You Are What You Read: Baby Boomer Books

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Technically I miss Baby Boomer eligibility by four years. "My" generation was born Between the Wars. Even so I was impressed by Malcolm Jones' article in the March 19, 2007 issue of Newsweek, "Our Books, Ourselves".

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17534882/site/newsweek/

His inventory of Baby Boomer Books routed my personal Memory Lane through my libraries, past and present.

Below I'll list the titles in Jones' Formative Library. Please indicate on the poll above roughly how many of these books have influenced you.

Green Eggs and Ham
Catcher in the Rye
The Greening of America
The Medium is the Massage
Lord of the rRngs

Soul on Ice
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Whole Earth Catalog
Our Bodies, Ourselves

On the Road
Bright Lights, Big City
Fear of Flying
Catch-22
The Stranger

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Feminine Mistique
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Understanding Media
To Kill a Mockingbird

Stranger in a Strange land
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Love Story
A Confederate General from Big Sur
Lord of the Flies

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
The Martian Chronicles
Candy
Fanny Hill
Portnoy's Complaint

Valley of the Dolls
The Godfather
The Group
Lolita
The Little Red Book

Portnoy's Complaint
The Joy of Sex
Breakfast at Tiffany's
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret

The Joy Luck Club
Anywhere But Here
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Fahrenheit 451

Can you make any personal additions to this list?

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I was just browsing the site and found this. I enjoyed the article. Would like to add The Female Eunuch.

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"Bright Lights, Big City" is a Baby Boomer book?

I find myself resistant to this list but I'm not sure why.

I've read most of those books, not sure how I'd quantify "influence."

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My personal additions:

The Hidden Persuaders (Vance Packard)
Seven Days in May (Fletcher Knebel)
The Chosen (Chaim Potok)
Day of the Jackal (Frederick Forsyth)
The Exorcist (William Peter Blatty)
All The President's Men (Woodward and Bernstein)
The World According To Garp (John Irving)
A Dark-Adapted Eye (Ruth Rendell)

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sozobe wrote:

"Bright Lights, Big City" is a Baby Boomer book?

."

I thought the exact same thing. That isn't a baby boomer book. And, really, neither is The Joy Luck Club.

I'm surprised that Animal Farm, 1984, Johnny Got His Gun, and A Seperate Peace aren't on the list.

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Other thoughts....

Anywhere but Here shouldn't be on there but Go Ask Alice should.

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Supposedly Baby Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964. That spans 18 years and a lot of publishing history.

Of course, like any list, this one is arbitrary.

My reaction reading the article was very visceral. Titles were tangled with places and people and sometimes emotional scenes. My list didn't overlap Jones list--but then his life didn't overlap mine, either.

Nerini--

Welcome to A2k. I agree about The Female Eunuch.

Soz--

I'd guess that when you have a free afternoon, you'll sit down and make your own list--some overlap, but not full identity.

Wandlejw--

I agree. Your additions reminded me that The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit wasn't included. Also, the 40's, 50's and 60's saw the development of Politics as an art form and Advertising as manipulation.

Boomer--

Like Soz, the first time you get a "free" afternoon without competing projects....

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I'm surprised "The Wanderers" (or one of it's variants) isn't on there. Twas standard reading in many high schools in the 1970s.

Several others like "A Clockwork Orange", "War and Peace" and "The Battle Of Britan" or "The Sinking Of The Bismark" also didn't make the list either though so...

P.S. "Portnoy's Complaint" is on your list twice Noddy! Wink

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I'm slow to understand the premise... what is a baby boomer book? One written by a baby boomer, or publshed during the years from 1946 to 1964?
Or read at some point in time by a baby boomer?

So I looked at the link and see it as being about the bookshelves of readers who came of age in the 60's and 70's. Which brings up, what year is "came of age"? All a little vaporous for me. I'm not a baby boomer, being born in '41, but, say I was born in '46, I'd still be a baby boomer now. No books past 1980 on the list?

Ok, ok, I'll go back and finish the article.

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I'm not quite getting that either. Identity? Books? Hmm.

Not only would there be a whole lot of post-1980's literature, there would be a lot of pre-1940's (and pre-1840's, and pre-....) (When was "Gilgamesh" written, again?) (Kidding.) (Mostly.)

I think part of what I'm objecting to is that this list seems to be laying claim to a bunch of stuff as "Baby Boomer" that I consider "good literature, in a long chain of good literature that stretches way back and continues to the present day."

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For example,

Quote:

The noteworthy distinction with boomer books was the missionary zeal with which readers pressed their favorites on other readers.

"Noteworthy distinction"? OK. I'm not a baby boomer by any stretch -- in fact I'm textbook Gen X -- but I've been both presser and pressee, mostly of books not on this list.

or:

Quote:

The childhood of Scout and Jem and Dill was not the childhood I had. It was the childhood I wanted.

Looking at the books that boomers read when they were young, you see a good number that embody such fantasies. Some of them are fantasies outright ("Lord of the Rings," "Stranger in a Strange Land").

Uh, that's really not specific to the boomers.

The whole thing strikes me as "books I like" wrapped up in pretentious cultural signifiers. And the if you replace the word "books" with the word "what," that's pretty well describes what bothers me about the whole baby boomer phenomenon. (I like many individual boomers. I have major problems with the phenomenon.)

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I was born in 1960 so I'm solidly in the baby boomer years.

I don't think of it as a real "identity" thing either, and I don't think of it as a "great literature" thing, either. I think that it has to do with what were the must reads of my generation - the books that everyone I know read between say the ages of 8th grade and college graduation.

Like Go Ask Alice. Not great literature but every girl I know and most of the boys read it our 9th grade year.

Lord of the Flies (on the list) and A Seperate Peace (not) were both required reading in high school but they fit into the strange category of things we were made to read but liked anyway.

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boomerang wrote:

I think that it has to do with what were the must reads of my generation - the books that everyone I know read between say the ages of 8th grade and college graduation.

That makes more sense. If the author had kept it to that without all the "noteworthy distinction" stuff I'd be more tolerant. (Just for example, later on he makes it sound like sex was invented in the 60's.)

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Osso briefly mentioned that the Newsweek article was about favorite books for those who "came of age" in the 1960's and 1970's. That may be a good way to characterize the books selected.

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sozobe wrote:

I'm not quite getting that either. Identity? Books? Hmm.

Not only would there be a whole lot of post-1980's literature, there would be a lot of pre-1940's (and pre-1840's, and pre-....) (When was "Gilgamesh" written, again?) (Kidding.) (Mostly.)

I think part of what I'm objecting to is that this list seems to be laying claim to a bunch of stuff as "Baby Boomer" that I consider "good literature, in a long chain of good literature that stretches way back and continues to the present day."

Since it is a list of book from "Jones' Formative Library" I assumed it was a list of books that were read in the formative years of a typical baby boomer. Many of those may have been the same for earlier generations and many for later generations as well.

I didn't see it as "laying claim" but more of a collective conscience. More of a "Some books come, some books go... but there is a core that people of each generation can pretty much expect that a majority of teh rest of their generation has read as well."

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I think I already responded, above.

For the record, I've read all but four on the list.

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sozobe wrote:

I think I already responded, above.

For the record, I've read all but four on the list.

*nods* Crossposting! Wink

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I'll add:
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and something by James Baldwin. I'd select "If Beale Street Could Talk" but, that's just a personal favorite. Perhaps "Notes of a Native Son", "Giovanni's Room", or "The Fire Next Time", some of his better known works.

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I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings -- totally should be on there.

Which reminds me -- Invisible Man was a must read too.

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I counted 6 (I miss the baby boomer years too). But, I counted One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest which I haven't read - I saw the movie.

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You Are What You Read: Baby Boomer Books

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