Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge discussion

Oh dear...I have no idea what came out the year I graduated. I will have to do some searching and hope for a good one!

a site with the top ten by year, for a good spread of years. :)
http://www.kruegerbooks.com/books/bes...

and for non-fiction: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~immer/b...

Damn. I'm nearly done with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire... Otherwise I could have used that!

I just checked mine (1997), and it was a good year for books including Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone!!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/popula...

Chamber of secrets was a bestseller my year, but I don't like to reread. Maybe it's time to finally read a Nicholas Sparks book because apparently The Rescue also was a best seller that year.

None of the ones that came out the year I graduated look appealing... XD Though I guess the point of this IS to stretch your horizons. Might give Dreamcatcher a shot, though...

I read it as published the year i graduated, but it does say Bestseller. Am I misunderstanding that it could have been published the year before but is still a bestseller or didn't become a bestseller until a year later (The year I graduated) and then it still counts?

What are your thoughts?

I say best seller is best seller regardless when it was published. Several people used the handmaids tale this year despite it being published forever ago!

Google heavily favors the New York Times when I try to search for best selling books. Aren't there other best seller lists? Who compiles them?

I was fine with this category until I started researching it. Oh, dear. My choices can be summed up as: Stephen King, Clive Barker, John Irving, Jackie Collins, Danielle Steel, and a few others .... And, no, I do t want to read any of those. The problem is, obviously: I was a reader then, so if I wanted to read it, I've already read it! (Example: Auel's The Mammoth Hunters) And there aren't any best-sellers I loved enough to want to re-read. I am hopeful that a more thorough week-by-week search of the best-seller list will reveal a forgotten gem. Or ... I use the Goodreads "200 best books of ..." list instead, which isn't technically a list of best-sellers.

Bleh! Grisham, Clancy, Steele, King...
The only book in the top 10 that I have any interest in, I've already read. (Like Water for Chocolate)

I'll have to dig deeper past the top 10. Does the NYT have archived bestseller lists?

Kenya wrote: "None of the ones that came out the year I graduated look appealing... XD Though I guess the point of this IS to stretch your horizons. Might give Dreamcatcher a shot, though..."

I have the same issue, mostly. Thank heavens for Waiting to Exhale. Otherwise I guess I'd be stuck with Danielle Steel...

Chrissy wrote: "Bleh! Grisham, Clancy, Steele, King...
The only book in the top 10 that I have any interest in, I've already read. (Like Water for Chocolate)

I'll have to dig deeper past the top 10. D..."

http://www.hawes.com/pastlist.htm

This site is a monstrosity, rainbow flashing things and all. But seems to have weekly break downs of the hardcover NYT lists for most years.

For anyone asking, here are the NYT bestsellers by year for fiction and here is the list for non-fiction.

Each year is broken down by week.

Yeah, Paradise by Toni Morrison, which I already own! 1998 was also apparently a very good year for Danielle Steel. Now I'm getting intrigued and kind of want to read one of her books.

Katie wrote: "Chrissy wrote: "Bleh! Grisham, Clancy, Steele, King...
The only book in the top 10 that I have any interest in, I've already read. (Like Water for Chocolate)

I'll have to dig deeper pa..."

Ooh thanks - that gives us some more options!

I think I'll go with Heir to the Empire, which I guess is now canceled canon in the Star Wars universe.

Though I'm tempted to read Pat Robertson's book about the new world order - I'm sure current events showed we were on the very brink of Armageddon . . . 26 years ago.

Using Amazon's top 10 bestseller list for 2011 (my graduation year), I wound up with Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, one of the suggestions from my 2017 book-a-day calendar. For a minute there I was worried I wouldn't find something fitting for 2011 that I hadn't already read (otherwise I might've done a reread).

Bah. None of this looks interesting, minus the Tom Clancy book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New...

1995, I feel like an antique looking over some of the titles LOL

I get to choose between The Satanic Verses, A Brief History of Time, and, oh, I just can't.... The Art of the Deal.

Um yeah, totally going with Hawking. I now have to read one of those bestsellers nobody's actually read.

I can’t be bothered with the list-makers obsessions with bestseller lists, so as long as it was popular and published in 1997, that’s good enough for me. The list above has plenty of options on it that I’m happy to read.

That top ten of mine also had lots of crap- and I used to read lots of crap, so I’ve read plenty of them. My nana had a cottage on an island that the whole family went to and the power got knocked out regularly and then they were slow to fix it. My aunts, mom and nana were all readers of romances and Danielle Steel and so I often ran out of my own books and tore through those. As nostalgic as it would be to revisit something like that, I’d really rather not.

I will be going with Tuesdays with Morrie (1998).

Ooooh, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay seems to work for 2000, as does The Poisonwood Bible (I guess it was in Oprah's Book Club that year).

I've been meaning to read both for ages.

I‘m going to graduate in 2019... What should I do for this prompt?

Obviously you'll have to time travel 😜 maybe just pick any best seller from this decade and make it similar to the bestseller from the decade you were born. Or the year you graduated another school like middle or jr high or elementary school?

Or from the year you started high school

Katie, thanks for that link! I found a few decent possibilities, including Griffin and Sabine, Assembling California, Every Living Thing, Girl, Interrupted, or I could reread The Hope.

I graduated in 2006, so I picked some books I would have been really into at the time. I also loved both of these movies.

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist
It's Kind of a Funny Story

I think this is a good excuse to finally read The Help (2010).

I have read a couple of them, but I see some good possibilities.

1979
Fiction Bestsellers
1. Robert Ludlum, The Matarese Circle
2. William Styron, Sophie’s Choice
3. Arthur Hailey, Overload
4. Harold Robbins, Memories of Another Day
5. Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird
6. Stephen King, The Dead Zone
7. Mary Stewart, The Last Enchantment
8. Howard Fast, The Establishment
9. Gen. Sir John Hackett et al., The Third World War: August 1985
10. John Le Carré, Smiley’s People
Critically Acclaimed and Historically Significant
V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction
Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism
Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor
Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach
William Styron, Sophie’s Choice
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics
Peter Singer, Practical Ethics
Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions

Nonfiction Bestsellers
1. Erma Bombeck, Aunt Erma’s Cope Book
2. Herman Tarnower and Samm Sinclair Baker, The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet
3. Howard J. Ruff, How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years
4. Steve Martin, Cruel Shoes
5. Nathan Pritikin and Patrick McGrady Jr., The Pritikin Program for Diet and Exercise
6. Henry Kissinger, White House Years
7. Lauren Bacall, Lauren Bacall By Myself
8. Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court
9. Robert J. Ringer, Restoring the American Dream
10. Charles Paul Conn, The Winner’s Circle

Grrr...I hate these "bestseller" prompts. The lists are all bogus to begin with, and if you're of a certain age, all Googling gets you is a top ten list or two.

2003 for me. I'm not going to get hung up on lists either, as long as I've heard of it before it can count.

We Need to Talk About Kevin
Life of Pi
The Complete Persepolis
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
The Kite Runner
The Devil Wears Prada
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Shutter Island
Odd Thomas
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Reading Lolita in Tehran

Okay, 2005 was officially a terrible year for books, at least going by the bestsellers! I am not yet inspired...

Katie wrote: "Chrissy wrote: "Bleh! Grisham, Clancy, Steele, King...
The only book in the top 10 that I have any interest in, I've already read. (Like Water for Chocolate)

I'll have to dig deeper pa..."

That site is so late 90's HTML. But it's a lot easier to navigate than other sites. I was heading here to add it with the same caveat.

What if you didn't graduate high school...

tif wrote: "What if you didn't graduate high school..."

Just pick the year you turned 18! That's what I did.

And I guess younger readers could pick a bestseller from when they finished primary/elementary school.

Zero interest in books published in 1981. The few I like I have read. May have to use another year - or the year I graduated college.

Marianne wrote: "Zero interest in books published in 1981. The few I like I have read. May have to use another year - or the year I graduated college."

Hmm...That's a good idea. 1987's chart-toppers don't appeal to me, so maybe '91 was a better year for books.

Stina wrote: "Marianne wrote: "Zero interest in books published in 1981. The few I like I have read. May have to use another year - or the year I graduated college."

Hmm...That's a good idea. 1987's chart-toppe..."

Oh, my, 1991's top ten list was almost entirely Danielle Steele! I finally just googled "best books of 1987" and decided on Equal Rites. I'm pretty sure I already have a copy. And at this point, I don't care if it was officially a bestseller or not.

1988 here. Not too long ago, I got a "Save the Date" postcard for our 30th reunion next year, and I refuse to believe I'm that old.

Found this NYT list (http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/02/boo...) and my best options from it (not counting books I've already read) are:

A Brief History of Time
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Presumed Innocent
The Tommyknockers
Communion: A True Story
Something Under the Bed is Drooling: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection
Calvin and Hobbes
The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury

We'll see what catches my eye when the time comes.

Does anyone know how to find a list of YA bestselllers from the New York Times? I've managed to find the fiction and non-fiction bestsellers, but not the YA lists.

Mine is 2007. I've already read several, while I enjoyed them I don't really want to reread them. Here's some though

Heart-Shaped Box
Lisey's Story
Obsession - I love her books. They aren't great works of literature but they are addicting
Hide
Absolute Fear
Shopaholic & Baby
Nineteen Minutes
Dear John
The Woods
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Blaze - this will probably be my pick. It's on my TBR and I own it so it's perfect
High Noon - I love her books too. This isn't her best but I enjoyed it

I get to go way back to stuff that should be candidates for classics by now: 1961. I'll keep playing with the lists here and with others (thanks, too, for the suggestions in posts above): http://www.hawes.com/1961/1961.htm

I am not one that has ever been a fan of J.D. Salinger, but I might still consider Franny and Zooey.

Oh, my, I just took a look at the list of 1961 bestsellers on the Berkeley site. Do or don't the titles say something about what has happened to the lives and expectations of American women in the past half century?

Nonfiction Bestsellers (1961)
1. The New English Bible: The New Testament
2. William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
3. Better Homes and Gardens Sewing Book
4. Casserole Cook Book
5. William Lederer, A Nation of Sheep
6. Better Homes and Gardens Nutrition for Your Family
7. Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960
8. Dr. Herman Taller, Calories Don’t Count
9. Betty Crocker’s New Picture Cook Book: New Edition
10. Gavin Maxwell, Ring of Bright Water

https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~immer/b...

(The lists on this site are a delight to explore and think about. Thanks, Sanasai, @2! )

poshpenny wrote: "I get to choose between The Satanic Verses, A Brief History of Time, and, oh, I just can't.... The Art of the Deal.

Um yeah, totally going with Hawking. I now have to read one of those bestsellers nobody's actually read. ..."

Good luck! May you not join the rest of us who have been down that path, even those of us who were science majors! I made the mistake of trying to get my then fairly new book club to read it. I don't know that any of us succeeded entirely.

The Satanic Verses didn't particularly interest me back then, but with some historic distance it might now. Also, Salman Rushdie is not easy reading, either, but I do like what I have read.

Well, I do like science quite a bit, and I am pretty sure I have an illustrated edition around here somewhere. I might just do it on audio though. I've listened to several science/physics books and I quite like it. Instead of tripping over big/unfamiliar words all the time, the narrator just breezes through them and it's easier to grasp the concepts.

I just wanna know, if I actually make it all the way through, do I get to gloat? ;)

poshpenny wrote: "I just wanna know, if I actually make it all the way through, do I get to gloat? ;) "

I may have mentioned it but we have one classic with a bit of a reputation, and after you have read it you can by a t-shirt with the text "I have read [the name of the novel]." It's about 800 pages long, I think, and covers about 6 hours when the men gather to a drawing room to discuss about buying a ship. There is one famous "scene" where one of them goes over to the mantelpiece to pick up a pipe. Apparently it takes maybe 70 pages. One of the chapter titles is called "You can skip this chapter because, just like in the other ones, nothing happens in this one, either". But it is considered to be a great novel and those who have read it have said that it actually is good, especially the language.

I seem to have the unfortunate distinction of graduating high school the same year that 50 Shades of Grey was released (and took top spot on the bestseller list for half the year).

Tytti wrote: "There is one famous "scene" where one of them goes over to the mantelpiece to pick up a pipe. Apparently it takes maybe 70 pages."

hahahaha OK, I'll take the physics!

I got my Abitur one German equivalent to a high school degree in 2006 at age 19 so I'll pick one from that year. There are actually a lot I enjoyed on the Spiegel Bestsellerliste for 2006 in fiction and nonfiction including

Hape Kerkelings Ich bin dann mal weg: Meine Reise auf dem Jakobsweg - i'm off then (non fiction).

I loved this one but will pick one I didn't read yet. Possibly

Frank Schätzing Nachrichten aus einem unbekannten Universum: Eine Zeitreise durch die Meere - would translate to news from an unknown universere, It's on my tbr for quite some time.