Exploring Books Published the Year I Was Born for the Unabridged Podcast Reading Challenge

unabridgedpod
3 hours ago
7 min read

Stack of books beside a vase with dried flowers. Text reads: Exploring books published the year I was born, for the Unabridged Reading Challenge.

Any other Bicentennial Babies out there? One of our Unabridged Podcast Reading Challenges this year asks that we read a book from the year of our birth. Since I was born in 1976, I thought I'd start researching options. Goodreads has a list called "Most popular books published in 1976: Books most frequently added to Goodreads members' shelves, updated weekly"; I also checked out Wikipedia's "1976 in literature." I'm using both as a starting point and then looking elsewhere to verify the accuracy of the information.

Here are some books I've read that were published in '76. It's been a while since I read many of them, so I don't have reviews to share. Instead, I'll share the synopses and have added commentary when possible. (Read to the end where I'll share what I hope to read for this category.)

Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle (Bookshop.org)

Synopsis: "Joan Foster is a woman with numerous identities and a talent for shedding them at will. She has written trashy gothic romances, had affairs with a Polish count and an absurd avant-garde artist, and played at being a politically engaged partner to her activist husband.

"After a volume of her poetry becomes an unexpected literary sensation, her new fame attracts a blackmailer threatening to reveal her secrets. Joan’s response is to fake her own death and flee to a hill town in Italy.

"Studded with hair-raising comic escapades and piercing psychological insights, Lady Oracle is both hilarious and profound."

Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)

Synopsis: "It is 922 A.D. The refined Arab courtier Ibn Fadlan is accompanying a party of Viking warriors back to their home. He is appalled by their customs—the gratuitous sexuality of their women, their disregard for cleanliness, and their cold-blooded sacrifices. As they enter the frozen, forbidden landscape of the North—where the day’s length does not equal the night’s, where after sunset the sky burns in streaks of color—Fadlan soon discovers that he has been unwillingly enlisted to combat the terrors in the night that come to slaughter the Vikings, the monsters of the mist that devour human flesh. But just how he will do it, Fadlan has no idea."

Until Michael Crichton died, I was a Crichton completionist (his publisher is still publishing works by him, but I haven't kept up with those). I vividly remember reading this one, which was quite different from his other books but also just as compelling as the rest.

Lois Duncan's Summer of Fear (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)

Synopsis: "From the moment Rachel's family takes in her orphaned cousin Julia, strange things start to happen. Rachel grows suspicious but soon finds herself alienated from her own life. Julia seems to have enchanted everyone to turn against her, leaving Rachel on her own to try and prove that Julia is a witch. One thing about Julia is certain-she is not who she says she is, and Rachel's family is in grave danger."

I loved, loved, loved Duncan's books and devoured them all when I was in high school.

Judith Guest's Ordinary People (Bookshop.org)

Synopsis: "One of the great bestseller of our time: the novel that inspired Robert Redford’s Oscar-winning film starring Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore

"In Ordinary People, Judith Guest’s remarkable first novel, the Jarrets are a typical American family. Calvin is a determined, successful provider and Beth an organized, efficient wife. They had two sons, Conrad and Buck, but now they have one. In this memorable, moving novel, Judith Guest takes the reader into their lives to share their misunderstandings, pain, and ultimate healing. Ordinary People is an extraordinary novel about an 'ordinary' family divided by pain, yet bound by their struggle to heal."

I read this one after I started teaching and remember absolutely sobbing throughout. I've heard great things about the film (and I'm sure I would love it, as I do most of Redford's work), but I've never watched it.

Alex Haley's Roots: The Saga of an American Family (Bookshop.org)

Synopsis: "Based off of the bestselling author's family history, this novel tells the story of Kunta Kinte, who is sold into slavery in the United States where he and his descendants live through major historic events.

"When Roots was first published forty years ago, the book electrified the nation: it received a Pulitzer Prize and was a #1 New York Times bestseller for 22 weeks. The celebrated miniseries that followed a year later was a coast-to-coast event-over 130 million Americans watched some or all of the broadcast. In the four decades since then, the story of the young African slave Kunta Kinte and his descendants has lost none of its power to enthrall and provoke.

"Now, Roots once again bursts onto the national scene, and at a time when the race conversation has never been more charged. It is a book for the legions of earlier readers to revisit and for a new generation to discover."

I read this in high school English class and watched the miniseries with my family (my mom bought the DVDs because she loved it so much). I reread it in 2022 and, while some parts of the text had aged poorly, I still found it to be a powerful read.

Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)

Synopsis: "Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly sensual, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force—a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write."

I became an Anne Rice fan in high school and read (almost) everything she wrote. Yes, I've watched the film adaptation—it's fine—but I highly recommend the recent adaptation for television. What a fantastic retelling.

Tom Robbins's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)

Synopsis: "The whooping crane rustlers are girls. Young girls. Cowgirls, as a matter of fact, all 'bursting with dimples and hormones'—and the FBI has never seen anything quite like them. Yet their rebellion at the Rubber Rose Ranch is almost overshadowed by the arrival of the legendary Sissy Hankshaw, a white-trash goddess literally born to hitchhike, and the freest female of them all.

"Freedom, its prizes and its prices, is a major theme of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. As Tom Robbins’s robust characters attempt to turn the tables on fate, the reader is drawn along on a tragicomic joyride across the badlands of sexuality, wild rivers of language, and the frontiers of the mind."

One of my friends loaned this book to me in high school, and it was a book unlike anything I'd read before. This may be one to revisit.

Anne Rivers Siddons's Heartbreak Hotel (Bookshop.org)

Synopsis: "This is the insightful, troubling tale of the coming of age of a privileged young Southern woman during the turbulent Civil Rights era.

"In Montgomery, Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr. has organized a bus boycott. In Tuscaloosa, outrage surrounds the entrance of the state university's first black student. But at little Randolph University, sweltering in the summer heat, life remains dreamily the same. At Kappa House, the sorority sisters talk of who has pinned whom, and whether they can sneak past their housemother so they can party at an out-of-town bar. Even among this privileged group, pretty, popular Kappa sister Maggie Deloach is unquestionably one of the elite...until she commits a single act of defiance and courage that forever alters the way others think of her, and how Maggie thinks of herself."

Siddons is another of those authors whose work I sought out; I read every book of hers that my library had on its shelves.

Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)

Synopsis: "Why is the land so important to Cassie's family? It takes the events of one turbulent year—the year of the night riders and the burnings, the year a white girl humiliates Cassie in public simply because she's black—to show Cassie that having a place of their own is the Logan family's lifeblood. It is the land that gives the Logans their courage and pride—no matter how others may degrade them, the Logans possess something no one can take away."

It's been years and years since I read this one, but there are still scenes that stuck with me. What a powerful work of middle-grade fiction. (This one could be perfect for the Reading Challenge, too!)

And what might I read?

I think my first new 1976 read will be

Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)

Synopsis: "Fifteen-year-old Menolly allies with magnificent dragons in the first book in the Harper Hall trilogy, set within science fiction legend Anne McCaffrey’s beloved and bestselling Dragonriders of Pern series.

"For centuries, the world of Pern has faced a destructive force known as Thread. But the number of magnificent dragons who have protected this world and the men and women who ride them are dwindling.

"As fewer dragons ride the winds and destruction falls from the sky, Menolly has only one dream: to sing, play, and weave the music that comes to her so easily—she wishes to become a Harper. But despite her great talents, her father believes that a young girl is unworthy of such a respected position and forbids her to pursue her dreams. So Menolly runs away, taking shelter in a cave by the sea. Miraculously, she happens upon nine fire lizards that could possibly save her world...and change her life forever."

I've been hearing about McCaffrey's books for years but have never read any of them; I think this year will change that. I'm looking forward to it!

#bookishfaves #seasonal #realisticfiction #fantasy #middlegrade #yalit

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