1978

US F I C T I O N

1. Chesapeake, James A. Michener 709 copies on LT

2. War and Remembrance, Herman Wouk 552 copies

3. Fools Die, Mario Puzo 192 copies

4. Bloodlines, Sidney Sheldon 64 copies

5. Scruples, Judith Krantz 201 copies

6. Evergreen, Belva Plain 130 copies

7. Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Richard Bach 1,421 copies

8. The Holcroft Covenant, Robert Ludlum 360 copies

9. Second Generation, Howard Fast 60 copies

10. Eye of the Needle, Ken Follett 778 copies

N O N F I C T I O N

1. If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries--What Am I Doing in the Pits?, Erma Bombeck 255 copies

2. Gnomes, Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet 527 copies

3. The Complete Book of Running, James Fixx 108 copies

4. Mommie Dearest, Christina Crawford 224 copies

5. Pulling Your Own Strings, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer 130 copies

6. RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon 127 copies

7. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, Barbara Tuchman 1,810 copies

8. Faeries, Brian Froud and Alan Lee 688 copies

9. ln Search of History: A Personal Adventure, Theodore H. White 160 copies

10. The Muppet Show Book, the Muppet People 69 copies

I'm ashamed to admit that I read Scruples many years ago. I also read Eye of the Needle which was made into a pretty good movie staring Donald Sutherland. I own A Distant Mirror and Faeries.

I've read and still own A Distant Mirror and In Search of History. This is about the time I began to ignore fiction in favor of non-fiction: I mean have YOU read any of the best-selling fiction of the seventies and eighties?

James Fixx reminds me of the story of the Man Who Saw Everything Twice in Catch-22. I was a runner who believed Jim Fixx was the person to emulate, but when he died on his front porch after a short ten miler, I decided he had taken the whole running thing one step further than I could go so I quit.

I don't recognize any of these and have read none of them - then again I was 2 in 78.

Considering I was only 10 that year it's strange how many of them I've read:

Bloodlines, Scruples, Evergreen, The Holcroft Covenant, Eye of the Needle, If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries--What Am I Doing in the Pits?, Gnomes, Mommie Dearest, The Muppet Show Book

Read some of these authors, but none of these books.

I have read War and Remembrance and The Complete Book of Running. I own, but have not read, A Distant Mirror and RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (no great admirer of Nixon, but I have biographies of all of the presidents)

Geneg, I think you are taking a "glass-half-empty" view of James Fixx. Heart disease was common in his family, and he lived 9 years longer than his father did. Here is a different opinion.

The only one I know I read was Eye of the Needle, although I have shared houses with copies of Gnomes, Fairies, and A Distant Mirror.

I was a little affected by Jim Fixx' death myself. But I wasn't a runner, and decide I wouldn't be when I heard his tragic news (we didn't know it was in his family in a bad way). But a few years later, I did get into racewalking which I like quite a bit, and puts less pressure and stress on the body. No racewalk book will ever be a besseller.

I own and have read Scruples (note top self: really must clear my shelves of all that ancient chickfic, it's just embarrasing) as well as Mommie Dearest. Faeries is an utterly wonderful book - so wonderful in fact that I can even forgive the twee spelling of the word 'fairies'. When my copy was stolen I wasted no time in getting another, even though it was out of print at the time.

Oh gosh, I also have a copy of Gnomes, given to me by a well-meaning friend who had seen both Faeries and Castles on my shelves: I'm ashamed to say I have never read it, never done more than flipped through the pages. The illustrations simply don't appeal.

The Complete Book of Running, as a piece of writing, embodied the spirit of the day.