Book of the Year - Part 3

The last couple of days, I've been making my way through a list of the most popular books, by year from 1945 on. Here's the final decades on the list. (And if you're wondering why I chose to illustrate this post with the cover of a book by Heinrich Böll, from 1949, which was not the most popular book of the year, the reasons are a) year of my birth; b) my favorite writer of all the authors on the list for those 80 years worth of most popular books. Just so you know...)

In 1995, the "It" bok was Wicked: Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Never read, and no desire to. But Gregory Maguire is a local guy - lives in Concord, Mass - and has a incredibly interesting life story. So good for him! (Did enjoy the 2024 movie.) I did read Jon Krakauer's 1996 book Into the Wild. Talk about a wild story..."Enjoy" might not be the right world, but I always find the subjects that Krakauer takes on to be fascinating. 

This type of work is not usually my reading jam, but in 1997, I gobbled up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. And all the follow on Harry Potter's as well. Surprised myself, that's for sure. Until I read Demon Copperhead last year, I'd never read any Barbara Kingsolver. But her 1998 The Poisonwood Bible is definitely on my to-read list. 1999 was apparently the year of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a book I wasn't familar with. But based on its description as a book about a high school introvert, I'd probably have enjoyed it. (Signed, a well-compensated introvert.)

In 2000, Dave Eggers was being a genius without me. Never read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. But it does sound interesting. The plot, anyway. And I may check out a later Eggers work: a satirical novel about Donald Trump. Maybe. In 2001, I did try reading Life of Pi.  But years ago, when sitting in bed reading Ciderhouse Rules, I gave myself permission for the first time to stop reading a book I reallly, really, really wasn't enjoying. So much for Life of Pi. At one point, I was a Jeffrey Eugenides fan, so I remember liking his 2002 novel Middlesex. And I'll admit that, while Dan Brown's no one's definition of a good writer, in 2003, along with everyone else in the world, I was reading and enjoying The Da Vinci Code.

I think I read 2004's Gilead. If not, it is near the top of a book pile in my bedroom, and once I start in on it, I should be able to figure out whether I've already read it. And I know that, in 2005, I read The Year of Magical Thinking. But I don't remember whether I liked it or not. (A little Joan Didion, IMHO as a reader, goes a long way.) 2006: The Emperor's Children. Check! 

The next couple of years were YA ones. In 2007, it was Thirteen Reasons Why, which I've never heard of, and, thus never read. But in 2008, just as I'd gobbled up the Harry Potter series, I gobbled up The Hunger Games books, which I actually liked better than the Potters. 

I didn't quite buy it, but I definitely got a kick out of 2009's The Help. In 2010, I read about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in The New Yorker. But I never read the book. And I am a bit embarrassed to admit that, in 2011, I read the spectacularly cheesy and awful Fifty Shades of Grey. Once again, proof that you don't need to be a good writer to be popular. (I was visiting a friend and she handed it to me. And, yes, I did read it. But, no, I haven't seen the movie.) 

It was a corny tear-jerker, but in 2012, I liked The Fault in Our Stars. Sniff, sniff, sniff. Hand me a Kleenex, please. Higher up the literary food chain, in 2013, I was reading (and enjoying) the way overly-complex The Goldfinch. I know that in 2014, everyone was raving about All the Light We Cannot See. As someone who has been reading an awful lot of books, since I was in grammar school, about World War II, you'd think this one would have been right up my alley. But I didn't buy it for a New York, let alone a Paris, minute. 2015's most popular read, The Girl on the Train, was a book I did enjoy. Right about the time Trump was first elected in 2016, I found The Underground Railroad way too harrowing to deal with. Post the first Trump era, I picked it up again and - although I usually don't do magical realism - I LOVED IT. 

And while, in 2017, I may not have loved Little Fires Everywhere, I really liked it. 2018's An American Marriage - an Oprah Book - is a novel I've never heard of. But it sounds good and I'll put it on my look out for list. I will admit that the 2019 thriller, The Silent Patient, has an interesting premise - a woman shoots her husband in the face and her therapist tries unsuccessfully to figure out what motivated her to do the deed. But not enough that I want to read it. 

Somehow, in 2020, while every other person I know was reading, it, I somehow missed Where the Crawdads Sing. I'd watch the movie, but I think it's on Hulu, which I don't subscribe to. 2021 brought us The Four Winds, but I'm not a big Kristin Hannah fan, so I took a pass on that one. The list ends with 2022's pick, It Ends With Us, which I didn't read. I didn't read It Starts With Us, either.  

There were plenty of popular books in 2023 and 2024. Here are some of the ones I read.

2023: Tom Lake, Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, So Late in the Day. 

2024: Tell Me Everything, James, The Woman Behind the Door.

My vote for 2003 would be the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. As I've mentioned, I'm usually not a magical realism kind of reader, but I loved this. For 2024, I've got a tie between James, the reimagined telling of Huck Finn, and The Woman Behind the Door (part of Roddy Doyle's Paula Spencer trilogy, which I thought was fabulous; or, as he Irish might say, fecking brilliant).  

That's it for my three part books report.