Our feature about books from 1969 has spurred a couple of customers to write to us.
Kathy writes…..
I grew up in the 1960′s. My Mother was a very big reader. We had book shelves and book cases in every room of our home. There was not a bit of dust on them. Not because Mom was a great house-keeper, she was though. It was because she was a great reader. Every spare moment Mom had her nose in a book. You would think given the exposure I would have been a reader too. I was not! Remember this was the 1960s. If the establishment did it, the young people did not do it.
I do not remember what happed, a rainy day maybe with nothing to do but I picked up my first adult reading book. The Godfather. I was hooked. I have had a life long love of books since then.
A side note to this story is my first “car” date was dinner and a movie. The movie was The Godfather. It is the only time I have read a book first and enjoyed the movie.
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Lou writes….
Idiots! Philistines! Bookmongers! The best book published in 1969, by a wide margin, was Leonard Gardner’s Fat City. It was a first novel (Gardner’s only book) and was a finalist for the National Book award that year. It was the most influential book published that year for beginning writers, Denis Johnson acknowledges it as a primary influence and favorite book, and it has never been out of print.
Thanks Lou and Kathy.