An AARP Post leads to a list of My Favorite Books from the 1970s!

This morning my wife said “you’re old. please join AARP so we can at least derive some benefits from you ancientness!” Actually, she didn’t say that, but she did ask me to join AARP so that we can hopefully get a discount on our Ancestry.com renewal! While I was on the site registering and paying the whole $16.00 a year membership this post Readers’ Picks: 10 Books Boomers Love caught my attention.These are the books that the readers picked:

10 The World According to Garp – John Irving
9. The Joy of Sex – Edited by Alex Comfort
8. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
7. Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
6. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
5 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
4. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
3 Roots – Alex Haley
2. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
1 Catcher in the Rye – J.D Salinger

While the above list is a terrific list, it is not my reading list! I have only read two of the books on the list – Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five. So I thought that I put together a list of my favorite books that were published and read mostly during my high school and college years.

Renaissance Granddad’s Favorite Reads from the 1970s – as best he can remember!

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Several of the authors among those shown could have had two or more books on the list. John Fowles’  The Collector and The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Alexander Solzhenitsyn‘s The First Circle., Tom Tryon’s The Other and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, could have all been on the list!

The late high school years along with the college’s year set the tone for the life that follows. Is there a better music than the music of your generation, at least there isn’t for the music of mine! And the books you read lay a foundation for future reading as well help guide you along  your life’s path. The works of Herman Hesse helped me discover and accept the duality of nature, Catch-22 and August 1914 taught me about the absurdities and the horrors of war, and Stephen King and Tom Tryon taught me to be afraid of the dark – very afraid! The Day of the Jackal and The Eye of the Needle ignited a love of political thrillers,Watership Down and All Creatures Great and Small enhanced my love of animals.

Then there is Death at an Early Age, Reading the story of Jonathan Kozol‘s first year as a teacher in a very poor Boston school, was upsetting. When I read the book and I felt so sorry for those poor children, the saddest thing may be that in many schools throughout America things haven’t changed all that much, especially in the inner city schools. Anyway reading Death at an Early Age led me to an Education degree from the University of Georgia. Unfortunately, the twists and turns of my life resulted in that degree going unused! But I hope that my love of learning and reading has been passed on to my children and they will in turn pass it on to their children. And maybe my daughter Elizabeth, who is in her final year of her Masters program in Educational Psychology at the University of Delaware, will do what I didn’t and help some of those in need children!

So there is the list of some of my favorite books of the 1970s. It was a fun exercise and I think many of those books should be visited again!  How many of my books have you other boomers read?? What were some of your favorites from that era??

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