Bestselling books of the twentieth century

[carbonel]

I've read just over a quarter of the Publisher's Weekly list, though it's actually a slightly higher percentage of the total, since a couple of them were listed for two years.

To some extent, this percentage, especially from the 1960s through the 1980s, represents my parents' reading tastes, because a lot of these were books that were available at home.

(1929) All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
(1931) The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
(1936) Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
(1939) The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
(1942) The Song of Bernadette, Franz Werfel
(1952) The Silver Chalice, Thomas B. Costain
(1954) Not as a Stranger, Morton Thompson
(1959) Exodus, Leon Uris
(1962) The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone
(1964) The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John Le Carré
(1965) The Source, James A. Michener
(1966) Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann
(1968) Airport, Arthur Hailey
(1969) Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth
(1970) Love Story, Erich Segal
(1971) Wheels, Arthur Hailey
(1972) Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach
(1974) Centennial, James A. Michener
(1977) The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien; Christopher Tolkien
(1978) Chesapeake, James A. Michener
(1980) The Covenant, James A. Michener
(1981) Noble House, James Clavell
(1982) E.T., William Kotzwinkle
(1985) The Mammoth Hunters, Jean M. Auel
(1990) The Plains of Passage, Jean M. Auel
(1996) The Runaway Jury, John Grisham

I assume it would be much lower for younger-than-me readers, which is an increasingly higher percentage of the population every year, but I'd be interested in seeing how that shakes out.

Comments

[a_t_rain]

Huh, interesting. I don't think I've ever even heard of most of the specific books from the 1900s-1910s, although I knew some of the authors, and the only one from the 1920s I've read is The Bridge of San Luis Rey. From the 1930s, I've read The Good Earth, Gone With the Wind, and The Grapes of Wrath, but then there's another really big gap where I haven't read any of the ones from the 1940s-1960s. After that: Ragtime, Return of the Jedi Storybook (!), I think one of the Jean Auel books but I can't remember which one, and that's it. Apparently I fail at bestsellers...