Birth Year Project: 1978

[This year has come up before, twice, so I've added a third list . . . ]

Well-Known Books:

• The Stand, Stephen King

• A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century [history], Barbara Tuchman

• The Eye of the Needle, Ken Follett

• Chesapeake, James Michener

• Mommie Dearest, [memoir], Christina Crawford

[Two of 1978's Bestsellers—The Silmarillion (J.R.R. Tolkien) and The Thornbirds (Colleen McCullough)—were published in 1977]

My List:

• This House of Sky [memoir], Ivan Doig

• The World According To Garp, John Irving

• The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera

• The Snow Leopard [travel memoir], Peter Matthiessen

• Going After Cacciato, Tim O’Brien

• Betrayal [play], Harold Pinter

My Second List:

• The Stories of John Cheever [stories], John Cheever

• Happy All the Time, Laurie Colwin*

• Games at Twilight and Other Stories [stories], Anita Desai [India]

• The Singapore Grip, J. G. Farrell*

• Violet Clay, Gail Godwin*

• Falling Angel, William Hjortsberg

• Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, William Kennedy

           Notes: 

The Singapore Grip is the third volume of The Empire Trilogy, after Troubles (1970) and The Seige of Krishnaspur (1973). 

Billy Phelan's Greatest Game is part of Kennedy's eight-book Albany Cycle, which also includes Ironweed (1983) and Very Old Bones (1992). 

My Third List:

• Tirra Lirra by the River, Jessica Anderson [Australia]*

• The Basketball Diaries [memoir], Jim Carroll, 1978 [New York City]*

• The Last Good Kiss, James Crumley (detective novel) [Texas/Montana]

• Plumb, Maurice Gee (James Tait Black Memorial Prize winner) [New Zealand]*

• House of Hunger [novella and stories], Dambudzo Marechera

     (co-winner Guardian Fiction Prize) [Zimbabwe]*

• The Sea, the Sea, Iris Murdoch (Booker Prize winner) [Ireland/England]*

• Life: A User's Manual, Georges Perec [France]*

• Birdy, William Wharton*

[*I have not read]