Nah - HP is ok (I like the movies better, actually), but there is much better sci fi/fantasy stories out there with a longer and deeper shelf life. Fahrenheit 451, Dune, Lord of the Rings are books that have stood the test of time, and I suspect if not read, at least will have influenced many of the sci fi writers of the 22nd century.

Hard to think of which would be popular. It might be interesting to look at what was read in 1906, and which ones are read now, to see what type of stories people attach themselves to.

The reason Harry Potter wasn't on my 20th Century Children's Lit. course was because the lecturer said it wouldn't withstand the test of time. He said it was great to read once or twice, but he couldn't see people reading it over and over. I'm not sure how much I believe in them not being re-read, but I don't think they'll be as popular 100 years from now.

I'd have to say that people will still be reading Shakespeare. He's survived this long ...

I am guessing that you want current books and not those that already have proven themselves as classics, right?

If that is the case, I nominate Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven and Into Thin Air as two that shall remain in print.

PAM

PAM, the latter one is certainly a classic in the mountaineering world as it is, so yeah, that stands to reason. The other one is about a specific issue, I wonder if it will not seem dated after a while?

Below is a list of best sellers of 1906:

1. Coniston, Winston Churchill*
2. Lady Baltimore, Owen Wister
3. The Fighting Chance, Robert W. Chambers
4. The House of a Thousand Candles, Meredith Nicholson
5. Jane Cable, George Barr McCutcheon
6. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair *
7. The Awakening of Helena Ritchie, Margaret Deland
8. The Spoilers, Rex Beach
9. The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton*

10. The Wheel of Life, Ellen Glasgow

The * are for authors or books that we still read, and I know made impact in our world. Some others I am not familiar with - any of the others significant?

BTW, all of these books have been recently reissued in a series, sold on Amazon, called appropriately enough Best books of 1906.

Also published 100 years ago and still in print
White Fang ~Jack London
The Railway Children ~E. Nesbit
The Little Princess ~Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Bobbsey Twins of Lakeport ~Laura Lee Hope (1907)
Anne of Green Gables ~Lucy Maud Montgomery (1908)

Cindy, you may be aware that the writer of Coniston, Winston Churchill, is not the more famous British Winston Spencer Churchill, but I wasn't until I happened onto a description of the New England Churchill's novels. He evidently wrote realistic political stories set in New Hampshire. I think he's generally forgotten by most of today's readers, though.

At one time Wister's Lady Baltimore was immensely popular -- so much so that a very decadent, created-in-the-South cake was named after the heroine. I read Lady B when I was an adolescent, but I don't think I know of anyone who has read it recently.

Ellen Glasgow's The Wheel of Life was also very popular, right up until mid-twentieth century. I remember it being very melodramatic in style, if I'm recalling the right book. It probably wouldn't appeal to many nowadays.

I'm afraid the books that will still be selling in 2106 will be the ones that I have never cared for, like Vonnegut, Pynchon, and all those postmodern and magical realism things that don't do anything but perplex me. It's hard to predict what will appeal to future readers, beyond those books that have already proven themselves classics, but some of those will probably fall by the wayside, too. Oh well! It won't be my problem. :-)

Here are some classics that SHOULD stand the test of time --

Horton Hears A Who

Fun with Dick and Jane

Green Eggs and Ham

Cat in the Hat

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

A Christmas Carol

(Yes, ok. A Christmas Carol doesn't seem to belong in that pack but I couldn't resist!)

The Diary of Anne Frank
Cry, the Beloved Country by A. Paton
Little Women
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by A. Dillard
The Four Quartets by Eliot
1984 by Orwell
The Age of Innocence by Wharton

Dyno, other than A Christmas Carol I have never read any of the books on your list and have only ever heard of them from people here at RP! Maybe they need to cross the Pond in the next hundred years so we can get used to them.

Mary I think some of your ideas may stand the test of time, although I wonder if TS Eliot is not already'out-of-fashion' at the moment.
I used to live very near 'Burnt Norton' (see below) but as it is a private house I'd never looked over the wall!

Surprising that there are two 'Winston Churchills' born at much the same time, as neither name is that common.

Here is a link that might be useful: Burnt Norton

Vee, "Fun With Dick & Jane" used to be the readers used "in days of yore" to teach reading to first grade Americans. The rest of Dyno's list, with the exception of Dickens are all popular childrens' books by a Dr. Seuss, with quite wild illustrations. I never got into these, but most folk seem to adore them....

On the Burnt Norton site, what does "bring own, no corkage" mean???

Mary, I believe that means that you can take your own wine and won't be charged for opening it. ( a lot of places that allow you to take your own wine will charge a 'corking' fee for opening it).

Pat

Mary, as Pat says you provide the booze they will open and serve it but wont charge you for providing the glasses etc.
Seems a rather old fashioned idea as, these days restaurants, hotels and 'venues' such as this can put huge mark-ups on drink which they will have originally bought in bulk at a much reduced price.
We have some rather strange 'licencing laws' relating to the sale and consumption of alchohol in the UK. It may be that this place doesn't have a 'table licence' and therefore cannot sell alchohol. Maybe 'Burnt Norton' hasn't been running as a 'wedding venue' for very long and is hoping to get a licence in the future . . . they would have to show that their 'do's' are not rowdy, there have been no complaints from neighbours to the police and the owners don't have a criminal record!
btw we don't differentiate between beer, spirits, wine etc. although you often see old pub signs with "landlord soandso licenced to sell beer and spirits' ie all forms of 'drink'.
gbg sorry to get off your topic. :-)

>Cindy, you may be aware that the writer of Coniston, Winston Churchill, is not the more famous British Winston Spencer Churchill

Hee, no, I wasn't. I made the assumption because he did write many books over his long career. Funny.

>like Vonnegut, Pynchon, and all those postmodern and magical realism things that don't do anything but perplex me.

Oh, Vonnegut is wonderful - but I agree with you, I dob't get Pynchon and the postmodern stuff. To me its a fad that will fade within a 100 years. Now, magic realism I don't mind much - I can see books like Eva Luna by Isabell Allende and 100 Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez being read a century from now. Depends on the writer - like so much!

I suspect Seuss will be read forever, as will anything by Eric Caryle and Jan Brett - books with the themes, humor and language that children love.

woodnymph, ditto on all of those.

Assuming that there are more books written and published now, then there werein 1906, readers will have many more books to choose from 100 years from now. I hope by then they have very long longevity, coz they are going to need it if they have time to read all they want! :)

But wait a minute... most of these books are already classics. The chances are very good they will survive another 100 years. Wasn't gbg asking about books that are popular today?

PAM

I have to disagree about Dr Seuss, I had 3 children, and 3 grandchildren and have never read any of his books and survived, they may be popular, but have never been on my list of 'must reads' for my children!
All my offspring are readers and don't seem to have suffered from my neglect LOL!

I do think that the Harry Potter books will be read years from now just as the LOTR's books have survived, I have always said that I think that Rowling had a great idea with her 7 books and they are cleverly done, and, have been the reason that millions of children have been excited to read them and see the films.
So just as people now revere LOTR's as an example of good over evil - I think the HP series will fall into the same category-but that is just my opinion!

Pat

>Wasn't gbg asking about books that are popular today?

Theres a problem - all of those books are popular today. So - how does one separate todays best sellers (literally the top ten of the NYT or some such), from books that are, well, popular now.

sherwood, you might not have listed them for your children, but they are incredibly popular and are read and loved by many. No one is hurt by not reading them, but many have wonderful memories of those stories. When you think about The Grinch, that alone will be a classic long after our children have grandchildren. I watch the video every Dec 1 to get me into the holiday mood, and know that its become a classic during the holidays already, and probably will remain so (as long as people stick to the animated version,and not the horrid real life thing from a few years back!)

I was thinking of books popular today but after reading all the comments here I think we could bring up the classics too. Some of them may lose their popularity over the next century, do you think?

gbg

I wonder if late 21st-century and early 22nd-century readers/writers will rebel against what they might perceive as the "fantasyheads" of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It's happened before:
The romanticists of the early 19th century rebelled against the classicists of the 18th century.
The realists of the late 19th century and early 20th century rebelled against the romanticists.
The moderns of the post-WWI era rejected the "sentimental glop" of the Victorians.
The postmoderns of the last four(?) decades of the 20th century turned everything upside down, inside out, and crosswise.

Yet the classics of all those movements (except the last mentioned, but only because it really hasn't had time) have continued to shine through.

What will the next movement be? Post-postmodern, maybe. Is it already in the works? Gee, I hope so because I haven't been very fond of the popular literature of the last few decades, and it saddens me to think that the era of my life will be represented by a lot of incomprehensible, impenetrable (to future readers) experiments. But I guess it's always been thus. Well, no, that can't be true, because we can read the literature of earlier eras and get things out of it that will give us some insight into their times and what made them tick. Can you imagine interpreting our own age with only the fantasy that has been written during it, if the fantasy is what survives? Yikes! And it will probably be the fantasy because historically that's been true -- look at the Arthur legends, mythology, fairy tales and such.

So, yes, the Harry Potter and Dr. Seuss books do have a good chance of lasting to 2106. Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan and all those Oz books have survived the changing tastes of "movements." I haven't read Potter, but I have actively loathed the other childhood fantasies I mentioned (I didn't even like them when I was a kid), but that only means that they are bound to be beloved for a long, long time because my reading taste has never been a good predictor of what will be popular or classic. Personally, I like Mummsie's list of books -- that era of realism is the one I seem to find most congenial.

What ever survives, you can be sure it will only be a fraction of what is popular today. I have a copy of Michael Kordes's Making the List, a book about the books that have made bestseller status over the course of the 20th century. It is a fun read. Half of the books I never heard of, and I do read some older popular fiction. Of the half I heard of, half of it I had forgotten.

Since we already have a 1906 list, here are a couple more, chosen at ten year intervals.

1916:
Seventeen by Booth Tarkington
When a Man's a Man by Harold Wright Bell
Just David by Eleanor H. Porter
Mr. Brittling Sees It Through by H. G. Wells
Life and Gabriella by Ellen Glasgow
The Real Adventure by Henry Kitchell
Bars of Iron by Ethel M. Dell
Nan of Music Mountain by Frank M. Spearman
Dear Enemy by Jean Webster
The Heart of Rachelby Kathleen Norris

1926:
The Private Life of Helen of Troy by John Erskine
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
Sorrell and Son by Warwick Deeping
The Hounds of Spring by Sylvia Thompson
Beau Sabreur by P.C. Wren
The Silver Spoon by John Galsworthy
Beau Geste by P.C. Wren (busy writer!)
Show Boat by Edna Ferber
After Noon by Susan Ertz
The Blue Window by Temple Bailey

Some of these I have never heard mentioned. Some others I have heard of, and several I have actually read. But most often when I recognize them it is because they were made into movies, and I used to watch a lot of classic movies.

I wonder how many of our popular books will be best remembered as movies? Perhaps this is a good question for the other forum.

Rosefolly

From the 1916 list, I have read Tarkington's Seventeen and Webster's Dear Enemy. Both are delightful, in my opinion; they are, of course, fully embedded in their time, but they are also readily accessible to readers of today.

From the 1926 list, I know I've read Beau Geste and Showboat, but I'm not sure about Gentlemen Prefer Blondes -- I think I've only seen the film.
"I wonder how many of our popular books will be best remembered as movies?"That's a very good question, rosefolly. I run across readers all the time, when discussing books, that I realize are remembering the film better than the book. Sometimes I wonder if they've actually read the book. But I sometimes recall the film better, too, so I shouldn't be too suspicious. I think it's funny, though, that I can tolerate some film adaptations and remakes better than others; example, Jane Eyre. I love the book, but I know the story so well that the actors (in several versions) don't really displace my own visions. Other films, though, have ruined my own ideas forever, and I am wary of watching certain book-to-film adaptations.

I suspect you're right that books which have been adapted to the screen will remain better known than those that haven't -- perhaps even to 2106 and beyond. Then there are some films that have completely eclipsed the books from which they are adapted. Of course I can't think of any right now! But I know there are some, perhaps many.

Frieda, I thought "Dr. Zhivago" completely eclipsed the book from which it was adapted, in every way. I found the novel quite lackluster when I tried to read it. I know there are other examples, but I can't think of any, at present. I agree with what you wrote about "Jane Eyre."