Such lists, with their mini-reviews, are invaluable timesavers for busy parents—I think I just repeated myself—or for those moms and dads who worry that some books, particularly those for teenagers, may espouse values or contain language and material that they would find objectionable. They reference their trusted guide, jot down five or six titles, head for the library or the bookstore, and emerge with an armload of books that the kids will enjoy.
Recently, while considering what novels I might give to my teenage grandchildren, I referred to some of these sources and found an abundance of good suggestions, ranging from the classics to contemporary “young adult books.” These were helpful, but some of the recommendations sent me tumbling back in time to the extracurricular reading of my own high school days.
In that paleolithic pre-internet age, I relied on instinct, interest, and the public library for my book selections. The James Bond movies brought me to the stories of Ian Fleming. James Hilton’s “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” may have planted in me the seed that blossomed 25 years later when I became a teacher, while Morton Thompson’s novel about the making of a young physician, “Not as a Stranger,” fleetingly tempted me to follow in my father’s footsteps and enter the field of medicine. For a couple of weeks after graduation, James A. Michener’s “Hawaii” kept me company in the evenings in my family’s backyard.
These pleasant memories gave rise to another idea altogether: Could the lists of bestselling fiction from the mid-20th century serve as resources for older teenagers?
Striking Gold
Krueger Books, an online outfit dealing in first editions and rarities, has blessed readers by compiling lists of the 10 bestselling novels for every year of the 20th century. I limited my search to lists from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Here I found books with which I was familiar, such as Boris Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago,” Frances Parkinson Keyes’s “Joy Street,” and Franz Werfel’s “The Song of Bernadette.” Here, too, there were just as many, or more, that were unfamiliar to me.
Next, I tracked down a dozen or so of these bestsellers online and found about half of them still in print, while the others were readily available secondhand. Three were also still on the shelves of my local library. In short, despite their age, nearly all of the titles listed by Krueger remain accessible to interested readers.
Quality
Compare the writing of these older bestsellers to those of today, and the difference in style is notable. The sentences run a bit longer, the vocabulary is more extensive, and the descriptions are often more detailed. We don’t need to make this comparison a contest, but you might note that the older books should add muscle to your teen’s comprehension and stock of words.Content
Were we to apply today’s movie ratings to most of these novels, they would qualify as G or PG. The gore and violence, gratuitous sex, and coarse language found in some of today’s fiction wouldn’t have made the cut 70 and 80 years ago. The one exception would be the novels of the late 1940s and the 1950s, such as the World War II blockbusters written by Norman Mailer and James Jones.The Virtues
Missing from nearly all of these stories are the therapeutic shades that color so much of modern life, including our fiction. Some of the authors on these lists whom I recognize as either liberal or conservative, but none I’ve read espouse the radicalism, the rancor, or the divisions of today’s culture. Few of their characters, except those deserving mockery or condemnation, are self-obsessed or see themselves as victims. These authors celebrate such virtues as love, loyalty, hard work, courage, and honor.Pleasure
Many teens have already found hours of fun reading books written in the mid-20th century and earlier. J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” and the “Anne of Green Gables” series come to mind. James Hilton’s “Lost Horizon,” Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca,” Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind,” and Kenneth Roberts’s “Northwest Passage” were all bestsellers in the 1930s and retain their appeal today. Let your ambitious teen readers have a shot at Hervey Allen’s three-volume “Anthony Adverse,” or introduce them to some shorter but equally worthy work, such as Caroline Miller’s novel of rural Georgia, “Lamb in His Bosom.”Try these old-timers out on your teens. They may discover a whole new realm of literature. And who knows? Maybe you’ll be reading right along with them.
