I was thinking about when I read Clan of the Cave Bear and how come I never finished the rest of the books and realized that I’d read the first three book in HS. But that’s not what the OP is about, that was just the bread crumbs that led me to this subject. For reasons I can no longer recall during my sophomore year in HS the Flowers in the Attics book became immensely popular. My whole social circle as well as everyone else’s seemed to be reading those books. I seem to even remember the staff of the school getting a little concerned. Did any books tear through your HS/Workplace like that?
PS If anyone had that experience with the same series any particular reason it would have popular in 84-85?
*In case you’re interested, I was in the Army, my reading dropped off considerably.
Dune – when it came out, everybody was reading it. Very popular, and apparently a sea change in SF. Was it? I don’t know. I read some SF in my teens, mostly Ray Bradbury, and Dune was quite different from that.
I can tell by looking at the tattered dust jackets that Geek Love, Firestarter, and Gorky Park made the rounds of my workplace.
My John Saul paperbacks fell apart from lending. So did Peyton Place, my Earl Thompson books, and the first few in the Mandingo series. Guess nobody wanted to be seen buying them but me. :dubious:
Stuffy, you must be my daughter’s age. She and all her friends were reading the V.C. Andrews books. Pulpy, soapy, potboilers, but compelling, they were.
I’m not sure that reading was popular enough in my school for that to happen. My best friend was obsessed with Flowers in the attic though.
In college, a bunch of us (all women) got hooked on, of all things, Ludlum’s Bourne novels all at once. We were stealing them from each other to get some reading in.
In high school (2002 ish) it was Ender’s Game. My lit teacher recommended it to everyone, and somehow even the book-haters seemed to try it out. The next year Go Ask Alice made the rounds through my history class.
7th grade ('83-'84), it was Forever and Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones. In high school, it was the works of V.C. Andrews, not just Flowers in the Attic.
The crowd I ran with in college regarded On The Road as our bible. Of course, it was a mostly male crowd.
At my current place of employment, The Purpose-Driven Life appears to be making the rounds.
I don’t remember the title but a muckedy-muck at work decided that our department should all read what I called “that horrible fish book” which was some dribble of drivel about a lady who meets a guy who works at the Pike Street Fish Market in Seattle and loves life and how he loves his job and won’t that make us all super productive.
They sent it around with one of those routing slips so you could check your name off when you’d read it. Does “enforced compliance” count as “tearing through the workplace”?
I went to high school in the 1960s. Two very popular books were The Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies. I guess these days you’ll find those books in literature classes, but they were hot stuff then, and many kids hid their copies from parents and teachers.
I had to hide 1984 and Brave New World at about that time. And I got chewed out by my English teacher for doing a book report on Silent Spring. “That’s not appropriate.” :rolleyes:
Same thing happened to me! My eleventh grade English teacher pitched a fit when I chose Silent Spring as the subject for my nonfiction book report. The teacher snorted and said “This is poppycock. I said nonfiction.”
I don’t know if it’s ‘tearing through’ but a disproportiante number of sorority girl types at my university are obsessed with Tolkien this semester. It’s a bit unsettling to hear these girls with Alpha Kappa Whatever tee shirts and flawless hair and makeup chattering about Aragorn and Ewoyn like they were guest stars on the latest episode of Nip/Tuck.
Same here. Our library had quite a few copies, and they were always in demand.
Harry Potter made quite a splash, too, I recall. There were always some cult books; I think Where the Red Fern Grows was up there at one point. Some Judy Blume was very popular too; but it was too long ago for me to remember the titles.
Dan Brown went through our office a few years back. First one guy read Angels and Demons, thought it was good and passed it around, then withing about two-three weeks every foreigner in the office had read it and we were starting on The Da Vinci Code. Next, Digital Fortress got passed around and that was when we all agreed we were sick of Dan Brown.
Last year, 20th Century Boys, a manga series by Naoki Urasawa, suddenly became popular with everyone. I tried keeping up with it, but my interest flagged around volume 11. The rest of the office is up to volume 22 or so and eagerly awaiting the thrilling conclusion.
Another one for Flowers In the Attic. I’m fairly confident the reason was the sex. I think everyone’s copy was especially creased at the big sex scene. I think I was in the 8th grade.
Dune was big in high school, even with people who didn’t read much science fiction.
In senior year of college, Donna Tartt’s Secret History made the rounds, it seemed like everyone I knew had read it. That one was probably fueled by the fact that it was about college students who thought they were smarter than everybody else.