Following on from the success of the last reading club – 1920 – Simon and I had a bit of a chat and discussion about what year we should choose for the next reading club. And we both felt happy at moving back to a mid-century position, so drum roll please – the next club will be 1956! 😀
A quick look online reveals all manner of interesting titles from 1956, both well-known and quite obscure. I know that there are a number of books I’m very keen to get to, and although it’s six months down the road, the next club will come round very quickly. So what are you waiting for? You have plenty of notice to start exploring titles, gathering books, making lists and reading! I do hope you’ll all join Simon and I for the #1956Club – it will be such fun! 😀
Apr 26, 2020 @ 13:39:19
Really looking forward to it! I will start investigating my shelves…
Apr 26, 2020 @ 14:02:56
Happy hunting! There are some interesting and varied books published in 1956!
Apr 26, 2020 @ 13:48:26
Already excited!
Apr 26, 2020 @ 14:02:31
Me too! Looks to be a great year!
Apr 26, 2020 @ 14:05:43
I will do better this time!
I have four lovely books from 1956 on the TBR The Flight from the Enchanter by Iris Murdoch; A Haunted Land by Randolph Stow; Here Be Dragons by Stella Gibbons and The Fall by Albert Camus. Any suggestions for which one I should choose?
Apr 26, 2020 @ 14:12:39
Oooh, a lovely list to choose from. The only one I’ve read is the Camus and that was a very long time ago so I can remember nothing about it. So I may well choose that one! Will be interested in your thoughts about any of these that you choose!
Apr 26, 2020 @ 14:22:29
Hooray, a year in the 1950s! Marvellous choice. I’ll try my best to join this one, health status permitting. xx
Apr 26, 2020 @ 16:18:32
I thought you’d be pleased with this one, Jacqui. Hope you can join in! 😀
Apr 26, 2020 @ 14:44:58
I definitely have some on the TBR pile from 1956: Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck and Madame Solario (a Persephone) by Gladys Huntington. I also have Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz on my to-read list this year. Thanks for hosting, I’m looking forward to it!
Apr 26, 2020 @ 16:18:12
Oooh, nice choices. I have an ancient copy of Madame Solario pre Persephone – if I can find it….
Apr 26, 2020 @ 14:58:46
Yep! I’m in……now to start looking!
Apr 26, 2020 @ 16:17:49
Excellent! Look forward to seeing what you read!
Apr 26, 2020 @ 15:35:39
Sounds good. I enjoy looking for the books for these Year Reads nearly as much as the actual read.
Apr 26, 2020 @ 16:17:35
LOL! Yes, half the fun is making piles of potential reads, even if we don’t get round to actually reading them! It’s a good year, though.
Apr 26, 2020 @ 16:59:10
One immediately grabs my attention; it’s one I’ve been meaning to re-read for years – but I’ll say no more.
Apr 26, 2020 @ 17:32:26
Excellent! Look forward to it! 😀
Apr 26, 2020 @ 16:27:04
Yay, 1956 will be really interesting, so many great potential titles.
Apr 26, 2020 @ 16:29:39
I know – it’s a good one, isn’t it? Time to start planning ahead…. ;D
Apr 26, 2020 @ 18:41:00
Off the top of my head I know which one I shall be rereading and which I fortuitously ordered in a new edition: Mishima’s Temple of the Golden Pavilion, one of my favourite Japanese books! Also, a great year for drama, so might do a few plays.
Apr 26, 2020 @ 18:59:43
Oh lovely! That’s on my list of possibles, along with a lot of others – I think it’s going to be very hard to choose!!
Apr 26, 2020 @ 19:52:20
Thanks for the announcement- it really brightened my day to start thinking about what I want to read.
Apr 26, 2020 @ 20:08:04
Marvellous! It’s fun to plan ahead, and half the joy is going through the stacks, searching out books and having a little excuse to maybe shop…. ;D
Apr 26, 2020 @ 20:19:54
WONDERFUL MARVELLOUS GREAT FANTASTIC YEAR !
1956 is the year that Gallimard published The Roots of Heaven by Romain Gary. It won the Prix Goncourt.
Now I hope there will be new readers for this excellent novel.
Apr 26, 2020 @ 20:31:40
LOL. I thought that might please you! 😀
Apr 26, 2020 @ 21:03:46
I’ve looked into the books published that year (I love to do that) and stumbled upon great ones.
I’ll be in, unless something goes in the way.
Apr 27, 2020 @ 08:40:02
It’s fun searching out titles – look forward to seeing what you come up with! 😀
Apr 26, 2020 @ 20:24:34
a vintage year by the looks of it!
Apr 26, 2020 @ 20:31:19
It seems so! A lot of wonderful books are appearing already! 😀
Apr 26, 2020 @ 21:05:18
I like the graphic!
I’m sure there’s a few more around, too, but I see Nelson Algren’s A Walk on the Wild Side is 1956, and I own it and I haven’t read it. I’m sure there’s a few others…
And maybe by then I’ll have read all the books I piled up for 1920…
Apr 27, 2020 @ 08:39:38
It’s lovely, isn’t it? Simon does all the graphics – he’s much better than me at these!
It’s a great year and you have 6 months to get ready for it – in which time you could read all the 1920 books!!!! 😉
Apr 27, 2020 @ 03:07:57
An exciting announcement! I look forward to the read and hope to join in. Of course, I have my copy of Colette’s Cherie, which I selected for the 1920 club, staring at me (unread) from my nightstand . . .
Apr 27, 2020 @ 08:38:46
It’s a good year. And really, you could read Colette any time!
Apr 27, 2020 @ 08:58:42
Im so disappointed you didn’t choose my birth year (one year off). Would have been great fun seeing scores of people celebrating my birth :).
I’ve dig into the TBR and yeah I have one that fits this week, so it will be The Fall by Camus by me…
Apr 27, 2020 @ 10:26:03
Oh dear… sorry about that, but 1956 just looked so great! And yay for Camus – look forward to your thoughts!
Apr 27, 2020 @ 11:12:32
Apr 27, 2020 @ 11:16:25
Here are a few suggestions for those interested in crime fiction, minus the Christie title, as I’m sure that’s probably been mentioned already:
Crime Out of Mind by Delano Ames
A Dram of Poison by Charlotte Armstrong
The Beckoning Dream by Evelyn Berckman
The Blind Villain by Evelyn Berckman
Patrick Butler for the Defence by John Dickson Carr
Death in the Quadrangle by Eilis Dillon
Riddle of a Lady by Anthony Gilbert
Death in Cyprus by M M Kaye
Miss Hogg and the Bronte Murders by Austin Lee
Voyage into Violence by Frances and Richard Lockridge
The Case of the Four Friends by J C Masterman
Murder of Olympia by Margot Neville
The Canvas Dagger by Helen Reilly
I appreciate some are probably easier to find than others, but I guess that is half the fun!
Apr 27, 2020 @ 15:20:49
Thank you – some great titles there! And I have the Kaye title lurking too. I shall explore the TBR further… 😀
Apr 27, 2020 @ 13:49:38
This was a great choice, Karen, there are so many titles! 🙂 I think I will be reading A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney & The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West.
Apr 27, 2020 @ 15:16:31
It’s a great year and I hadn’t picked up that there was a West! Wonderful!
Apr 29, 2020 @ 23:41:46
How do I join?
Apr 30, 2020 @ 08:39:58
Hi Debbie, it’s very informal and all are welcome! Basically, everyone reads, explores and writes about books from the year we’re featuring. You can post on your blog, on social media, on sites like Goodreads or LibraryThing or just leave comments on my or Simon’s blogs. Simon and I have a page or a post where we collect together links to blog reviews, and you can use the lovely graphic Simon’s created if you post on your blog. I have a dedicated page for each year we’ve done on my blog, so you can have an explore if you wish and see what we’ve done for previous clubs. Hope you can join us – it’s great fun! 😀
May 01, 2020 @ 00:35:20
That sounds wonderful. Looking forward to it. Just checking though it is the year the book is set not published?
May 01, 2020 @ 08:38:49
It’s the book the year was published – you can find all sorts of handy lists on Wikipedia and Goodreads and the like. So we kind of build up a composite picture of the books published in the particular year on which we focus. It’s quite illuminating and great fun!
May 03, 2020 @ 23:40:44
Thank you! I’ll get searching for 1956!
May 04, 2020 @ 07:12:29
Fab!
Apr 30, 2020 @ 17:38:20
So far, this is one of the most appealing years. 1920 wasn’t ideal as I had already read some that I would have chosen but 1956 has a few that are on my piles. Peyton Place for example. And many more.
Apr 30, 2020 @ 20:45:38
56 certainly is a good one I think – an awful lot of choice!
May 01, 2020 @ 17:31:14
This sounds like a great year: count me in! There are already loads of great options surfacing in the comment sections (here and on Simon’s blog) but I will take a look, too, at the Canadian choices.
May 01, 2020 @ 19:39:48
Excellent – it’s a great year and I’ll be interested to see what you can bring from Canada!
May 02, 2020 @ 14:30:22
May 03, 2020 @ 10:43:10
“‘Take my camel, dear’, said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.’
One of the best opening sentences. Rose Macauley “The Towers of Trebizond.”
1956. It was a banner year!
Here are a few of my 1956 favorites;
The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
The Silver Sword/ Escape from Warsaw – Ian Serraillier
Train to Pakistan – Khushwant Singh
The 101 Dalmations – Dodie Smith
Howl – Allen Ginsberg
The Wreck of the Mary Deare – Hammond Innes
My Dog Tulip – J.R.Ackerley
Bonjour Tristesse РFran̤oise Sagan
Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes – Angus Wilson
Night – Elie Wiesel
The Doors of Perception – Aldous Huxley
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
Beyond the Black Stump – Nevil Shute
Gallipoli – Alan Moroehead
The Flight from the Enchanter – Iris Murdoch
My Family and Other Animals – Gerald Durrell
The Outsider – Colin Wilson
May 03, 2020 @ 13:02:00
It is indeed a marvellous opening, and thank you for the list of excellent suggations. So many choices for 1956!
May 04, 2020 @ 11:07:29
Woohoo! So many good titles. I have The Towers of Trebizond and I think it’s going to be my choice.
A couple of other ones that I own, Imperial Woman and My Family and Other Animals, I have already read, but I wouldn’t mind revisiting Durrell.
The ones on the shelf are priority, but there are so many others that are highly alluring.. We shall see..
May 04, 2020 @ 11:18:25
It’s a stellar year, I think – so many choices, and I’ve already pulled stacks from the shelves. It’s going to be very hard to decide!
May 18, 2020 @ 08:47:41
I shall almost certainly do my usual – read the book(s), fail to post! But it’s always fun. Now to line up some worthy contenders…
May 18, 2020 @ 08:54:32
It *is* fun and making up piles of books or lists is much of the enjoyment. And there are so many good books from that year!
May 18, 2020 @ 09:01:32
Exactly. Though I wish I got the reviews done, it’s never a wasted experience. And this year will be particularly enjoyable when it comes to making the list because off the top of my head I can’t think of a single book published in 1956! I have a whole lot of nice surprises to look forward to 😀
May 18, 2020 @ 09:34:36
You have indeed! I personally think it’s a stellar year!