I have embarked on a new project. And this will not be finished in short order. I decided some time ago that I needed to read more fiction. But not just any fiction. It needed to be substantive or at least something that had some small impact on the world. I enjoy reading mysteries for relaxation but find more serious modern fiction unappealing. I’ve decided to pick a book to read from every year that I’ve been on this earth. From the year I was born to now. Each book should be one that had some noted impact, something that had more than just bestseller numbers to make it noteworthy.
I went to the 1962 best books list to pick something to start. That was quite a year for publishing. One Flew Over the Coo Koo’s Nest, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, The Man in the High Castle, Another Country, A Clockwork Orange, to name only a few. I settled on Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. I chose it for its themes: societal and individual fragmentation, communism, sexual liberation, and the women’s movement.
I also decided to widen my reading outside of fiction. Here are some of the books I’ve read recently and the year they were published. More fiction is coming, but it might take a while.
1962
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
1963
Hannah Arndt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
1964
Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait
1965
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
