Ten North Frederick by John O’Hara wins the National Book Award.

Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Juan Ramón Jiménez wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.

C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle wins the Carnegie Medal, not his best, but it was about time.

Published in 1956:
Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck. A fictionalized biography of Ci-xi, aka Tz’u Hsi, the Last Empress of China. I have this book on my shelves, and it’s not just fictionalized—it’s Fiction using the names and circumstances of historical characters. But it’s a good story and it does give a flavor of China in the latter 19th century.

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. I have so many favorites when it comes to C.S. Lewis, but Till We have Faces is such a wonderful re-telling of the Cupid and Psyche myth. There are so many layers to the story. I must re-read this one soon.

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz. This book is the first in Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, and it’s a possible read for my North Africa Challenge this year.

The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier (also called Escape from Warsaw). I love this children’s novel set in the aftermath of World War II about refugee children from Poland who manage to be reunited with their father in Switzerland despite many obstacles.

Dead Man’s Folly by Agatha Christie. I remember this one in which Poirot and mystery writer Ariadne Oliver arrange a murder hunt on a large estate, and the whole thing turns truly deadly. The character of Ariadne Oliver, possibility Agatha Christie’s alter-ego, adds a lot of fun to the story.

Might as Well Be Dead and Three Witnesses by Rex Stout. More Nero Wolfe. THere’s never too much Nero Wolfe, even at 300+ pounds.

Eloise by Kay Thompson. My urchins love Eloise, but I think she’s a brat, especially in the movies that are based on Thompson’s stories about this six-year old girl who lives on the top floor of the Plaza Hotel in New York City. We disagree.

Martin Gardner begins his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American magazine. Have any of you ever looked at the classic collections of math games and puzzles by Martin Gardner? Classic fun for math geeks like my Engineer Husband.

A Fable by William Faulkner wins the National Book Award and also the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Halldor Laxness(?) wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Best-selling fiction book of 1955: Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk. I’ve only read Wouk’s Caine Mutiny and his two WW II novels, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance.

Published in 1955:
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is published in Paris. Nabokov’s controversial novel doesn’t make it to the U.S. until 1958.

Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie. I like the way there was usually at least one Christie novel published every year, beginning in 1920 with The Mysterious Affair at Styles and ending in 1976 with her last Miss Marple tale, Sleeping Murder. One could always ask for the latest Agatha Christie mystery for Christmas.

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. I wrote here about the family trauma we experienced when we watched the movie based on this book several years ago.

Tunnel in the Sky by Robert Heinlein. Did anyone else read this and other science fiction/space travel books by Heinlein when you were a teenager? I remember them as good clean fun, but am I remembering correctly? And would they be terribly dated nowadays?

Andersonville by Mackinlay Kantor. Semicolon review here.

The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis. There’s always a bit of a kerfuffle about whether to read this one first since it tells about the creation of Narnia. I says read the Narnia books in publication order, beginning with the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. By the time you read the first five books, you’ll want to know where Narnia came from and how it all began.

The Mouse That Roared by Leonard Wibberley. Reviewed at Why Homeschool. I read this book a long time ago, too, and I remember thinking it was hilariously funny.

Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo. Classic Mexican literature of the twentieth century. Pedro Paramo is a short book, but rather confusing for someone who’s reading in a second, acquired language, as I was when I read this one back in college. I wonder if I could still read anything half this complicated in Spanish?

The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien. Even as a teenager, I saw the Christian echoes in this book that never really mentions God or Christianity. Everyone should read, listen to, or at least watch the movie version of The Lord of the Rings. Everyone.

How many of the books published in 1955 have you read or at least encountered? Is there anything on that list I shouldn’t miss?

The National Book Award went to The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. My mom once took a course in Modern Jewish literature, and I typed her papers for her. I learned all about Saul Bellow, Nathaniel West and Bernard Malamud by osmosis, so to speak, enough to know that Malamud would be my favorite of the trio. In fact, I actually read Malamud’s The Fixer (1966) and at least started Augie March, but Bellow didn’t interest me.

Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Newbery Medal for children’s literature: And Now Miguel by Joseph Krumgold. Krumgold’s story of a boy growing up in a shepherding family in New Mexico moves much too slowly for today’s children. But it’s still a good book.

Published in 1954:
Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Does every American teenager read Lord of the Flies in ninth or tenth grade? And what do they learn from it, I wonder? I remember the story as a wonderfully vivid illumination of the doctrine of original sin and how we are all idol worshippers at heart. But I don’t know if even my daughter got that out of it when she read it a couple of years ago.

Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya. Semicolon review here.

The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis. Maybe my favorite of the Narnia books. Some people accuse Lewis of being racist in the book, portraying Arabic-style cultures as evil and depraved. But I see the story as a contrast between freedom and slavery, and it doesn’t matter the exact cultural tradition of the people that embody those two ways of living.

The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, first two parts of The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. All I can say about this item on the list is that 1954 was a very good year–and 1955 with the completion of the trilogy will be even better. I discovered Tolkien when I was a teenager, in his first phase of “coolness”, and these books and a Bible are the books I would most want to have with me on a deserted island or anywhere else.

Katherine by Anya Seton. I read this historical fiction classic about Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster, mistress and then third wife of John of Gaunt (14th century), a few years ago. It was a great book, and I recommend it.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison wins The National Book Award for 1953.

Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Not my favorite Hemingway. I can appreciate Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls, but the whole man against nature angst of Old Man and the Sea is way outside my enjoyment zone.

The Christopher Award, presented by The Christophers, a Christian organization founded in 1945 by the Maryknoll priest James Keller, to honor books, movies and television specials that affirm the highest values of the human spirit”, is given to the book Karen by Marie Killilea. I read the book Karen, written by her mom about a girl who lives with cerebral palsy, when I was a teenager, and I found it quite inspiring. Cerebral palsy was a much misunderstood condition, both then and even now, and it was educational for me to read about Karen and her family, dedicated Catholics who were determined to help Karen to grow up to be the best that she could be in spite of her physical challenges.

Ann Nolan Clark’s The Secret of the Andes wins the Newbery Medal. Charlotte’s Web wins a Newbery Honor. This year of Newbery picks is often cited as a mistake by critics who think it evident that Charlotte’s Web is the better book and should have won the Newbery. I don’t disagree, but I have read Secret of the Andes. It’s a fine story and works quite well as a read aloud. Ms. Clark should be accorded due respect for her writing and not always compared to E.B. White.

Sir Winston Churchill wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Also published in 1953:
Journey Cake, Ho! by Ruth Sawyer. A picture book based on the story of the Gingerbread Boy, but set in Appalachia with a “journey cake” substituting for the the gingerbread boy.

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin. Can anyone recommend (or not) this acclaimed novel?

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. My mom took a Jewish American literature class in graduate school when I was a teen, and read some of her books, including this one by Saul Bellow. I can’t say I understood it or liked it at the time. I wonder what I would think if I read it again now.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Classic science fiction, dystopian fiction, and indictment of book-burning and censorship.

The Long Good-bye by Raymond Chandler.

After the Funeral and A Pocketful of Rye by Agatha Christie.

The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas. The Robe is one of my all-time favorite books, and it became the number one bestseller of 1953. The novel tells the story Marcellus, a Roman tribune who ends up carrying out the crucifixion of Jesus and winning Jesus’ robe as the soldiers gamble at the foot of the cross.

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis. My favorite scene from Narnia is in this book: Puddleglum and Eustace and Jill are trapped underground in an kingdom ruled over by the Green Lady (the White Witch again), and they are about to be spellbound by her fascinating voice. Then Puddleglum says:

“One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a playworld which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”

Go, Puddleglum!

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming. The first James Bond novel.

The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Miller’s play uses the Salem Witch trials as a metaphor for and illumination of the McCarthy and the Committee on Un-American Activites (U.S. House of Representatives) blacklisting of suspected communists in government, entertainment and business. Its initial production on Broadway in 1953 won a Tony Award.

Set in 1953:
The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer, 2008. Recommended at Literary License.

Keeping Score by Linda Sue Park. Semicolon review here.

Penny from Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm. Reviewed by Miss Erin. Also reviewed at Jen Robinson’s Book Page.