feminist novel The Golden Notebook, which explored women’s struggle to integrate their various roles and masks into an authentic whole, and suggested that the real revolution would be between men and women.

So much was the nascent women’s movement in the air that even that pinnacle of unreconstructed masculinity Ian Fleming got in on the act, creating Viv Michel, his first and only female narrator, in the tenth James Bond thriller. Not that The Spy Who Loved Me is a feminist tract; Viv is prone to such observations as “All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken. It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that made his act of love so piercingly wonderful.” Critics and fans hated this Bond Girl Speaks twist, but the next year Sean Connery stepped onto the silver screen in Bond’s cinematic debut Dr. No, and all was forgiven. For a 1962 thriller that feels as fresh today as the day it was written, try The Hunter, the very first of Richard Stark’s 24 relentless thrillers featuring tough guy antihero Parker.

1962 was a big year for books, from Beats to blockbusters, utopias and dystopias, kid’s books and coming-of-age stories: We’ve barely scratched the surface here so check out this list of the books on our nightstands and coffee tables in 1962. Stay tuned for new lists of the music, movies and TV of 1962 in the weeks to come.