1948

US F I C T I O N

1. The Big Fisherman, Lloyd C. Douglas 95 copies on LT

2. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer 845 copies

3. Dinner at Antoine's, Frances Parkinson Keyes 61 copies

4. The Bishop's Mantle, Agnes Sligh Turnbull 17 copies

5. Tomorrow Will Be Better, Betty Smith 55 copies

6. The Golden Hawk, Frank Yerby 34 copies

7. Raintree County, Ross Lockridge Jr. 78 copies

8. Shannon's Way, A. J. Cronin 48 copies

9. Pilgrim's Inn, Elizabeth Goudge 125 copies

10. The Young Lions, Irwin Shaw 92 copies

N O N F I C T I O N

1. Crusade in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower 158 copies

2. How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, Dale Carnegie 411 copies

3. Peace of Mind, Joshua Loth Liebman 23 copies

4. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, A. C. Kinsey, et al. 60 copies

5. Wine, Women and Words, Billy Rose 8 copies

6. The Life and Times of the Shmoo, Al Capp 27 copies

7. The Gathering Storm, Winston Churchill 420 copies

8. Roosevelt and Hopkins, Robert E. Sherwood 43 copies

9. A Guide to Confident Living, Norman Vincent Peale 35 copies

10. The Plague and I, Betty MacDonald 74 copies

I just picked up Dinner at Antoine's at a friends of the library sale. I saw the movie version of Raintree County starring Elizabeth Taylor and I believe Audie Murphy. I just finished a psychology course that had Dr. Kinsey as one of the topics. The movie about him starring Liam Neeson was quite good.

My grandmother mentioned the New Orleans restaurant, Antoines, several times to me when I would bisit her in Tennessee, so she must have read the novel; I don't remember her telling me when she had been in New Orleans, however.

I did read Pilgrim's Inn by Elizabeth Goudge maybe 20 years ago, and liked it. I think it was part of a trilogy of novels revolving either around the same place or same people.

I was wrong about Pilgrim's Inn being part of a trilogy. I was thinking of "The City of Bells trilogy" (also called the Cathedral Trilogy).
The dean's watch
Towers in the mist
A city of bells

These were good, too.

Pilgrim's Inn was part of a different trilogy along with The Bird in the Tree and The Heart of the Family. I think they were anthologized as The Elliots of Damrosehay (not sure how to spell Elliots). That's the only one on this list I've read, although I did once own a cat named Shmoo.

Raintree County, a popular book and movie by an author now forgotten. Sadly, another suicide.

Churchill and Eisenhower both writing that year.

A few years back there was a good movie version of The Gathering Storm.

Nothing for me here, but I've read a couple of Robert E. Sherwood's plays.

I made a series of the Eliot Chronicles. This is the trilogy title used when these books were reissued. When the three novels were collected in 1957, the book was called the Eliots of Damerosehay. By the way, Pilgrim's Inn was originally published in Britain as The Herb of Grace.

Nothing for me either

Fiction: I've read The Naked and the Dead and Dinner at Antoine's. The former is the better book.

Non-fiction: I've read Roosevelt and Hopkins. Robert Sherwood was an insider in the Roosevelt White House, so his portrait of the relationship between Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins becomes a fascinating, in-depth look at the inner workings of the FDR administration starting with the politics and execution of the New Deal policies and running right through the execution of the war. A very long book, and very detailed. If you're interested in this era of history, this is a fascinating work, made more so by the fact that it was written by someone who was there for a lot of it, and only a few years after Roosevelt's death, when all of these events were quite fresh. One thing I took away from this book in terms of my knowledge about the American efforts in WWII was simply how incredibly complicated it all was, from a logistical standpoint.

I have the oddest combination from this year!
Naked and the Dead and
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Also, I have Maggie-Now in my to-be-read. I had always assumed that it was a sequel to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn but find it is not.
MAJ

Amazingly, I've read The Plague and I, a quasi-humorous account of her encounter with TB. I read it when I was 13 and full of the La Bohemian romance of consumption: Betty''s tales of carrying around a brown baby bag in which to throw one's bloody tissues did not accord with my romantic vision. I've seen the films of Shoes of the Fisherman and Raintree County - quite put me off them.

My review of Dinner at Antoine'sThere is a wonderful sense of life in the old upper-class New Orleans families of the 1940's . Mardi Gras is very interesting. The mystery works (what there is of it) but the book is mostly a soap opera. The romance in the book did not work for me. Keyes was born in 1885 and she married in 1903. Her husband was 40 years old and a prominent politician who served as a governor and a US senator. Her attitude about love and marriage seems to reflect her own life. All the good women seem to strive to be a handmaiden to a good man with important work to do. I like seeing characters play the hand that life has dealt them including the women's social restrictions of the era they lived in. But the women in this book aren't playing their hands, they're just sitting there holding their cards prettily . As incredibly racist as this book is the black woman is actually the best developed female character. The devoted domestic servant is a mainstay in novels. Tossie's devotion actually makes sense. She has found a niche in life that suits her and she is not as humble as she seems. She has found plenty of people to look down on (black-and-white). It is way too long.

I used to love Keyes books but I haven't read one in a long time so your remarks about Dinner at Antoine's made me wonder what I would think of them now.

A Station wagon in Spain is the only other Keyes that I have read. I think the women in it had some brains. My favorite characters include Jane Eyre, Little Dorrit and Fanny from Mansfield Park so I don't think I am expecting pushy 2013 women. But the women in Antoine's just seemed like doilies. The racism might be a good reminder of how bad things were.

I read Dinner at Antoine several years back and more or less enjoyed it, I think more for the fun of finally reading one of her books, plus I was living in New Orleans at the time so it was a look into a bygone world of the place I was living. Speaking of New Orleans, in the back end of the French Quarter is a beautiful old house that among other things (including being a former convent) is Keyes' former home, now turned into a museum. It's a fun visit.

I mean to tour her house someday. I think you can also tour the house that inspired her Steamboat Gothic.