August 2009 The Fifties

This is a big list - we decided to concentrate on 1957/1958. Pick a year.

1950

Barabbas - Par Lagerkvist
Helena - Evelyn Waugh
Strangers on a Train - Patricia Highsmith
The Third Man - Graham Greene
A Murder is Announced - Agatha Christie
The Great Escape - Paul Brickhill
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C S Lewis
The Grass is Singing - Doris Lessing
The Rat Race - Jay Franklin
A Town Like Alice - Neville Shute
Power Without Glory - Frank Hardy


1951

Come in Spinner - Dymphna Cusack
The Cruel Sea - Nicholas Monsarrat
Five on a Hike Together - Enid Blyton
From Here to Eternity - James Jones
My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier
The Grass Harp - Truman Capote
Prince Caspian - C. S. Lewis
Requiem for a Nun - William Faulkner
The Teahouse of the August Moon - Vern Sneider
The End of the Affair - Graham Greene
Siddartha - Hermann Hesse
The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
The Caine Mutiny - Herman Wouk
Sparticus - Howard Fast


1952

Charlotte's Web - E. B. Brooks
Coins in the Fountain - John Hermes Secondari
The Borrowers - Mary Norton
To Catch a Thief - David Dodge
Heaven Knows, Mr Allison - Charles Shaw
The Natural - Bernard Malamud
The Bridge Over the River Kwai - Pierre Boulle
The Diary of Anne Frank - Anne Frank
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Men at Arms - Evelyn Waugh
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Mrs McGinty's Dead - Agatha Christie
They Do it With Mirrors - Agatha Christie


1953

The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
After the Funeral - Agatha Christie
Battle Cry - Leon Uris
Casino Royale - Ian Fleming
Farnenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin
A Kiss Before Dying - Ira Levin
The Night of the Hunter - Davis Grubb
Ring for Jeeves - P.J. Wodehouse
Legion of the Damned - Sven Hassel
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids - Isaac Asimov (as Paul French)
The Rebel - Albert Camus
The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir
Zen in the Art of Archery - Eugene Herrigel
Nine Stories - J.D. Salinger
Junkie - William S Burroughs
The Go-Between - L.P. Hartley


1954

The Bad Seed - William March
The Forgotten Planet - Murray Leinster
I am Legend - Richard Matheson
Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
Live and Let Die - Ian Fleming
My Brother's Keeper - Marcia Davenport
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts - Amos Tutuola
Pictures from an Institution - Randall Jarrell
A Spy in the House of Love - Anais Nin
Story of O - Pauline Reage
The Man Who Planted Trees - Jean Giono
The Doors of Perception - Aldous Huxley
Under the Net - Iris Murdoch
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkein
Lord of the Flies - William Golding


1955

Auntie Mame - Patrick Dennis
The Bodysnatchers - Jack Finney
The Ginger Man - J. P. Donleavy
The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit - Sloane Wilson
Marjorie Morningstar - Herman Wouk
Moonraker - Ian Fleming
The Mouse that Roared - Leonard Wibberley
The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
The Return of the King - J.R.R.Tolkein
The Tree of Man - Patrick White
Waiting for the Mahatma - R.K. Narayon
The Quiet American - Graham Greene
Surprised by Joy - C.S. Lewis
Lolita - Vladimir Nabakov
Officers and Gentlemen - Evelyn Waugh
Hickory Dickory Dock - Agatha Christie


1956

Bang the Drum Slowly - Mark Harris
Beyond the Black Stump - Nevil Shute
Daimonds are Forever - Ian Fleming
The House of Sixty Fathers - Meindirt deJong
The Hundred and One Dalmations - Dodie Smith
The Naked Sun - Isaac Asimov
The Nun's Story - Kathryn Hulme
Old Yeller - Fred Gipson
Peyton Place - Grace Metalious
A Walk on the Wild Side - Nelson Agren
The Art of Loving - Enrich Fromm
Death in Cyprus - M. M. Kaye
That Uncertain Feeling - Kingsley Amis
Seize the Day - Saul Bellows


1957

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
Bunny Lake is Missing - Merriam Modell (as Evelyn Piper)
A Death in the Family - James Agee
The Guns of Navarone - Alistair MacLean
Justine - Lawrence Durrell
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter - Isaac Asimov
Mandingo - Kyle Onstott
Odd Girl Out (lesbian pulp) - Ann Bannon (as Ann Weldy)
On the Beach - Nevil Shute
Room at the Top - John Braine
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Voss - Patrick White
The World of Suzie Wong - Richard Mason
The Town - William Faulkner

1958

Around the World with Auntie Mame - Patrick Dennis (pseudonym of Edward Everett Tanner III)
Balthazar - Lawrence Durrell
The Big Country - Donald Hamilton
The Candle in the Wind - T.H. White
The Dhama Bums - Jack Kerouac
Exodus - Leon Uris
Hornblower in the West Indies - CS Forester
The League of Gentlemen - John Boland
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner - Alan Stillitoe
The Once and Future King - T. H. White
Mrs 'arris Goes to Paris - Paul Gallico
Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning - Alan Stillitoe
Tom's Midnight Garden - Philippa Pearce
The Young Lions - Irwin Shaw
A Summer Place - Sloan Wilson
The Subterraneans - Jack Kerouac
If This is Woman - Primo Levi
Dr Zhivago - Boris Peasternak
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
The Leopard - Guisepe Tomasi di Lampedusa
To the Islands - Randolph Stow


1959

Cat Amongst the Pigeons - Agatha Christie
The Cool World - Warren Miller
Danny Dunn and the Weather Machine (series) - Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams
The Devils Advocate - Morris West
Hawaii - James Michener
The Hustler - Walter Tevis
I am a Woman - Ann Bannon (lesbian pulp fiction)
Madeline and the Gypsies - Ludwig Bemelmans
The Manchurian Candidate - Richard Condon
Naked Lunch - William S Burroughs
Psycho - Robert Bloch
Return to Peyton Place - Grace Metalious
Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein
To Sir, With Love - E.R. Braithwaite
The Unknown Shore - Patrick O'Brien
Walkabout - James Vance Marshall
Wolfbane - Frederick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth
The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass

Through the 50s -

Enid Blyton's Famous Five, Noddy, Secret Seven
Agatha Christie
P.G Wodehouse
The rise of Science Fiction

Note how many were made into films and how many inspired songs!

Amazing to contemplate what people were thinking about after the war. A theme might be, what is it to be a man?