The 70s were an exciting time to be a teen, that’s for sure. It was a time of change, shifts in thinking, protesting the Viet Nam War, the Equal Rights Movement, Watergate, and the debut of Saturday Night Live. 1976 was our nation’s bicentennial. It was a time to “Do the Disco”, and watch the first (of many) Rocky movies. We became obsessed with the Bermuda Triangle and gnomes were even more popular than they are today. We balanced love stories with historical sagas and horror. Books on diets and sex flew off the shelves. And a certain shark saw to it that we didn’t vacation near the Atlantic Ocean for quite some time. The 1950s were just far enough behind us to be fascinating, and that fascination was fueled by the TV show “Happy Days” and the movies “Grease” and “American Graffiti”. Most of us happily scheduled our lives around the TV mini-series craze (see the titles with an *).
So what were we reading back then? Looking back over some bestseller lists from the 70s, I found these gems, still available for checkout at Salina Public Library. I encourage you to read them! They have definitely withstood the test of time.
1970
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
Irwin Shaw, Rich Man, Poor Man*
1971
William P. Blatty, The Exorcist
Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal
Herman Wouk, The Winds of War*
1972
Chaim Potok, My Name is Asher Lev
1973
Flora R. Schreiber, Sybil
1974
Richard Adams, Watership Down
Peter Benchley, Jaws
Studs Terkel, Working
1975
L. Doctorow, Ragtime
Judith Rossner, Looking for Mister Goodbar
1976
Alex Haley, Roots*
Judith Guest, Ordinary People
1977
J.R.R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien, The Silmarillion
Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds*
Jay Anson, The Amityville Horror
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
1978
Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance*
Judith Krantz, Scruples
Ken Follett, Eye of the Needle
1979
Stephen King, The Dead Zone
William Styron, Sophie’s Choice
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels
About The Author: Lori
Lori is the Information Services Outreach Librarian at Salina Public Library. A native of DeKalb, Ill., Lori spent only one summer detassling corn for DeKalb AgResearch and made an impressive $2.35 per hour. She stayed in her hometown and graduated from Northern Illinois University with a B.A. and M.A. in art history. Lori moved to Kansas in 1990 with plans to get a Ph.D. in art history from KU, but that quickly turned into attending Emporia State University and receiving a second master’s degree in library and information science. She met a fellow library student named Nick and they married over spring break just before graduating. Lori enjoys reading about, looking at, and researching anything having to do with art or art historical matters. Every spring she encourages her 30 fruit trees to bear well, and gardens on her three acres in Saline County. She appreciates the style of the 1920s-40s, and can often be found knitting, cooking (and eating) delicious Italian food, obsessively playing Words with Friends or working a crossword puzzle. Lori can be reached at infoservices.lori@salpublib.org.
More posts by Lori