In Nancy Pearl's
Book Lust, she lists ten influential novels written by American authors in each of the ten decades of the twentieth century. Back in 2008 I thought it would be an interesting exercise to see how many of these "good reads" were available in Kindle editions. Many novels published early in the century were in the public domain and available for reading on the Kindle so I was able to do a "decade by decade" series of posts for the 1900s, the 1910s and the 1920s. When I got to the decade of the 1930s, however, I hit a brick wall. None of the classic novels from that decade were yet available in electronic form. Revisiting the list in 2011, I find that six of the ten are now available for e-books readers so maybe this is a good time for continue the "decade by decade" posts. Kindle Reader posts for earlier decades, are
here.
First a timeline of the 1930s to give you a flavor of the decade and inklings of what may have influenced writers at that time. It was, of course, the decade of the "Dust Bowl" and The Great Depression which began in late 1929 and continued approximately up to the beginning of WWII.
In 1930 the dwarf planet Pluto was discovered.
In 1931 Al Capone was imprisoned for tax evasion, the Empire State building was completed, and the United States officially adopted The Star Spangled Banner as the national anthem.
1932 marked the invention of air conditioning and the Zippo lighter, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and the Lindbergh's baby was kidnapped.
In 1933 Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the New Deal and prohibition was ended in the United States.
In 1934 the infamous Bonnie and Clyde were killed in a police ambush. In China Mao began the Long March. Parker Brothers began selling the board game Monopoly.
1935 saw the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous and Social Security was enacted into law in the United States.
The Hoover Dam was completed in 1936, the Spanish Civil war began, King Edward VIII abdicated the throne of England to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, and the summer Olympics in Berlin became a showplace for the Nazi dictatorship.
In 1937 Amelia Earhart vanished during an attempt to fly around the world and the Hindenberg blew up, killing all on board. Japan invaded China.
In 1938 Neville Chamberlain, after a meeting with Adolf Hitler, announced that "peace in our time" had been achieved. Shortly thereafter, Hitler annexed Austria.
1939 saw the invention of the helicopter and the first commercial flight across the Atlantic. Germany and Russia signed a non-aggression pact, giving Hitler the implicit go-ahead to begin a series of acts of aggression that began World War II.
In the 1930s Americans were reading these novels:
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. Vintage, 2010. Print Length: 217 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (163 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers." - from the trade paperback edition.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Penguin Classics, 2006. Print Length: 464 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (686 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of sharecroppers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in financial and agricultural industries. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they were trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with thousands of other 'Okies', they sought jobs, land, dignity and a future. The Grapes of Wrath is frequently read in American high school and college literature classes due to its historical context and enduring legacy. A celebrated Hollywood film version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was made in 1940." - Wikipedia.
Goodbye Mr. Chips by James Hilton. Pub House, 2010. Print Length: 125 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Inspiration for
Dead Poets' Society and
Mr. Holland's Opus, this best-selling novel tells the story of Mr. Chipping, an unpopular teacher who over time wins the admiration of his students and colleagues. Steeped in nostalgia for pre-WWI Britain, much of the story's pathos emerges from the death of boys and teachers we've come to know and love. Mr. Chips suffers his own personal losses and endures as the moral center of the small boy's school, a symbol for a larger world threatened by chaos. The book became an Academy-Award winning Hollywood hit that catapulted Greer Garson to stardom. Peter O'Toole played Chips in a later version. Bonus material: annotations, book group discussion questions, essay questions, and bibliographic material." - Publisher.
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West. New Directions, 2009. Print Length: 208 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (44 reviews). Kindle edition $8.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"First published in 1933,
Miss Lonelyhearts remains one of the most shocking works of 20th century American literature, as unnerving as a glob of black bile vomited up at a church social: empty, blasphemous, and horrific. Set in New York during the Depression and probably West's most powerful work,
Miss Lonelyhearts concerns a nameless man assigned to produce a newspaper advice column - but as time passes he begins to break under the endless misery of those who write in, begging him for advice. Unable to find answers, and with his shaky Christianity ridiculed to razor-edged shards by his poisonous editor, he tumbles into alcoholism and a madness fueled by his own spiritual emptiness. In 1940, when an automobile accident prematurely claimed Nathanael West's life, he was a relatively obscure writer, the author of only four short novels. West's reputation has grown considerably since then and he is now considered one of the 20th century's major authors." - Publisher.
Light in August by William Faulkner. Vintage, 2011. Print Length: 512 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (86 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...an exploration of racial conflict in the society of the Southern United States. Originally Faulkner planned to call the novel Dark House, which also became the working title for Absalom, Absalom! . Supposedly, one summer evening while sitting on a porch, his wife remarked on the strange quality that light in the south has during the month of August. Faulkner rushed out of his chair to his manuscript, scratched out the original title, and penciled in Light in August; however this story is probably apocryphal given the huge symbolic role that both light and the month of August play in the novel. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Light in August 54th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005." - Wikipedia.
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Scribner, 2007. Print Length: 960 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (352 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Margaret Mitchell's epic novel of love and war won the Pulitzer Prize and went on to give rise to two authorized sequels and one of the most popular and celebrated movies of all time. Many novels have been written about the Civil War and its aftermath. None take us into the burning fields and cities of the American South as Gone With the Wind does, creating haunting scenes and thrilling portraits of characters so vivid that we remember their words and feel their fear and hunger for the rest of our lives. In the two main characters, the white-shouldered, irresistible Scarlett and the flashy, contemptuous Rhett, Margaret Mitchell not only conveyed a timeless story of survival under the harshest of circumstances, she also created two of the most famous lovers in the English-speaking world since Romeo and Juliet." - Publisher.
Not Yet Available in Kindle Editions:
The Good Earth, by Pearl Buck. Washington Square Press, 2004. Print Length: 368 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (414 reviews). Paperback edition $9.37.
"...a novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1932. The best selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, it was an influential factor in Buck winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. It is the first book in a trilogy that includes Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935). The novel of family life in a Chinese village before World War II was a best-seller in both 1931 and 1932 and has been a steady favorite ever since. In 2004, the book was returned to the best seller list when chosen by the television host Oprah Winfrey for Oprah's Book Club. The novel helped prepare Americans of the 1930s to consider Chinese as allies in the coming war with Japan." - Wikipedia.
1919, by John Dos Passos. Mariner Books, 2000. Print Length: 464 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (8 reviews). Paperback edition $10.40.
"With 1919, the second volume of his U.S.A. trilogy [following
The 42nd Parallel], John Dos Passos continues his 'vigorous and sweeping panorama of twentieth-century America' (Forum), lauded on publication of the first volume not only for its scope, but also for its groundbreaking style. Again, employing a host of experimental devices that would inspire a whole new generation of writers to follow, Dos Passos captures the many textures, flavors, and background noises of modern life with a cinematic touch and unparalleled nerve.
1919 opens to find America and the world at war, and Dos Passos's characters, many of whom we met in the first volume, are thrown into the snarl. We follow the daughter of a Chicago minister, a wide-eyed Texas girl, a young poet, a radical Jew, and we glimpse Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Unknown Soldier." - Publisher.
The Citadel, by A. J. Cronin. Back Bay Books, 1983. Print Length: 368 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (32 reviews). Paperback edition: $17.78.
"
The Citadel is a novel by A. J. Cronin, first published in 1937, which was groundbreaking with its treatment of the contentious theme of medical ethics. It is credited with laying the foundation in Great Britain for the introduction of the NHS a decade later. ...Dr Cronin... drew on his experiences practising medicine in the coal mining communities of the South Wales Valleys, specifically the town of Tredegar, where he had researched and published reports on the correlation between coal dust inhalation and lung disease. Cronin once stated in an interview, 'I have written in The Citadel all I feel about the medical profession, its injustices, its hide-bound unscientific stubbornness, its humbug ... The horrors and inequities detailed in the story I have personally witnessed.' - Wikipedia.
Captain Horatio Hornblower, by C. S. Forester. Bantam, 1950. Print Length: 662 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (10 reviews). Paperback edition: Out-of-print. Price varies with availability.
"C. S. Forester (1899 - 1966) wrote several novels with military and naval themes, including The African Queen, The Barbary Pirates, The General, The Good Shepherd, The Gun, The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck and Rifleman Dodd. But Forester is best known as the creator of Horatio Hornblower, a British naval genius of the Napoleonic era, whose exploits and adventures on the high seas Forester chronicled in a series of eleven acclaimed historical novels. Over the years, Hornblower has proved to be one of the most beloved and enduring fictional heroes in English literature, his popularity rivaled only by Sherlock Holmes." - Time Warner.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.
For those Kindle readers who, like me, read for entertainment, scanning the book reviews in People magazine is good way to check out new people-related books - celebrity bios, popular novels, absorbing nonfiction - just hitting bookstore shelves. Featured in the October 3rd issue of People:
"At a dinner party in the posh London suburb of Greenwich, Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table midway through the meal, locks himself in an upstairs room, and refuses to leave. An eclectic group of neighbors and friends slowly gathers around the house, and Miles’s story is told from the points of view of four of them: Anna, a woman in her forties; Mark, a man in his sixties; May, a woman in her eighties; and a ten-year-old named Brooke. The thing is, none of these people knows Miles more than slightly. How much is it possible for us to know about a stranger? And what are the consequences of even the most casual, fleeting moments we share every day with one another?" - Publisher.
"On Election Day 2008, McGinniss began his on-the-ground reporting that culminated, famously, in his moving next door to Sarah Palin in spring 2010... In all of his books, McGinniss has scrutinized the mysterious space between image and reality - how that space is created, negotiated, and/or manipulated. Now, with The Rogue, McGinniss combines his deep appreciation of the place Sarah Palin comes from with his uncanny ability to penetrate the façades of people in public life. The result is an extraordinary double narrative that alternately traces Palin’s curious rise to political prominence and worldwide celebrity status and recounts the author’s day-to-day experiences as he uncovers the messy reality beneath the glossy Palin myth." - Publisher.
