The National Book Award went to The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. My mom once took a course in Modern Jewish literature, and I typed her papers for her. I learned all about Saul Bellow, Nathaniel West and Bernard Malamud by osmosis, so to speak, enough to know that Malamud would be my favorite of the trio. In fact, I actually read Malamud’s The Fixer (1966) and at least started Augie March, but Bellow didn’t interest me.

Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Newbery Medal for children’s literature: And Now Miguel by Joseph Krumgold. Krumgold’s story of a boy growing up in a shepherding family in New Mexico moves much too slowly for today’s children. But it’s still a good book.

Published in 1954:
Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Does every American teenager read Lord of the Flies in ninth or tenth grade? And what do they learn from it, I wonder? I remember the story as a wonderfully vivid illumination of the doctrine of original sin and how we are all idol worshippers at heart. But I don’t know if even my daughter got that out of it when she read it a couple of years ago.

Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya. Semicolon review here.

The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis. Maybe my favorite of the Narnia books. Some people accuse Lewis of being racist in the book, portraying Arabic-style cultures as evil and depraved. But I see the story as a contrast between freedom and slavery, and it doesn’t matter the exact cultural tradition of the people that embody those two ways of living.

The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, first two parts of The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. All I can say about this item on the list is that 1954 was a very good year–and 1955 with the completion of the trilogy will be even better. I discovered Tolkien when I was a teenager, in his first phase of “coolness”, and these books and a Bible are the books I would most want to have with me on a deserted island or anywhere else.

Katherine by Anya Seton. I read this historical fiction classic about Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster, mistress and then third wife of John of Gaunt (14th century), a few years ago. It was a great book, and I recommend it.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison wins The National Book Award for 1953.

Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Not my favorite Hemingway. I can appreciate Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls, but the whole man against nature angst of Old Man and the Sea is way outside my enjoyment zone.

The Christopher Award, presented by The Christophers, a Christian organization founded in 1945 by the Maryknoll priest James Keller, to honor books, movies and television specials that affirm the highest values of the human spirit”, is given to the book Karen by Marie Killilea. I read the book Karen, written by her mom about a girl who lives with cerebral palsy, when I was a teenager, and I found it quite inspiring. Cerebral palsy was a much misunderstood condition, both then and even now, and it was educational for me to read about Karen and her family, dedicated Catholics who were determined to help Karen to grow up to be the best that she could be in spite of her physical challenges.

Ann Nolan Clark’s The Secret of the Andes wins the Newbery Medal. Charlotte’s Web wins a Newbery Honor. This year of Newbery picks is often cited as a mistake by critics who think it evident that Charlotte’s Web is the better book and should have won the Newbery. I don’t disagree, but I have read Secret of the Andes. It’s a fine story and works quite well as a read aloud. Ms. Clark should be accorded due respect for her writing and not always compared to E.B. White.

Sir Winston Churchill wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Also published in 1953:
Journey Cake, Ho! by Ruth Sawyer. A picture book based on the story of the Gingerbread Boy, but set in Appalachia with a “journey cake” substituting for the the gingerbread boy.

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin. Can anyone recommend (or not) this acclaimed novel?

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. My mom took a Jewish American literature class in graduate school when I was a teen, and read some of her books, including this one by Saul Bellow. I can’t say I understood it or liked it at the time. I wonder what I would think if I read it again now.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Classic science fiction, dystopian fiction, and indictment of book-burning and censorship.

The Long Good-bye by Raymond Chandler.

After the Funeral and A Pocketful of Rye by Agatha Christie.

The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas. The Robe is one of my all-time favorite books, and it became the number one bestseller of 1953. The novel tells the story Marcellus, a Roman tribune who ends up carrying out the crucifixion of Jesus and winning Jesus’ robe as the soldiers gamble at the foot of the cross.

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis. My favorite scene from Narnia is in this book: Puddleglum and Eustace and Jill are trapped underground in an kingdom ruled over by the Green Lady (the White Witch again), and they are about to be spellbound by her fascinating voice. Then Puddleglum says:

“One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a playworld which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”

Go, Puddleglum!

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming. The first James Bond novel.

The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Miller’s play uses the Salem Witch trials as a metaphor for and illumination of the McCarthy and the Committee on Un-American Activites (U.S. House of Representatives) blacklisting of suspected communists in government, entertainment and business. Its initial production on Broadway in 1953 won a Tony Award.

Set in 1953:
The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer, 2008. Recommended at Literary License.

Keeping Score by Linda Sue Park. Semicolon review here.

Penny from Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm. Reviewed by Miss Erin. Also reviewed at Jen Robinson’s Book Page.

The National Book Award was given to From Here to Eternity by James Jones.

The Caine Mutiny by Hermann Wouk won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I read The Caine Mutiny back when I was a teenager, and I remember where I was when I read it: Glorieta, New Mexico at a camp for Christian young ladies. (We were called Acteens, a very 1970’s title for a missions organization for girls.) Anyway, the camp itself and the subject matter in the book were enough of a contrast that I remember the experience of reading it quite well. In my cabin at a camp full of teen girls, during afternoon rest and recreation (recreation for me was reading), I was reading about a bunch of men on a ship and how they eventually relieve Captain Queeg of his command on the basis of the men’s belief that he is mentally unbalanced. I’ve never seen the movie based on The Caine Mutiny. Have you?

Newbery Medal for children’s literature: Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes.

Carnegie Medal for children’s literature: The Borrowers by Mary Norton. I love The Borrowers. I need to read it to Z-baby if we ever finish reading The Lord of the Rings. (I love LOTR, too, but it is very long.)

Published in 1952:
Mrs McGinty’s Dead and They Do It With Mirrors by Agatha Christie. I think Mrs. McGinty was one of the first Agatha Christie mysteries I read, and I remember it well, including whodunnit. I must admit that I can often re-read many of her other novels with pleasure because my ailing memory doesn’t remind me who the murder is.

The Silver Chalice by Thomas B. Costain. Historical fiction set during the time of Christ.

Giant by Edna Ferber. Ferber’s fun, but highly inaccurate, novel of Texas. I grew up around ranchers and oil men, and although some Texans truly are “bigger than life” (and too big for their britches), Giant goes just a little too far with all the high-flying and high-rolling Texas millionaires. I really wonder if Ms. Ferber had ever been to Texas and if not, where she got her information about the culture of the state. She was a New Yorker as and adult, and she was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. Giant was made into a 1956 movie starring Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, and Rock Hudson. It’s a good story if you don’t take its portrayal of Texas too seriously.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. I can take, and even appreciate, some Hemingway, but this story of an old man and a boy catching a fish seemed long even at only a little over a hundred pages.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. Such a fun book, and it has about the best opening sentence in children’s literature: “There was once a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” In this book, Lewis does a riff on the Odyssey as Caspian, Edward, Lucy and cousin Eustace voyage on The Dawn Treader looking for the seven lost Lords of Narnia and for the End of the World. This chronicle also has the best transformation as Eustace becomes a dragon, repents of his whining, greedy, lazy ways, and is restored by Aslan to his human form, albeit a much nicer person than when he started out on the journey.

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. I found the book, Excellent Women, to be reminiscent of Jane Austen (drolly observant), Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford (insightful in regard to the ordinary), and even Jane Eyre, without the drama, but with the wry self-analysis. Semicolon review here.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck. If I have to choose between Steinbeck and Hemingway, I’ll take Hemingway.

Prisoner’s Base and Triple Jeopardy by Rex Stout. Prisoner’s Base is sad in that a sympathetic character gets killed off in the beginning, but it’s good solid Nero Wolfe tale. Triple Jeopardy is one of Stout’s collections of long short stories or short novelettes, and as such it doesn’t interest me as much as the full-length books do. But I’ll read, and expect to enjoy, anything Mr. Stout wrote about Nero Wolfe and his sidekick Archie Goodwin.

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. “Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.”