4. Which of the twelve recurring features do you think is most central to a book’s success in general? Which of the twelve is most central to your own reading experience?
5. Can you think of any other features that recur in these twelve novels—or other popular fiction—that aren’t noted in Hit Lit?
6. Which of the twelve novels that Hit Lit examines have you read? Of those you’ve read, which do you remember most vividly or most fondly? What aspects of that novel stay with you? Are any of these aspects related to one of the twelve recurring features the book describes?
7. What are some of the differences between these commercially successful books of the twentieth century and recent bestsellers, in your opinion?
8. Most of the books on this list of highly successful novels are not written in a literary style. Does that matter? Should it? Do novels that are full of beautiful prose have the same kind of emotional impact on you as those with more unadorned writing? Do you find that the style itself affects how you read a book, or not?
9. When you choose to read a book rather than watch TV or a film, what are some of the factors that go into making that decision?
10. In the “Juicy Parts” section, the author argues that in all these novels there’s one sexual episode that is life changing for a character, or somehow crucial to the outcome of the plot. Can you think of other novels you have read where this is also true? Why do you think this is such a widespread device?
11. One argument Hit Lit makes is that a common thread that runs through all these bestsellers is a focus on American values or American characters of various kinds. Do you think American bestsellers challenge conventional American myths and beliefs, or do they pander to the conventional views that Americans have about themselves and their society?
12. Why do we like mavericks as protagonists in fiction? Do these characters succeed because they rebel against convention, or do they eventually succumb to the pressures of normalcy? Take Scout, for instance. Will she always be a rebel, or will she learn to work within the system as Atticus does?
13. Discuss the tension between urban values and rural values Hall points out. Does this same conflict exist in other books you’ve read lately? Is this part of what some describe as the “Two Americas”?
14. Four of the twelve novels Hall discusses are written by women. How do these novels portray a different vision than the ones written by men? In particular, are women more richly characterized by the female writers, or do men sometimes achieve the same level of dimensionality?
15. When we read books like Jaws or The Godfather or The Exorcist, do you think what we are learning about human nature or the way the world works is different from when we read Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner or Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections? Or do we gain similar insights, regardless of the type of fiction we read?
16. Should students of literature be required to study popular novels as well as the literary classics? Should schools include Valley of the Dolls, Jaws, or The Godfather in their English curriculum or only books like To Kill a Mockingbird? How do you think this would help, or hurt, our understanding of literature?
17. Which of the novels on this list of twelve bestsellers do you think people will be reading a hundred years from now and which won’t last? Why?
Also by James W. Hall
Dead Last
Silencer
Hell’s Bay
Magic City
Forests of the Night
Off the Chart
Hot Damn
Blackwater Sound
Rough Draft
Body Language
Red Sky at Night
Buzz Cut
Gone Wild
Mean High Tide
Hard Aground
Bones of Coral
Tropical Freeze
Under Cover of Daylight
About the Author
JAMES W. HALL is the author of seventeen novels, four books of poetry, two short-story collections, and a book of essays. He’s also the winner of the Edgar and Shamus awards.
Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century's Biggest Bestsellers Page 25