Happy Birthday To Us!

For my son's first birthday, our friends James and Jo gave us a copy of Five Minutes' Peace by Jill Murphy. It's a book a lot of you will remember from your own childhood - I certainly do - or perhaps read to your own children. Jo told me that it was a special year to give this book as a present as it is 30 years old. James, Jo, my husband and I were all born in 1986, so we too are 30 this year! With my birthday approaching in a couple of weeks' time (I like chocolate and pretty stationery thank you very much) I though it would be fun to look at which other books share a birth year with me.

Here are a few highlights from the Goodreads list of most popular books published in 1986:

• IT - Stephen King
• The Light Fantastic - Terry Pratchett
• Red Storm Rising - Tom Clancy
• The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins
• An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Jolly Postman - Janet Ahlberg
• Batman: the Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller
• The Bourne Supremacy - Robert Ludlum

What surprised me, looking through the list, was how many of the top-rated books from 1986 were part of long-running series (47 of the Top 100). Most of them are series I haven't heard of, but you can find books from the Adam Dalgliesh series, the Riftwar Saga and the Babysitter's Club! There is also an overwhelming bias towards fantasy and science fiction.

What were the most popular books in the year you were born? If you click on the link I gave above, then change the date in the address bar, you can find out! Let me know in the comments!

I also thought I'd check which books were celebrating important anniversaries the year I was born. In 1986 Gone With the Wind, How to Win Friends and Influence People and several Agatha Christie books were 50 years old, and The Secret Garden and The Phantom of the Opera were 75. (There were no results for 1886!)

So now you know. Happy 30th birthday to us!