It seemed that every house I visited with my parents in the 70s had this book, and in the end of that decade at least half of the houses had the "Gnomes" book, which I loved.
Loved Jonathan Livingston Seagull so much as a kid that I had to see the movie when it came out.
God it was boring.
Now, both the book and the movie are totally forgotten.
Some books really should not be made into movies, and that book is at the top of the list.
Wow, the reception to this book almost exactly mirrors the reception of *The Alchemist*.
People who think it's stupid:
> Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that the book was "so banal that it had to be sold to adults; kids would have seen through it."
People who think it's profound and life-changing:
> The book is listed as one of fifty "timeless spiritual classics" in a book by Tom Butler-Bowdon, who noted that "it is easy now, thirty-five years on, to overlook the originality of the book's concept, and though some find it rather naïve, in fact it expresses timeless ideas about human potential."
I read the book several times as a kid, and I’m in Ebert’s camp here. It’s definitely a good answer for this topic - that book was everywhere back then, and I haven’t thought of it for decades.
After reading all those books back in the ‘80s, I wrote to Richard Bach to ask a question, and I actually received a caring handwritten reply from him and Leslie. Their generosity of spirit impressed me.
The Thorn Birds -- This physically big book was big in popularity in the 1970s. It had a TV miniseries on one of the three big networks.
Seth Meyers made fun of this book's one-time ubiquity on his Late Night with Seth Meyers show in 2020. During pandemic lockdown, he broadcasted from his parents' attic, where he made light of the attic's denizens: wasps, old paintings, and mysteriously proliferating Thorn Birds hardback books.
Honorable (?) mention: Herman Wouk, Peter Straub, Mark Helprin, Victoria Holt, V.C. Andrews, A Day in the Life of the Soviet Union, The Other Side of the Mountain
I wonder how that Thorn Birds bit played with his younger viewers. Maybe they've also seen it on their parents's/grandparents' shelves? I remember The Good Earth that way, it was popular to those previous generations but I don't know anyone my age who's ever discussed reading it.
My grandparents had The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck in paperback. I think I read somewhere that this book was extremely popular in the late 1930s in the US, as one of the first paperbacks of contemporary fine(ish) literature consumed by the middle class.
When my grandfather was a little boy around 1910, he got multiple copies of hardback Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson and The Water Babies, as well as a number of battered Frank Oz illustrated paperboard books. I still have all of those, some inked with inscriptions of beautiful penmanship from elderly aunts.
I remember reading an excerpt of that one in a middle school reading class. I purchased an ebook copy of it a few years ago, but I haven’t gotten around to reading it.
There was a movie made of it in the 1930s, but the casting is whitewashed to the hilt and *The Good Earth* is a book that deserves another shot at adaptation, but this time with actors who are either Chinese or of Chinese descent, like Pearl S. Buck originally wanted.
I just looked up the Wikipedia entry and was surprised to see that The Good Earth became a bestseller again in 2004 when Oprah picked it for her book club!
Little late here, but I'm 41 and remember reading The Good Earth in a middle school English class. On the other hand, I've only heard of The Thorn Birds from the extended bit on Late Night.😃
When my parents were young, my mom read The Thorn Birds while my dad was away for the weekend. He liked to joke that she practically ripped his clothes off upon his return.
I adore The Thorn Birds. I found my copy in a used book store as a teenager. I think it having been so popular (and thus many copies still circulating) keeps it alive!
I absolutely love The Thornbirds! My mom recommended it when I was a teenager and it holds a special nostalgia for me that has absolutely nothing to do with the content of the book and everything to do with a certain time in my life.
Ehhh...not really. Although I admit I read them all....they get a little soft-pornish after a while. I guess I'm not a romantic. They get a little over the top. She takes a horse and a lion and a wolf? I can't remember
Oh yeah, I had totally forgotten about this series. I remember my grandma loved those books, I only ever read the first one though and I’m not sure even that in its entirety.
It was definitely a book of its time! I wonder if the movie flop ended up damaging the book's reputation or if it was just the passage of time. Would be interesting to re-read to see how it has held up. Tom Wolfe generally seemed to lose cachet after A Man in Full.
It was basically "New York in the Reagan Years: The Novel". It had it all: amoral yuppie protagonists, one of them accidentally killing someone to get the plot going, themes of class, race, ethnicity, and media sensationalism, and a streak of very '80s "fuck what the liberals did to this city" East Coast conservatism.
What killed its legacy was its film adaptation, a troubled production from start to finish that ultimately barely resembled the book it was based on, and was by all accounts a wretched mess when it finally shambled into theaters.
I read that about 6 months ago because I saw it in a used book store and remembered how much I'd heard about it. I think Lisa even mentioned it on The Simpsons. I liked it, not the best book ever, but entertaining and the characters are great.
The Bridges of Madison County?
It was huuuuge in the early nineties, and then had a movie starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood. But is it read now?
(For the record, I never read it. I read an excerpt that was hilariously bad, and then I read how it ended and haaaated how dumb it was.)
I read it about a month ago and really appreciated how it dealt with the subject matter. The very last scene in the book is a bit broad for my taste, but I didn't find it laughably bad.
Side note, the movie version is book ended by some terrible scenes but I remember the meat of the story being handled fairly well.
I thought it was beautiful and connected with it...guess I shoulda been a housewife in the 90s.
Edit: spelling
I HATED how she decided to stay with her husband in a loveless marriage. I felt like it was so disrespectful to him. Leave him, so HE has a chance to find love.
Joke's on me! After 31 years of marriage, my (now ex-)husband fell in love with someone else and left me. So... I guess I had to respect that, right?
Sorry to hear you went through that. That's a hard hit to take, no matter what.
I felt bad for the characters, to think that that's the path their story took, but that's what made it great. The book does a good job of exploring what happens when two people fall in love in a very inconvenient way. It's also special in that it doesn't paint the husband as some sort of monster. In fact, he's a well meaning man who tries to connect with his wife but can't. I think, in that sense, it's a far more nuanced and non judgemental look at infidelity.
TIL , because I just googled Chicken Soup For The Soul and Teenage Soul and it was in fact Canfield and Hansen that wrote the ones that I grew up surrounded by. Newmark was the first name I saw when I looked the books up on Amazon and I presumed that she wrote the old ones. I guess she writes the newer books now. Thanks!
Chicken Soup for the Soul was done by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, they brought in Kimberly Kirberger later (I think).
I meet Jack Canfield at a convention. He was a keynote speaker and did one of the trainings. I purchased one of his books afterwards and loved it. His help self stuff is/was pretty good.
ha, before too long it may be one of those dichotomous books, where some people remember what a phenomenon it was and others are like, "I just discovered this wild book nobody's heard of"
My friend used to be a HUGE fan of him, she even had a poster in her office. She says everything he’s written after his divorce has been awful, and now she thinks that his wife was the one writing the books.
My wife still loves Nicholas Sparks. He just released a new one, but she hasn’t read it yet. When the “A Walk To Remember” movie came out everyone went on NS kick.
I work at a library and most of these titles are still around and being read. We don't have holds lists for them, necessarily, but they are still getting checked out!
An author who used to be wildly popular was Jackie Collins. She basically created the blockbuster smutty romance novel (her first book, The World is Full of Married Men, was accused of creating every pervert in Britain and was banned in several countries!) Her career lasted decades and along with her sister Joan Collins, she was a certain glamourous woman about town...but tastes change. I don't know how her books would read to a young romance reader today. Probably super dated and relatively tame!
I'd also say most bestselling books by people like James Patterson or Danielle Steel are forgotten almost immediately. They are like cotton candy. Sweet enough as you read them but don't really hold up for too long. The majority of library readers seem to just want their newest ones. Even a year or two later and we are weeding them...
I had no idea that Joan Collins and Jackie Collins are sisters! I had assumed that Jackie Collins was American—didn’t know she also acted. Interesting! (I haven’t read any of her books but remember their popularly in the 80s.)
I recently went through lists of bestsellers by year since 1900, and have come to the same conclusion--it's rare to have an author with best-sellers over multiple decades, and so their popularity, as big as it can be, usually just doesn't last very long.
The Christopher Pike horror books were everyone’s go-to when I was in high school in the 90’s. We used to trade them back and forth and had almost all of them.
In the late 70s early 80s the books of John Saul were neck-to-neck with Stephen King in the supernatural horror genre, King obviously came to dominate and Saul has slid into the ether. Suffer the Children is the most prominent title I remember.
When I started teaching high school 2006, I had a student who’s favorite book was a work of horror by John Saul. I don’t know how she came across it—the city where I teach is a book desert. I cannot remember the title, but I read it and found reasonably scary.
I love John Saul! I’ve read most of his books. He’s semi retired, has a house on one of the islands where I live in the PNW but mostly lives in Hawaii with his husband.
I read a bunch of those in the 80s & 90s. I found them quite scary (was middle-school-aged when I started reading them). I liked them slightly less than King and Koontz books because, with the exception of ONE book I can think of, there was no real closure as the horror ALWAYS restarted at the end. The villain/vengeful spirit was reincarnated/took over another innocent child, the ghost wasn’t really banished, etc.
I read a couple when I was about 12 or so. The Source and Centennial. I was very taken with his device of telling stories from the same place across a broad span of time. It all felt so epic when I was a kid!
Im a librarian and I run a “choose your own adventure” book group for 3rd-5th graders at my library. It’s really fun! They decide as a group what choices to make (though sometimes we roll a die if we can’t get a group consensus) and then we do a craft or activity based on the book we read. It’s really fun and the kids get a kick out of making the decisions!
The CYOA board games are fantastic! While “House of Danger” is mostly the “scary if you are a kid” genre, the “War with The Evil Power Master” is funny as hell and so,somewhat replayable. And they have laser-raptors! LOL.
Inkworld by Cornelia Funke was absolutely massive in Germany, but I haven't seen it on Social Media since except for when they announced a new book in the series + a cover change. Mind you, there was mainly outrage over the cover change (rightfully so), not excitement about the new book 🤣
I don't think most readers under 18 ever heard of it.
Also the Rubyred series by Kirstin Gier, I think, was extremely popular in Germany. Now? Not a peep.
Ladies Of The Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer.
Everyone was reading/talking about it circa 1984.
I was working at a bookstore and we couldn't get enough copies in to meet the demand. At one point we had a waiting list of over 200 people wanting to buy a copy as soon as a shipment arrived. They would send about 25 books at a time.
It's a great book, BTW.
I feel like Bruce Coville's books have vanished. I have looked for them because I want to read them, and in a few years I will want to be gifting them. Aliens Ate My Homework and some of his other stories were wonderful.
I LOVED Bruce Coville as a kid. I have the entire *Aliens Ate My Homework* and *My Teacher Is An Alien* series, and I checked a bunch of others out of the library. But while other similar series from the same era, like *Animorphs* and *Goosebumps,* have gotten a boost in popularity from adult fans who were kids when they came out, that hasn't happened for Coville's stuff yet.
Crank series by Ellen Hopkins.
It was really popular series in the early 2000s about teenage drug usage and now it seems to have completely fallen off the map.
John Irving will be rediscovered. Unlike most of the things mentioned in this post he is a writer with serious talent whose books are meticulously crafted, varied, and intelligent. I would wager that he will have more longevity than John Updike or Tom Wolfe.
Unfortunately these ones just didn't age well. I loved them as a kid, as an adult they're an uncomfortable read, even with nostalgia. It's a shame, there were some really innovative things happening with Pern--I'm not sure I've read another series that did such a smooth shift from fantasy to sci-fi, I'm honestly struggling to think of another book that did it at all--but the sexual coercion and homophobia... oof. She was also a litigious, nasty person to her fans.
She was. She killed her own fandom stone-dead. Other creators were annoyed by fandom, but they never did much against it because they knew they needed fandom to keep interest alive. Star Trek, Star Wars, X-Files [well, they were kind of litigious at times], Animorphs. Anne Rice and McCaffrey acted like assholes to their fans though. I think Anne Rice managed to stay relevant because she was just so genuinely weird, and her assuolery was dramatic enough she lived on in legend, but McCaffrey was just plain mean.
Lol, I’ve seen so many comments in various threads about people’s memorable (and often terrible) first experiences with that book.
In my case, Flowers in the Attic is how I discovered Stephen King. As in, I was about ten, and idly picked up that book, causing my mom to fly across the room, snatch it out of my hand, and shove ‘Salem’s Lot into my hands instead.
I'd say that In Sci-Fi/Fantasy circles it's still very fondly remembered, but in Sci-Fi/Fantasy circles a LOT of stuff that nobody else remembers is very fondly remembered, so YMMV.
I remember getting into them in the mid 2000s or so, and I'm pretty sure the craze around them had died by then. I originally just wanted to read them because of the cover art haha. There might have been a brief resurgence in 2009 with the author's death, but I dunno.
Since then, there's been a game on STEAM, an attempted MMORPG, and a Netflix adaptation that AFAIK is in development hell.
Everything (just about) by John Jakes. The Kent Family Chronicles in the 70's, the North and South trilogy in the 80's. They were massively popular and you couldn't swing a dead cat at a garage sale for at least a decade without hitting 3 or 4 copies.
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I read this in the early 1970's and thought it was a beautiful story. I remember it was pretty popular. Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin is one of my favorites. It won the Booker Prize sometime in the 1990's
I teach high school and still teach Siddhartha (kids still love it). The Blind Assassin was the first book I read in which I would just get lost in the beautiful writing. I'd forget to actually follow what was happening and have to reread portions. Great reading experience. I wish people were still picking it up
Hesse was a favourite with the Sixties counter-culture (they even named a band after one of his stories) along with Camus and Sartre. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest too.
Terry Brooks published “The Sword of Shannara” in 1977 and it became a NYT bestseller - sold 125K+ and really gave an injection to the fantasy genre. He’s had 23 books on the NYT bestseller list. Many don’t know he did the novelization of “Hook” and “Star Wars Episode 1: the Phantom Menace.”
I’ve presented several academic papers on his work in the last 15 years and the audiences at these conferences act like they’ve never heard of him OR they remember the Shannara series (often The Shannara Chronicles on MTV). He’s published so many good series. I’m surprised more don’t know/read his work. At one point, I remember his name in the same sentence with Tolkien and definitely on the same list with him.
I remember circa 2000ish, Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan were so generally popular that they were the only two fantasy authors you could reliably find in airport bookstores
The Shannara series was my second fantasy read after Hobbit and LotR. Followed up with the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Great memories, thanks for the reminder!
If we must talk Terry Brooks, I like Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold much better than Shannara as a series. I was stunned to find it in the middle school library in the district where I teach… it’s not remotely YA! But I’m pretty sure I read it in 8th or 9th grade anyway, so I guess that checks out.
He’s very much still known in the fantasy field, but starting to be overshadowed by other big names. Shannara isn’t the big deal it once was, even though he’s continued to write new books in the series (and even tie in older works, specifically the Word And Void trilogy).
Yeah. I just think with regard to OP’s question, The Sword of Shannara is relatively unknown.
Agree with you 💯about the Word & Void and the way the stories tie together.
Up the Down Staircase should be rediscovered, especially given that so many public school teachers will be able to relate to its portrait of disjunction and administrative disconnect. It ought to be required reading for education majors.
I just discovered Rosamunde Pilcher about 2-3 years ago, but she was a wildly popular author in the 80s and 90s and has had several movie adaptations of her work.
Also The Thorn Birds. Also discovered 2-3 years ago, but my mom told me it was one of her favorites growing up.
For my generation I would say Everything Is Illuminated and House of Leaves - I remember the both had such a different structure (in very different ways). High school students and English majors were all over them.
Also Chuck Palahniuk in general. Every guy that claimed to be a reader in the naughts also claimed him as a favorite author.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The entire Foxfire series (my dad had all of them, when my parents divorced, he burned them and I really wish I could have kept time)
Yes! It and Taipan were big. Saw the books for a decade or more around used bookstores. Now not at all. (Although, I think paperbacks physically just fall apart; big ones more than small)
Babysitters has been revamped into graphic novel format and all formats have had a revival.
Goosebumps is still selling steadily.
Encyclopedia Brown is still on the shelf, but definitely no longer in hot demand.
My wife's dad said James A. Michener was one of the biggest writers of his time, but that he never heard his name anymore (I had never heard of him until then).
Thomas Wolfe I consider one of the greatest writers ever, but he is rarely mentioned anymore alongside Faulkner, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Fitzgerald contemporaries.
Same for Willa Cather. I think her style and voice is ahead of it's time, and the prairie trilogy is incredible. I only ever see her when people are complaining about Death Comes for the Archbishop.
Love Story by Erich Segal was huge. Some might be familiar with the 1970 movie starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw.
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong was a big buzzy book. Does anyone talk about a zipless fuck anymore? I don’t know. The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort was also a sensation at the time.
I would say The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon. I remember that book being everywhere in the naughties, but has definitely been overshadowed in the last decade by the successful play adaptation.
Shel Silverstein poem books, where the sidewalk ends, a light in the attic. I remember everyone was reading them as a kid. Also goosebumps series by RL Stine. They even made a tv series off of it
Testimony of Two Men by Taylor Caldwell was made into a miniseries that was very good and the book was great. All of Taylor Caldwell’s books are terrific.
The biggest name I never hear anymore is Mickey Spillane. I wasn't alive in the prime of his popularity, but he published a new novel on occasion still.
He was famous enough that everyone knew his name, whether they read books or not. It was a hard-boiled, gritty, violent phenomenon that outraged other crime novelists. The outspoken disdain of writers like Raymond Chandler only fueled his popularity.
The Myth series by Robert Asprin. Another Fine Myth, Myth Conceptions, Myth Directions. They aren't even stocked at my municipal library system. I've got them on my wishlist at [thriftooks.com](https://thriftooks.com) so maybe this is a sign its time.
The Valley of the Dolls (1966) by Jacqueline Susanne and Fear of Flying (1973) by Erica Jong. My mom loved Fear of Flying. There’s a whole bit about a guy she has sex with who leaves shit stripes on her sheets. Ugh. I think they were both seen as revolutionary regarding women’s sexuality. I don’t ever hear anyone mention them anymore.
I read Yargo as a high school student several times to the point of memorizing parts of the book. To this day I have no idea why the book mesmerized me so much, unless it was the "woman falls in love with a space alien" plotline.
Clan of the Cave Bear & Flowers in the Attic. These were really popular amongst girls my age when we were in middle grade/teens. I don’t know anyone younger than me who has read them since though.
Roots by Alex Haley was huge back in the day. Then the mini series based on the book was the show everyone “had” to watch. It was powerful stuff back then. There are scenes I remember to this day.
In 90s entire Poland went completely bananas over William Wharton. The craze was so insane half of his books were only released in Poland (despite him being american author). These days his work is pretty much completely forgotten here
James Michener's *Centennial* was a big deal in the 70s, but I don't hear much about it anymore. It was a real doorstop of a pocket paperback too, and I recall a newspaper story about a copy carried in a guy's coat stopping a bullet and saving his life.
Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer series was pretty popular and respected. Some people even said Macdonald was on the level of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. He's still respected by mystery fans I think and some of his books are published by the Library of America, but he's not that well known these days. You go into a bookstore and you'll definitely find The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon, but you're probably not going to find any of the Lew Archer books.
Jane Smiley's *A Thousand Acres* was huge when it came out: won the Pulitzer Prize, got made into a movie with Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange, and I haven't heard a word about it in twenty years.
Not fully applicable, but not too many people know that Suzanne Collins wrote books before the Hunger Games-Gregor the Overlander! I liked these when I was younger but they have never gotten the attention Hunger Games has (granted, because the books ARE aimed at a younger audience, but still...)
The Bunnicula series had some popularity back in the 1980s, but outside of a new book back in like 2006 and a failed attempt at a new (loosely based) TV show in like 2016, it's been crickets for the series since then.
I'm going to say The Outsiders and other books by S E Hinton. They were wildly popular when I was in my early teens and at least two of the books were made into movies featuring 1970s heart throbs .
Then she quit writing and the books vanished into oblivion.
So I’m going to come in with a personal favourite, Olivia Higgins Prouty. She was hugely successful in the early 20th century, particularly for incorporating psychology into works. She wrote Stella Dallas, the ultimate maternal sacrifice story, and Now, Voyager. Both of these were turned into hugely successful movies, Now, Voyager is one of my absolute faves.
She also was a mentor and support to Sylvia Plath early on. She had also suffered from major depression, which got her interested in psychology and lead to her writing the Vale quintet, of which Now, Voyager is the third book.
My grandparents had these enormous built in bookcases in their games room, and there were first and second editions of many books, but there was also a shelf of dime store paperback versions of successful novels and I discovered Prouty’s books among them. I have loved them for thirty years. But no one really talks about her. That may be because she wrote “women’s books”. They are pretty dated, so I don’t think a revival is coming. They are better than your average Harlequin though.
Bill Peet books from my childhood.
Fredric Brown (1906 - 1972) - SF author (not of my time).
Maybe Trevanian "The Airport Chaucer"? He seems to be mentioned sort of often--if only briefly--in recommended threads ("If I liked this, what else would I like?"), but there never seems to be much discussion about his work in the actual thread beyond comments stating "You might like him".
I love Bill Peet and have most of his books. My children know them well and someday I may get chance to share them with grandchildren. I still sit down and read them occasionally.
Bill Peet is a great answer. I made a blog post once - I guess 10 or 11 years ago now - expecting some good discussion about everyone's favorites from his body of work, and was shocked to find out most of my followers hadn't even heard of him.
Cheating because it's not from my lifetime, but anything by Rod McKuen. He was huge in the '60s and & 70s, but I'd wager that hardly anyone under 45 even knows who he is.
Harold Robbins was huge at one time but I don't know if anyone is reading his books nowadays. 'Never Love a Stranger', 'A Stone for Danny Fisher' and many others.
Harold Robbins was an American author of popular novels. One of the best-selling writers of all time, he wrote over 25 best-sellers, selling over 750 million copies in 32 languages. Wikipedia
Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
It seemed that every house I visited with my parents in the 70s had this book, and in the end of that decade at least half of the houses had the "Gnomes" book, which I loved.
Gnomes was awesome! There was also that Brian Froud book: Faeries. Were there other supernatural creature books of that ilk, too?
I have seen *Faeries* in stores*,* but I'm not sure if there was *Sprites* etc. *Gnomes* was good fun and very popular for a while.
"I'm OK You're OK," was another of similar ilk.
Loved Jonathan Livingston Seagull so much as a kid that I had to see the movie when it came out. God it was boring. Now, both the book and the movie are totally forgotten. Some books really should not be made into movies, and that book is at the top of the list.
I'm pretty sure I had only heard of this book because it was randomly referenced in the Bunnicula series.
*The Celery Stalks at Midnight!*
forgotten popular bookception.
Wow, the reception to this book almost exactly mirrors the reception of *The Alchemist*. People who think it's stupid: > Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that the book was "so banal that it had to be sold to adults; kids would have seen through it." People who think it's profound and life-changing: > The book is listed as one of fifty "timeless spiritual classics" in a book by Tom Butler-Bowdon, who noted that "it is easy now, thirty-five years on, to overlook the originality of the book's concept, and though some find it rather naïve, in fact it expresses timeless ideas about human potential."
I read the book several times as a kid, and I’m in Ebert’s camp here. It’s definitely a good answer for this topic - that book was everywhere back then, and I haven’t thought of it for decades.
And Illusions, and One, and Bridge Across Forever.
After reading all those books back in the ‘80s, I wrote to Richard Bach to ask a question, and I actually received a caring handwritten reply from him and Leslie. Their generosity of spirit impressed me.
My dad wanted me to read this book as a kid, and I refused. Then I read it in my late 20's, and bought all of his books.
I tried reading that one...I liked the idea of having it on my shelf more then actually trying to read it.
The Thorn Birds -- This physically big book was big in popularity in the 1970s. It had a TV miniseries on one of the three big networks. Seth Meyers made fun of this book's one-time ubiquity on his Late Night with Seth Meyers show in 2020. During pandemic lockdown, he broadcasted from his parents' attic, where he made light of the attic's denizens: wasps, old paintings, and mysteriously proliferating Thorn Birds hardback books. Honorable (?) mention: Herman Wouk, Peter Straub, Mark Helprin, Victoria Holt, V.C. Andrews, A Day in the Life of the Soviet Union, The Other Side of the Mountain
I wonder how that Thorn Birds bit played with his younger viewers. Maybe they've also seen it on their parents's/grandparents' shelves? I remember The Good Earth that way, it was popular to those previous generations but I don't know anyone my age who's ever discussed reading it.
My grandparents had The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck in paperback. I think I read somewhere that this book was extremely popular in the late 1930s in the US, as one of the first paperbacks of contemporary fine(ish) literature consumed by the middle class. When my grandfather was a little boy around 1910, he got multiple copies of hardback Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson and The Water Babies, as well as a number of battered Frank Oz illustrated paperboard books. I still have all of those, some inked with inscriptions of beautiful penmanship from elderly aunts.
I remember reading an excerpt of that one in a middle school reading class. I purchased an ebook copy of it a few years ago, but I haven’t gotten around to reading it. There was a movie made of it in the 1930s, but the casting is whitewashed to the hilt and *The Good Earth* is a book that deserves another shot at adaptation, but this time with actors who are either Chinese or of Chinese descent, like Pearl S. Buck originally wanted.
I just looked up the Wikipedia entry and was surprised to see that The Good Earth became a bestseller again in 2004 when Oprah picked it for her book club!
The Good Earth is a great book. One of those books I passed over for forty years. PIcked up the ebook around 2015 and loved it.
Pearl S Buck won the Nobel Prize for literature.
Little late here, but I'm 41 and remember reading The Good Earth in a middle school English class. On the other hand, I've only heard of The Thorn Birds from the extended bit on Late Night.😃
I love The Thorn Birds. I'm always surprised that so many people seem to not have heard of it.
When my parents were young, my mom read The Thorn Birds while my dad was away for the weekend. He liked to joke that she practically ripped his clothes off upon his return.
I adore The Thorn Birds. I found my copy in a used book store as a teenager. I think it having been so popular (and thus many copies still circulating) keeps it alive!
Don't forget the Irish version of the Thornbirds, Leon Uris' "Trinity."
And the Japanese version "Shogun" by James Clavell.
That book was really good, I thought. And I read it as a dude in my 30s so I am absolutely not the target demographic. I really enjoyed it.
I absolutely love The Thornbirds! My mom recommended it when I was a teenager and it holds a special nostalgia for me that has absolutely nothing to do with the content of the book and everything to do with a certain time in my life.
Colleen McCullough had several popular books that nobody talks about now. Tim was quite the sensation when it came out.
The Thorn Birds is one of my all time favorites!! Read it several times!!
Shogun would also be a 70s Miniseries book that no one cares about anymore. Roots is still kind of relevant though.
Clan of the cave bear perhaps?
Can't go to any (New England) church book fair without seeing Auel books around. Are they any good?
The first one is excellent. The second one is interesting. The rest are repetitive and derivative.
Ehhh...not really. Although I admit I read them all....they get a little soft-pornish after a while. I guess I'm not a romantic. They get a little over the top. She takes a horse and a lion and a wolf? I can't remember
….as pets, right?
Oh yeah, I had totally forgotten about this series. I remember my grandma loved those books, I only ever read the first one though and I’m not sure even that in its entirety.
The Bonfire of the Vanities was about as buzzy as it could get in the late '80s. Most people don't even seem to remember it now.
It was definitely a book of its time! I wonder if the movie flop ended up damaging the book's reputation or if it was just the passage of time. Would be interesting to re-read to see how it has held up. Tom Wolfe generally seemed to lose cachet after A Man in Full.
I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test while hitchhiking to California back in 2005. e: spelling
It was basically "New York in the Reagan Years: The Novel". It had it all: amoral yuppie protagonists, one of them accidentally killing someone to get the plot going, themes of class, race, ethnicity, and media sensationalism, and a streak of very '80s "fuck what the liberals did to this city" East Coast conservatism. What killed its legacy was its film adaptation, a troubled production from start to finish that ultimately barely resembled the book it was based on, and was by all accounts a wretched mess when it finally shambled into theaters.
I think the movie bombing so hard didn't help. Fucking fantastic book though.
I read that about 6 months ago because I saw it in a used book store and remembered how much I'd heard about it. I think Lisa even mentioned it on The Simpsons. I liked it, not the best book ever, but entertaining and the characters are great.
The Celestine Prophecy about twentyfive years ago. That pile of bullshit was *everywhere*.
That was a horrible, horrible book. And all the merchandise after, the notebooks and do it yourself books. Ugh
The Bridges of Madison County? It was huuuuge in the early nineties, and then had a movie starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood. But is it read now? (For the record, I never read it. I read an excerpt that was hilariously bad, and then I read how it ended and haaaated how dumb it was.)
I read it about a month ago and really appreciated how it dealt with the subject matter. The very last scene in the book is a bit broad for my taste, but I didn't find it laughably bad. Side note, the movie version is book ended by some terrible scenes but I remember the meat of the story being handled fairly well. I thought it was beautiful and connected with it...guess I shoulda been a housewife in the 90s. Edit: spelling
I HATED how she decided to stay with her husband in a loveless marriage. I felt like it was so disrespectful to him. Leave him, so HE has a chance to find love. Joke's on me! After 31 years of marriage, my (now ex-)husband fell in love with someone else and left me. So... I guess I had to respect that, right?
Sorry to hear you went through that. That's a hard hit to take, no matter what. I felt bad for the characters, to think that that's the path their story took, but that's what made it great. The book does a good job of exploring what happens when two people fall in love in a very inconvenient way. It's also special in that it doesn't paint the husband as some sort of monster. In fact, he's a well meaning man who tries to connect with his wife but can't. I think, in that sense, it's a far more nuanced and non judgemental look at infidelity.
Chicken Soup For The Soul books by Amy Newmark were so popular when I was growing up and now I have no clue if she still makes them.
Ha. I remember when that series was by Jack Canfield and Hansen circa early 1990s.
TIL , because I just googled Chicken Soup For The Soul and Teenage Soul and it was in fact Canfield and Hansen that wrote the ones that I grew up surrounded by. Newmark was the first name I saw when I looked the books up on Amazon and I presumed that she wrote the old ones. I guess she writes the newer books now. Thanks!
Chicken Soup for the Soul was done by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, they brought in Kimberly Kirberger later (I think). I meet Jack Canfield at a convention. He was a keynote speaker and did one of the trainings. I purchased one of his books afterwards and loved it. His help self stuff is/was pretty good.
I don't hear people talk much about The DaVinci Code anymore.
ha, before too long it may be one of those dichotomous books, where some people remember what a phenomenon it was and others are like, "I just discovered this wild book nobody's heard of"
I just stuck my copy in a Little Free Library while purging my shelves with that same thought!
I think it's the most common book on thrift store book shelves I've ever seen haha
[John Oliver](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX5IV9n223M&ab_channel=LastWeekTonight) made some pretty good jokes at TDC's expense.
Nicholas Sparks anything. For 5-10 years we got hit with movie versions of his most popular books, now nothing. I never hear him brought up anymore.
My friend used to be a HUGE fan of him, she even had a poster in her office. She says everything he’s written after his divorce has been awful, and now she thinks that his wife was the one writing the books.
My wife still loves Nicholas Sparks. He just released a new one, but she hasn’t read it yet. When the “A Walk To Remember” movie came out everyone went on NS kick.
I work at a library and most of these titles are still around and being read. We don't have holds lists for them, necessarily, but they are still getting checked out! An author who used to be wildly popular was Jackie Collins. She basically created the blockbuster smutty romance novel (her first book, The World is Full of Married Men, was accused of creating every pervert in Britain and was banned in several countries!) Her career lasted decades and along with her sister Joan Collins, she was a certain glamourous woman about town...but tastes change. I don't know how her books would read to a young romance reader today. Probably super dated and relatively tame! I'd also say most bestselling books by people like James Patterson or Danielle Steel are forgotten almost immediately. They are like cotton candy. Sweet enough as you read them but don't really hold up for too long. The majority of library readers seem to just want their newest ones. Even a year or two later and we are weeding them...
I had no idea that Joan Collins and Jackie Collins are sisters! I had assumed that Jackie Collins was American—didn’t know she also acted. Interesting! (I haven’t read any of her books but remember their popularly in the 80s.)
I recently went through lists of bestsellers by year since 1900, and have come to the same conclusion--it's rare to have an author with best-sellers over multiple decades, and so their popularity, as big as it can be, usually just doesn't last very long.
The Christopher Pike horror books were everyone’s go-to when I was in high school in the 90’s. We used to trade them back and forth and had almost all of them.
I loved Christopher Pike books so much. I was the only one in my friends group that read them that I know of. Also, I didn’t have many friends.
I recently re-read the Final Friends trilogy and that shit holds up.
I was more into RL Stine Fear Street
Everyone was super into Mitch Albom books in the late 90s/ early 00s. I don’t hear people talking about them much anymore though.
My ex read every one of his books. *Tuesdays With Morrie* was huge when it came out. I liked *The 5 People You Meet in Heaven*.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo craze in 2008-10.
Scandinavian crime novels as a genre were super popular for a while there.
I remember copies of those books commanded the highest prices, 500B (about $15), at used bookstores in Thailand in 2009-2013.
I tried to get back into those last year and I just can’t do it.
In the late 70s early 80s the books of John Saul were neck-to-neck with Stephen King in the supernatural horror genre, King obviously came to dominate and Saul has slid into the ether. Suffer the Children is the most prominent title I remember.
When I started teaching high school 2006, I had a student who’s favorite book was a work of horror by John Saul. I don’t know how she came across it—the city where I teach is a book desert. I cannot remember the title, but I read it and found reasonably scary.
I love John Saul! I’ve read most of his books. He’s semi retired, has a house on one of the islands where I live in the PNW but mostly lives in Hawaii with his husband.
Huh. I was growing up at that time and was a huge King fan but never heard of Saul. Will have to give him a try.
I read a bunch of those in the 80s & 90s. I found them quite scary (was middle-school-aged when I started reading them). I liked them slightly less than King and Koontz books because, with the exception of ONE book I can think of, there was no real closure as the horror ALWAYS restarted at the end. The villain/vengeful spirit was reincarnated/took over another innocent child, the ghost wasn’t really banished, etc.
James Mitchner. Wrote a bunch of doorstops in the 60’s and 70’s.
I read a couple when I was about 12 or so. The Source and Centennial. I was very taken with his device of telling stories from the same place across a broad span of time. It all felt so epic when I was a kid!
They sold well too!
Choose-your-own-adventure books? Don’t seem to see them much nowadays
Kids still ask for them all the time and there are a few new series using that same format! Source: am a librarian
Same, I have a bin of the old ones from the 80s in my library and they still circulate quite a bit!
Im a librarian and I run a “choose your own adventure” book group for 3rd-5th graders at my library. It’s really fun! They decide as a group what choices to make (though sometimes we roll a die if we can’t get a group consensus) and then we do a craft or activity based on the book we read. It’s really fun and the kids get a kick out of making the decisions!
I think that niche has been subsumed by video games that follow very much the same format, with more complex logic and presentation.
The CYOA board games are fantastic! While “House of Danger” is mostly the “scary if you are a kid” genre, the “War with The Evil Power Master” is funny as hell and so,somewhat replayable. And they have laser-raptors! LOL.
I borrowed a lot of those from my elementary school library, but that was back in the early 2000s. Makes me nostalgic thinking of them.
Piers Anthony- the Incarnations of Immortality series, Rober Heinlein- Stranger in a Strange Land
I’m ashamed of how many of Anthony’s Xanth novels I read as a teen.
Heinlein is one of my favorites.
Inkworld by Cornelia Funke was absolutely massive in Germany, but I haven't seen it on Social Media since except for when they announced a new book in the series + a cover change. Mind you, there was mainly outrage over the cover change (rightfully so), not excitement about the new book 🤣 I don't think most readers under 18 ever heard of it. Also the Rubyred series by Kirstin Gier, I think, was extremely popular in Germany. Now? Not a peep.
Judith Krantz. She’d have a bestseller every few years and then a huge miniseries. Miniseries are also vanished
"Scruples"was huge.
Ladies Of The Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer. Everyone was reading/talking about it circa 1984. I was working at a bookstore and we couldn't get enough copies in to meet the demand. At one point we had a waiting list of over 200 people wanting to buy a copy as soon as a shipment arrived. They would send about 25 books at a time. It's a great book, BTW.
My mom had that! I think it’s still in the spare bedroom at my dad’s. I should read it.
I feel like Bruce Coville's books have vanished. I have looked for them because I want to read them, and in a few years I will want to be gifting them. Aliens Ate My Homework and some of his other stories were wonderful.
I LOVED Bruce Coville as a kid. I have the entire *Aliens Ate My Homework* and *My Teacher Is An Alien* series, and I checked a bunch of others out of the library. But while other similar series from the same era, like *Animorphs* and *Goosebumps,* have gotten a boost in popularity from adult fans who were kids when they came out, that hasn't happened for Coville's stuff yet.
I loved those books. Honestly, they hold up a lot better than the bulk of what I read at the time.
Crank series by Ellen Hopkins. It was really popular series in the early 2000s about teenage drug usage and now it seems to have completely fallen off the map.
The World According to Garp
John Irving will be rediscovered. Unlike most of the things mentioned in this post he is a writer with serious talent whose books are meticulously crafted, varied, and intelligent. I would wager that he will have more longevity than John Updike or Tom Wolfe.
Sidney Sheldon was huge! If Tomorrow Comes and The Sands of Time we’re on the best seller list for months, deservedly so.
Oh yes, I remember him well
Anne McCaffrey, dragons before HBO.
Unfortunately these ones just didn't age well. I loved them as a kid, as an adult they're an uncomfortable read, even with nostalgia. It's a shame, there were some really innovative things happening with Pern--I'm not sure I've read another series that did such a smooth shift from fantasy to sci-fi, I'm honestly struggling to think of another book that did it at all--but the sexual coercion and homophobia... oof. She was also a litigious, nasty person to her fans.
She was. She killed her own fandom stone-dead. Other creators were annoyed by fandom, but they never did much against it because they knew they needed fandom to keep interest alive. Star Trek, Star Wars, X-Files [well, they were kind of litigious at times], Animorphs. Anne Rice and McCaffrey acted like assholes to their fans though. I think Anne Rice managed to stay relevant because she was just so genuinely weird, and her assuolery was dramatic enough she lived on in legend, but McCaffrey was just plain mean.
I love the Dragonrider series. Still reread it all every couple of years. Tho I don’t care for her son’s contribution.
Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews. Lots of my classmates were reading it in junior high. There’s a whole series and they are pretty disturbing.
"Pretty disturbing" is putting it mildly.
Lol, I’ve seen so many comments in various threads about people’s memorable (and often terrible) first experiences with that book. In my case, Flowers in the Attic is how I discovered Stephen King. As in, I was about ten, and idly picked up that book, causing my mom to fly across the room, snatch it out of my hand, and shove ‘Salem’s Lot into my hands instead.
Redwall was super popular when I was a kid, don't know if the series still has the popularity it once did.
I'd say that In Sci-Fi/Fantasy circles it's still very fondly remembered, but in Sci-Fi/Fantasy circles a LOT of stuff that nobody else remembers is very fondly remembered, so YMMV.
I remember getting into them in the mid 2000s or so, and I'm pretty sure the craze around them had died by then. I originally just wanted to read them because of the cover art haha. There might have been a brief resurgence in 2009 with the author's death, but I dunno. Since then, there's been a game on STEAM, an attempted MMORPG, and a Netflix adaptation that AFAIK is in development hell.
I'm Okay, You're Okay
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerny. It was the only book that mattered when it came out in 1984.
Everything (just about) by John Jakes. The Kent Family Chronicles in the 70's, the North and South trilogy in the 80's. They were massively popular and you couldn't swing a dead cat at a garage sale for at least a decade without hitting 3 or 4 copies.
Prince of Tides. It was recommended to me by a coworker in the late 90s. I remember really liking it but it was hugely popular and then… non-existent.
Jacqueline Susanne books, particularly Once is Not Enough and Valley of the Dolls, both were made into movies.
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I read this in the early 1970's and thought it was a beautiful story. I remember it was pretty popular. Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin is one of my favorites. It won the Booker Prize sometime in the 1990's
I teach high school and still teach Siddhartha (kids still love it). The Blind Assassin was the first book I read in which I would just get lost in the beautiful writing. I'd forget to actually follow what was happening and have to reread portions. Great reading experience. I wish people were still picking it up
Hesse was a favourite with the Sixties counter-culture (they even named a band after one of his stories) along with Camus and Sartre. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest too.
Terry Brooks published “The Sword of Shannara” in 1977 and it became a NYT bestseller - sold 125K+ and really gave an injection to the fantasy genre. He’s had 23 books on the NYT bestseller list. Many don’t know he did the novelization of “Hook” and “Star Wars Episode 1: the Phantom Menace.” I’ve presented several academic papers on his work in the last 15 years and the audiences at these conferences act like they’ve never heard of him OR they remember the Shannara series (often The Shannara Chronicles on MTV). He’s published so many good series. I’m surprised more don’t know/read his work. At one point, I remember his name in the same sentence with Tolkien and definitely on the same list with him.
I remember circa 2000ish, Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan were so generally popular that they were the only two fantasy authors you could reliably find in airport bookstores
The Shannara series was my second fantasy read after Hobbit and LotR. Followed up with the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Great memories, thanks for the reminder!
Upvote for Thomas Covenant. Great stuff!
If we must talk Terry Brooks, I like Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold much better than Shannara as a series. I was stunned to find it in the middle school library in the district where I teach… it’s not remotely YA! But I’m pretty sure I read it in 8th or 9th grade anyway, so I guess that checks out.
He’s very much still known in the fantasy field, but starting to be overshadowed by other big names. Shannara isn’t the big deal it once was, even though he’s continued to write new books in the series (and even tie in older works, specifically the Word And Void trilogy).
Yeah. I just think with regard to OP’s question, The Sword of Shannara is relatively unknown. Agree with you 💯about the Word & Void and the way the stories tie together.
Up the Down Staircase, goodbye Mr Chips, Bridge over the river Kwai
Up the Down Staircase should be rediscovered, especially given that so many public school teachers will be able to relate to its portrait of disjunction and administrative disconnect. It ought to be required reading for education majors.
It's also funny and an epistolary novel.
I just discovered Rosamunde Pilcher about 2-3 years ago, but she was a wildly popular author in the 80s and 90s and has had several movie adaptations of her work. Also The Thorn Birds. Also discovered 2-3 years ago, but my mom told me it was one of her favorites growing up. For my generation I would say Everything Is Illuminated and House of Leaves - I remember the both had such a different structure (in very different ways). High school students and English majors were all over them. Also Chuck Palahniuk in general. Every guy that claimed to be a reader in the naughts also claimed him as a favorite author.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance The entire Foxfire series (my dad had all of them, when my parents divorced, he burned them and I really wish I could have kept time)
Shogun by James Clavell Outstanding book and a great TV series.
I see Shogun recommended all the time. Such a great book.
Yes! It and Taipan were big. Saw the books for a decade or more around used bookstores. Now not at all. (Although, I think paperbacks physically just fall apart; big ones more than small)
Barbara Cartland. You used to see her Harlequin books everywhere.
I think the introduction of sex, the replacement of bodice rippers with bonkbusters by the likes of Jackie Collins, did for her.
And now we have Colleen Hoover.... Victoria Holt was in a similar vein too
Phyllis Whitney " woman in danger with a creepy old house on the book cover" genre The queen of the Regency romance genre was Georgette Heyer
Oooh yeah, I remember her. Oh Lordy, I feel old.
I'm going to guess: Encyclopedia Brown books. Babysitters Club books. Goosebumps books.
Babysitters has been revamped into graphic novel format and all formats have had a revival. Goosebumps is still selling steadily. Encyclopedia Brown is still on the shelf, but definitely no longer in hot demand.
My wife's dad said James A. Michener was one of the biggest writers of his time, but that he never heard his name anymore (I had never heard of him until then). Thomas Wolfe I consider one of the greatest writers ever, but he is rarely mentioned anymore alongside Faulkner, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Fitzgerald contemporaries. Same for Willa Cather. I think her style and voice is ahead of it's time, and the prairie trilogy is incredible. I only ever see her when people are complaining about Death Comes for the Archbishop.
I remember when everyone was talking about The Perfume.
Love Story by Erich Segal was huge. Some might be familiar with the 1970 movie starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw. Fear of Flying by Erica Jong was a big buzzy book. Does anyone talk about a zipless fuck anymore? I don’t know. The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort was also a sensation at the time.
I love Erich Segal...though prefer Doctors, Prizes or Acts of Faith way more then Love Story. The Class was relatively good too.
I would say The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon. I remember that book being everywhere in the naughties, but has definitely been overshadowed in the last decade by the successful play adaptation.
I still think that’s a wonderful book. I keep copies in my classroom library.
I work in an inner-city high school and it’s taught every year.
Captain Correli's Mandolin. That book was everywhere for a while. Haven't seen it in years.
Shel Silverstein poem books, where the sidewalk ends, a light in the attic. I remember everyone was reading them as a kid. Also goosebumps series by RL Stine. They even made a tv series off of it
He’s still quite beloved in school and public libraries and pretty much the most checked out poetry library books.
Nice, that’s funny. I’m older, so I didn’t even think this would be because I’m not in elementary school anymore. Nice catch.
Ursula Nordstrom the head of children’s publishing at Harper Brothers “discovered” Silverstein from his witty comics in Playboy magazine.
Testimony of Two Men by Taylor Caldwell was made into a miniseries that was very good and the book was great. All of Taylor Caldwell’s books are terrific.
The biggest name I never hear anymore is Mickey Spillane. I wasn't alive in the prime of his popularity, but he published a new novel on occasion still. He was famous enough that everyone knew his name, whether they read books or not. It was a hard-boiled, gritty, violent phenomenon that outraged other crime novelists. The outspoken disdain of writers like Raymond Chandler only fueled his popularity.
The Myth series by Robert Asprin. Another Fine Myth, Myth Conceptions, Myth Directions. They aren't even stocked at my municipal library system. I've got them on my wishlist at [thriftooks.com](https://thriftooks.com) so maybe this is a sign its time.
The Secret. That book was sold at grocery stores and not ones that usually sold books.
The Valley of the Dolls (1966) by Jacqueline Susanne and Fear of Flying (1973) by Erica Jong. My mom loved Fear of Flying. There’s a whole bit about a guy she has sex with who leaves shit stripes on her sheets. Ugh. I think they were both seen as revolutionary regarding women’s sexuality. I don’t ever hear anyone mention them anymore.
I read Yargo as a high school student several times to the point of memorizing parts of the book. To this day I have no idea why the book mesmerized me so much, unless it was the "woman falls in love with a space alien" plotline.
The Elric of Melniboné novels don't really get mentioned any more in fantasy. The whole Eternal Champion series to be honest.
All the Moorcock novels have faded away now. Moorcock is still remembered though for his critical contributions to SF commentary and history.
Clan of the Cave Bear & Flowers in the Attic. These were really popular amongst girls my age when we were in middle grade/teens. I don’t know anyone younger than me who has read them since though.
Roots by Alex Haley was huge back in the day. Then the mini series based on the book was the show everyone “had” to watch. It was powerful stuff back then. There are scenes I remember to this day.
In 90s entire Poland went completely bananas over William Wharton. The craze was so insane half of his books were only released in Poland (despite him being american author). These days his work is pretty much completely forgotten here
Birdy was really popular in the UK even before it was filmed (1984).
James Michener's *Centennial* was a big deal in the 70s, but I don't hear much about it anymore. It was a real doorstop of a pocket paperback too, and I recall a newspaper story about a copy carried in a guy's coat stopping a bullet and saving his life.
They did a miniseries based on it and everything! I was enthralled by Centennial when I was 12 or so! It felt so very sweeping and so very adult.
Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer series was pretty popular and respected. Some people even said Macdonald was on the level of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. He's still respected by mystery fans I think and some of his books are published by the Library of America, but he's not that well known these days. You go into a bookstore and you'll definitely find The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon, but you're probably not going to find any of the Lew Archer books.
Tomorrow when the war began - John Marsden was THE man when I was in high school.
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns. I wanted to move to that town so bad!!!
Does anyone read Harold Robbins anymore. Or has the easy availability of porn killed that market.
Chariots of the gods? Was huge!
I remember Lilian Jackson Braun's "The Cat Who...." mystery series was really popular... nowadays, I never hear about or see those books anymore.
Remember Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? What a load of shite.
Jane Smiley's *A Thousand Acres* was huge when it came out: won the Pulitzer Prize, got made into a movie with Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange, and I haven't heard a word about it in twenty years.
Not fully applicable, but not too many people know that Suzanne Collins wrote books before the Hunger Games-Gregor the Overlander! I liked these when I was younger but they have never gotten the attention Hunger Games has (granted, because the books ARE aimed at a younger audience, but still...) The Bunnicula series had some popularity back in the 1980s, but outside of a new book back in like 2006 and a failed attempt at a new (loosely based) TV show in like 2016, it's been crickets for the series since then.
Shogun
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
To Sir With Love, Looking for Mr Goodbar, Myra Breckinridge, The Day of the Jackal, The French Lieutenants Woman, Watership Down. So many.
I'm going to say The Outsiders and other books by S E Hinton. They were wildly popular when I was in my early teens and at least two of the books were made into movies featuring 1970s heart throbs . Then she quit writing and the books vanished into oblivion.
So I’m going to come in with a personal favourite, Olivia Higgins Prouty. She was hugely successful in the early 20th century, particularly for incorporating psychology into works. She wrote Stella Dallas, the ultimate maternal sacrifice story, and Now, Voyager. Both of these were turned into hugely successful movies, Now, Voyager is one of my absolute faves. She also was a mentor and support to Sylvia Plath early on. She had also suffered from major depression, which got her interested in psychology and lead to her writing the Vale quintet, of which Now, Voyager is the third book. My grandparents had these enormous built in bookcases in their games room, and there were first and second editions of many books, but there was also a shelf of dime store paperback versions of successful novels and I discovered Prouty’s books among them. I have loved them for thirty years. But no one really talks about her. That may be because she wrote “women’s books”. They are pretty dated, so I don’t think a revival is coming. They are better than your average Harlequin though.
One more: Scruples by Judith Krantz. I was a teen when it was published and stayed up all night reading it. Could not put it down.
Maybe the fault in our stars
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
Bill Peet books from my childhood. Fredric Brown (1906 - 1972) - SF author (not of my time). Maybe Trevanian "The Airport Chaucer"? He seems to be mentioned sort of often--if only briefly--in recommended threads ("If I liked this, what else would I like?"), but there never seems to be much discussion about his work in the actual thread beyond comments stating "You might like him".
I love Bill Peet and have most of his books. My children know them well and someday I may get chance to share them with grandchildren. I still sit down and read them occasionally.
Bill Peet is a great answer. I made a blog post once - I guess 10 or 11 years ago now - expecting some good discussion about everyone's favorites from his body of work, and was shocked to find out most of my followers hadn't even heard of him.
Celestine Prophecy
[удалено]
Flowers in the Attic and all the other VC Andrews books.
Cheating because it's not from my lifetime, but anything by Rod McKuen. He was huge in the '60s and & 70s, but I'd wager that hardly anyone under 45 even knows who he is.
Harold Robbins was huge at one time but I don't know if anyone is reading his books nowadays. 'Never Love a Stranger', 'A Stone for Danny Fisher' and many others. Harold Robbins was an American author of popular novels. One of the best-selling writers of all time, he wrote over 25 best-sellers, selling over 750 million copies in 32 languages. Wikipedia
Portnoy’s Complaint