The National Book Award goes to a book called The Field of Vision by Wright Morris.
Albert Camus wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Dr. Seuss (Ted Geisel) publishes The Cat in the Hat, using only 236 simple words. The story, about a subversive cat who brings chaos into two children’s rainy day but then manages to resolve the problem before mom comes home, is an instant classic.
Published in 1957:
Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot. Mrs. Elliot tells the story of her husband, Jim Elliot, and the other men who in attempting to make contact with the Waorani Indians in Ecuador were killed by the very people they came to help.
Kids Say the Darndest Things by Art Linkletter. Art Linkletter had a daytime TV show, a talk show called House Party, and at the end of each show he had a panel of children that he talked with and interviewed.
4.50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie. Aren’t trains romantic? Several of Agatha Christie’s novels involved trains, train travel, death on a train, even romance on a train.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I’ve never read it, even though road trips are one of my many fascinations. The New York Times hailed it as “the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as “beat”. I’m just not interested in drug-hazy memories of taking drugs while driving across country looking for more drugs.
The Guns of Navarone by Alistair McLean. We watched the movie based on this book a few months ago, and it felt really hokey and unbelievable. I remember the book as a better experience, but I read it a really long time ago.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss.
On the Beach by Nevill Shute. Semicolon review here.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I’m not an Ayn fan. Has anyone else here read it?
The Assistant by Bernard Malamud. I read this book when my mom was taking the aforementioned Jewish literature class, but I was too young to get it.
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. My opinion of this very long Russian romance is the same as her opinion, without the cursewords.
Through the Gates of Splendour was also a movie – The End of the Spear. Amazing story as is Elisabeth Elliot’s life.
Ann
I read Atlas Shrugged on a dare in the late 1990s. I know, some people jump off high walls on a dare and I read books! Somehow I know you’d understand. 😉
The man who dared me to read it was right, I loved Atlas Shrugged! It’s a long book and one is best served to skim over the areas where Rand is writing about her political philosophy but the basis of the story is even more profound today than it was when I read it in the 90’s.
It is one of my all time favorite reads and one I want to re-read again. Like I said, when you read the STORY and overlook the politics (which is easy to do)… it tells a story out of today’s headlines.
Green Eggs and Ham used only 50 words.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/18481