Most popular books published in 1955

Books most frequently added to Goodreads members' shelves, updated weekly

Monthly data available for the current year, the year prior and the next year.

#1

The most famous and controversial novel from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century tells the story of Humbert Humbert’s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze."The conjunction of a sense of humor with a sense of horror [results in] satire of a very special kind." —The New YorkerAwe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love—love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

#2

The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3)

J.R.R. Tolkien

2m shelvings

The Return of the King is the third part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic adventure The Lord of the Rings.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

The Dark Lord has risen, and as he unleashes hordes of Orcs to conquer all Middle-earth, Frodo and Sam struggle deep into his realm in Mordor.

To defeat Sauron, the One Ring must be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom. But the way is impossibly hard, and Frodo is weakening. The Ring corrupts all who bear it and Frodo’s time is running out.

Will Sam and Frodo succeed, or will the Dark Lord rule Middle-earth once more?

#3

The Magician’s Nephew (Chronicles of Narnia, #6)

C.S. Lewis

1m shelvings

The secret passage to the house next door leads to a fascinating adventure.

Narnia... a land where the woods are thick and cold, where Talking Beasts come to life—an entirely new world where adventure begins.

One cold, wet summer in London, Digory and Polly meet and become fast friends. Their lives take a sudden turn when Digory’s Uncle Andrew, who fancies himself a magician, sends them hurtling to... somewhere else. They arrive in Narnia, just as it is born from the song of the great Lion, Aslan. Along the way, they encounter the evil sorceress Jadis, whose dark magic threatens everything. After a whirlwind adventure, they finally find their way back home.

#4

The Talented Mr. Ripley (Ripley, #1)

Patricia Highsmith

299k shelvings

Now a Netflix Series

It’s here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith’s five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a “sissy.” Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripley’s fascination with Dickie’s debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie’s ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game.

“Sinister and strangely alluring,” (Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly) The Talented Mr. Ripley serves as an unforgettable introduction to this smooth confidence man, whose talent for self-invention is as unnerving—and unnervingly revealing of the American psyche—as ever.

#5

Pedro Páramo

Juan Rulfo

229k shelvings

A classic of Mexican modern literature about a haunted village.

As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro Páramo - lover, overlord, murderer.

Rulfo's extraordinary mix of sensory images, violent passions, and unfathomable mysteries has been a profound influence on a whole generation of Latin American writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel García Márquez. To read Pedro Páramo today is as overwhelming an experience as when it was first published in Mexico back in 1955.

#6

Harold and the Purple Crayon (Harold, #1)

Crockett Johnson

223k shelvings

Harold decides to go for a walk one evening and as he goes he fills in the scene using his purple crayon. Adventure goes hand in hand with imagination to create this charming classic story.

#7

Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

C.S. Lewis

195k shelvings

Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life is a partial autobiography describing Lewis' conversion to Christianity. The book overall contains less detail concerning specific events than typical autobiographies. This is because his purpose in writing wasn't primarily historical. His aim was to identify & describe the events surrounding his accidental discovery of & consequent search for the phenomenon he labelled "Joy". This word was the best translation he could make of the German idea of Sehnsucht, longing. That isn't to say the book is devoid of information about his life. He recounts his early years with a measure of amusement sometimes mixed with pain.

However, while he does describe his life, the principal theme of the book is Joy as he defined it. This Joy was a longing so intense for something so good & so high up it couldn't be explained with words. He's struck with "stabs of joy" throughout life. He finally finds what it's for at the end. He writes about his experiences at Malvern College in 1913, aged 15. Though he described the school as "a very furnace of impure loves" he defended the practice as being "the only chink left thru which something spontaneous & uncalculating could creep in." The book's last two chapters cover the end of his search as he moves from atheism to theism & then from theism to Christianity. He ultimately discovers the true nature & purpose of Joy & its place in his own life.

The book isn't connected with his unexpected marriage in later life to Joy Gresham. The marriage occurred long after the period described, though not long after the book was published. His friends were quick to notice the coincidence, remarking he'd really been "Surprised by Joy". "Surprised by Joy" is also an allusion to Wordsworth's poem, "Surprised by Joy-Impatient As The Wind", relating an incident when Wordsworth forgot the death of his beloved daughter.

#8

Beezus and Ramona (Ramona, #1)

Beverly Cleary

169k shelvings

Nine-year-old Beezus Quimby has her hands full with her little sister, Ramona. Sure, other people have little sisters that bother them sometimes, but is there anyone in the world like Ramona? Whether she's taking one bite out of every apple in a box or secretly inviting 15 other 4-year-olds to the house for a party, Ramona is always making trouble--and getting all the attention. Every big sister can relate to the trials and tribulations Beezus must endure. Old enough to be expected to take responsibility for her little sister, yet young enough to be mortified by every embarrassing plight the precocious preschooler gets them into, Beezus is constantly struggling with her mixed-up feelings about the exasperating Ramona.

#9

The Quiet American

Graham Greene

159k shelvings

Graham Greene's classic exploration of love, innocence, and morality in Vietnam

"I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused," Graham Greene's narrator Fowler remarks of Alden Pyle, the eponymous "Quiet American" of what is perhaps the most controversial novel of his career. Pyle is the brash young idealist sent out by Washington on a mysterious mission to Saigon, where the French Army struggles against the Vietminh guerrillas. As young Pyle's well-intentioned policies blunder into bloodshed, Fowler, a seasoned and cynical British reporter, finds it impossible to stand safely aside as an observer. But Fowler's motives for intervening are suspect, both to the police and himself, for Pyle has stolen Fowler's beautiful Vietnamese mistress.

First published in 1956 and twice adapted to film, The Quiet American remains a terrifiying and prescient portrait of innocence at large. This Graham Greene Centennial Edition includes a new introductory essay by Robert Stone.

#10

The End of Eternity

Isaac Asimov

131k shelvings

Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, a man whose job it is to range through past and present Centuries, monitoring and, where necessary, altering Time's myriad cause-and-effect relationships. But when Harlan meets and falls for a non-Eternal woman, he seeks to use the awesome powers and techniques of the Eternals to twist time for his own purposes, so that he and his love can survive together.

#11

The Chrysalids

John Wyndham

125k shelvings

A world paralysed by genetic mutation

John Wyndham takes the reader into the anguished heart of a community where the chances of breeding true are less than fifty per cent and where deviations are rooted out and destroyed as offences and abominations.

#12

A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories

Flannery O'Connor

124k shelvings

This now classic book revealed Flannery O'Connor as one of the most original and provocative writers to emerge from the South. Her apocalyptic vision of life is expressed through grotesque, often comic situations in which the principal character faces a problem of salvation: the grandmother, in the title story, confronting the murderous Misfit; a neglected four-year-old boy looking for the Kingdom of Christ in the fast-flowing waters of the river; General Sash, about to meet the final enemy. Stories include:

"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
"The River"
"The Life You Save May Be Your Own"
"A Stroke of Good Fortune"
"A Temple of the Holy Ghost"
"The Artificial Nigger"
"A Circle in the Fire"
"A Late Encounter with the Enemy"
"Good Country People"
"The Displaced Person"
©1955 Flannery O'Connor; 1954, 1953, 1948 by Flannery O'Connor; renewed 1983, 1981 by Regina O'Connor; renewed 1976 by Mrs. Edward F. O'Connor; (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

#13

Gift from the Sea

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

120k shelvings

In this inimitable, beloved classic—graceful, lucid and lyrical—Anne Morrow Lindbergh shares her meditations on youth and age; love and marriage; peace, solitude and contentment as she set them down during a brief vacation by the sea. Drawing inspiration from the shells on the shore, Lindbergh’s musings on the shape of a woman’s life bring new understanding to both men and women at any stage of life. A mother of five, an acclaimed writer and a pioneering aviator, Lindbergh casts an unsentimental eye on the trappings of modernity that threaten to overwhelm us: the time-saving gadgets that complicate rather than simplify, the multiple commitments that take us from our families. And by recording her thoughts during a brief escape from everyday demands, she helps readers find a space for contemplation and creativity within their own lives.

With great wisdom and insight Lindbergh describes the shifting shapes of relationships and marriage, presenting a vision of life as it is lived in an enduring and evolving partnership. A groundbreaking, best-selling work when it was originally published in 1955, Gift from the Sea continues to be discovered by new generations of readers. With a new introduction by Lindbergh’s daughter Reeve, this fiftieth-anniversary edition will give those who are revisiting the book and those who are coming upon it for the first time fresh insight into the life of this remarkable woman.

The sea and the beach are elements that have been woven throughout Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s life. She spent her childhood summers with her family on a Maine island. After her marriage to Charles Lindbergh in 1929, she accompanied him on his survey flights around the North Atlantic to launch the first transoceanic airlines. The Lindberghs eventually established a permanent home on the Connecticut coast, where they lived quietly, wrote books and raised their family.

After the children left home for lives of their own, the Lindberghs traveled extensively to Africa and the Pacific for environmental research.

#14

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Tennessee Williams

119k shelvings

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof first heated up Broadway in 1955 with its gothic American story of brothers vying for their dying father’s inheritance amid a whirlwind of sexuality, untethered in the person of Maggie the Cat. The play also daringly showcased the burden of sexuality repressed in the agony of her husband, Brick Pollitt. In spite of the public controversy Cat stirred up, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics Circle Award for that year. Williams, as he so often did with his plays, rewrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for many years—the present version was originally produced at the American Shakespeare Festival in 1974 with all the changes that made Williams finally declare the text to be definitive, and was most recently produced on Broadway in the 2003–2004 season. This definitive edition also includes Williams&rsquoi; essay “Person-to-Person,” Williams’ notes on the various endings, and a short chronology of the author’s life. One of America’s greatest living playwrights, as well as a friend and colleague of Williams, Edward Albee has written a concise introduction to the play from a playwright’s perspective, examining the candor, sensuality, power, and impact of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof then and now.

#15

Hinds' Feet on High Places

Hannah Hurnard

101k shelvings

With over 2 million copies sold, Hinds’ Feet on High Places remains Hannah Hurnard’s best known and most beloved book: a timeless allegory dramatizing the yearning of God’s children to be led to new heights of love, joy, and victory. In this moving tale, follow Much-Afraid on her spiritual journey as she overcomes many dangers and mounts at last to the High Places. There she gains a new name and is transformed by her union with the loving Shepherd. Included in this special edition (February 2009 release) is Hannah Hurnard’s own account of the circumstances that led her to write Hinds’ Feet, and a brief autobiography. Special edition also features a new cover design.

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Most popular books published in 1955

Books most frequently added to Goodreads members' shelves, updated weekly

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

Juan Rulfo ...more

#6

#7

#8

#9

Graham Greene ...more

#10

Isaac Asimov ...more

#11

#12

Flannery O'Connor ...more

#13

#14

#15

Juan Rulfo

Graham Greene

Isaac Asimov

Flannery O'Connor