Dear Reader Column - May 26, 2023

Dear Reader,

Happy Birthday to me...(and to you, if today's also your birthday). I was born at 8 a.m. in Madison, Wisconsin sixty-nine years ago.

It's always interesting to look back and see what was going on the year you were born, so I thought it would be fun to see what people were reading in 1954. Here's what was on the Best Seller lists then:

Nonfiction 

1. The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version 
2. The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale 
3. Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book 
4. Betty Crocker's Good and Easy Cook Book 
5. The Tumult and the Shouting, Grantland Rice

Fiction 

1. Not as a Stranger, Morton Thompson 
2. Mary Anne, Daphne du Maurier 
3. Love Is Eternal, Irving Stone
4. The Royal Box, Frances Parkinson Keyes 
5. The Egyptian, Mika Waltari

If it’s your day, too…Happy Birthday! 

(Don’t forget to make a wish before you blow out the candles.)

Thanks for reading with me. It’s so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected] 

• This month's Penguin Classics is To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading and enter for your chance to win