Monday, January 10, 2011

Bestsellers on the day of my birth

Over on BibiOZ.com (The Booksearch Wizard), they have a page where you can type in your birthday (use the calendar tool, it is easier to make sure that you get the right results) and the system spits out a list of the bestsellers on the day (week) of your birth (unless you were born before 1950, then you just get the bestsellers for the year).

(The link is on the topbar, far right---I could not get a clean link to the direct page.)

The fiction bestsellers for the week of my birth (ending September 5th 1965) were:

1: The Source (James Michener)
2: Up the Down Staircase (Bel Kaufman)
3: The Green Berets (Robin Moore)
4: Hotel (Arthur Hailey)
5: The Looking Glass War (John Le Carre)
6: The Man With the Golden Gun (Ian Fleming)
7: Night of Camp David (Fletcher Knebel)
8: Don't Stop the Carnival (Herman Wouk)
9: The Ambassador (Morris West)
10: The Rabbi (Noah Gordon)

The non-fiction bestsellers for the week of my birth (ending September 5th 1965) were:

1: The Making of the President 1964 (Theodore H. White)
2: Intern (Doctor X)
3: Is Paris Burning? (Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre)
4: Markings (Dag Hammarskjold)
5: Games People Play (Eric Berne)
6: The Oxford History of the American People (Samuel Eliot Morison)
7: Journey of a Soul (Pope John XXIII)
8: A Gift of Prophecy (Ruth Montgomery)
9: Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed (Elizabeth Longford)
10: Sixpence in Her Shoe (Phyllis McGinley)

How many of these books have I read? None.

I have read a couple of pages each from The Man With the Golden Gun, Games People Play, and Is Paris Burning?

I imagine that someone out there will find this sad; I hope that they have read more of the bestsellers of their birth week than I have.

1 comment:

Lavanah said...

I've read 3 of the fiction and 2 of the nonfiction books on your list. Now I'm off to see what was on the list when I was born...
but in all honesty, even among those of us who started reading while very young, how many of us were reading the week we were born?