20 years of stories in books

We've read a lot of books in the past 20 years, all the while worrying about the fate of booksellers and even, more recently, the printed word itself. But the flood of publishers' new releases, both serious and trashy, shows no sign of diminishing. Here are some milestones we passed along the way:

JOHN GRISHAM The onetime trial lawyer from Oxford, Miss., debuted on the bestseller lists the same year we introduced Fanfare. In the two decades since publication of "The Firm," Grisham's courtroom thrillers and other books have appeared on Publishers Weekly's Top 10 bestsellers list every year except 2006. (No slackening of interest -- he just didn't publish anything.)

'SCARLETT' Few sequels have generated as much bad ink as Alexandra Ripley's 1991 doorstop, which was authorized by the estate of "Gone With the Wind" author Margaret Mitchell. Reviewers panned "Scarlett," which yanks its heroine out of the South and sends her to Ireland. Newsday deemed the plot, characters and dialogue to be, in a word, "feeble." "GWTW" fans didn't mind -- they purchased "Scarlett" by the millions.

CHIP KIDD Remember when book jackets were either dowdy or crass? That was before the innovative graphic designer with the ultra-preppy name (and eyewear to match) raised the bar with bold, iconic covers for Cormac McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses" (1992), James Ellroy's "White Jazz" (1992) and others. Kidd and a handful of talented designers helped bring real objets d'art to our bookshelves.

TONI MORRISON The Swedish Academy doesn't routinely hand out Nobel Prizes in literature to American authors, let alone African-American ones, so when Toni Morrison got the award in 1993, it was a very big deal. After the call from Stockholm, the author of "The Bluest Eye," "Song of Solomon" and "Beloved" told reporters, "I thank God that my mother is alive to see this day."

AMAZON When Fanfare debuted in 1991, you had to get in your car and drive to the local bookstore if you wanted a copy of the new Tom Clancy thriller or Kitty Kelley's dishy Nancy Reagan bio. Jeff Bezos changed all that when Amazon.com came online in 1995, calling itself "the world's largest bookstore." Book buying had entered the Internet age, and we've never looked back.

LEFT BEHIND Way off the radar of New York literary types, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' 16-book cycle about the "End Times" of Christian theology, launched in 1995, appealed to evangelical Christian readers -- a growing market that sent seven of the "Left Behind" titles to the No. 1 slot on Publishers Weekly's bestseller lists.

OPRAH Has any one figure, who was neither an author nor a publisher, ever had such a lasting impact on what we read? Book clubs were still few and far between when the Queen of All Media debuted hers in 1996. (The first pick was Jacquelyn Mitchard's "The Deep End of the Ocean.") Over the years, Oprah had millions of us turning the pages along with her, thereby lifting the commercial fortunes of countless titles, including "A Map of the World," "The Poisonwood Bible" and even "Anna Karenina."

BOOK CLUBS Let a thousand flowers bloom. Inspired by Oprah's popular segment on TV, readers everywhere formed intimate groups for finger food, wine, small talk and, yes, book discussion. Publishers knew a good thing when they saw it -- today they routinely include "Discussion Questions and Topics" in the back of paperbacks.

'THE CORRECTIONS' Author Jonathan Franzen wowed critics with his ambitious 2001 novel of American family dysfunction and won a coveted spot on Oprah's Book Club -- until, that is, he was disinvited for questioning Oprah's past picks. No matter -- "The Corrections" took home a National Book Award and is now ranked as one of the great literary novels of the 21st century.

JAMES FREY Frey's gritty addiction memoir, "A Million Little Pieces" (2003) vaulted to the top of the bestseller lists when Oprah selected it for her book club. But there was one little problem: The Smoking Gun website discovered that Frey had fabricated material, including the length of a jail stay, and the author was called back to Oprah's couch for a nationally televised tongue-lashing.

CHICK LIT Blame it all, if you will, on Helen Fielding's "Bridget Jones's Diary" (1996) and Candace Bushnell's "Sex and the City" (1996), the books that launched a thousand pink and yellow covers. Today breezy novels about insecure women and their romantic troubles (with plenty of shopping, gossip and weight fluctuations) are a bona fide genre that encompasses books by Lauren Weisberger, Jennifer Weiner and Sophie Kinsella.

HARRY POTTER To the bookshelf of all-time children's fantasy classics, add an enthralling seven-book series about a bespectacled boy wizard, the creation of English author J.K. Rowling. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" made its U.S. debut in 1998, and for the next nine years young readers -- and grown-up ones, too -- were transfixed by Harry's adventures.

YOUNG ADULT BOOKS, ADULT READERS It's no longer a dirty little secret: grown-ups like YA literature. And why not? Smart series like Suzanne Collins' "Hunger Games" trilogy entrapped readers of all ages with an emphasis on dramatic storytelling, something sophisticated literary writers sometimes leave by the wayside. Even leading critics like Time magazine's Lev Grossman and Salon's Laura Miller joined the "kid-lit" club.

DAVE EGGERS The idiosyncratic author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" (2000), a fictionalized memoir of raising his 8-year-old brother after the death of their parents, parlayed his success into an indie literary empire: the McSweeney's publishing house, quirky magazines McSweeney's and The Believer, and the 826 writing and tutoring centers for kids.

'THE DA VINCI CODE' You'd think that Dan Brown's 2003 historical thriller would require a working knowledge of esoteric Catholic doctrine, Renaissance artwork and academic symbology. Apparently not -- "Da Vinci" captured readers who reveled in the conspiracy theories and plot twists, keeping it on bestseller lists for more than two years.

TRANSLATIONS The classics of world literature aren't forever -- especially when they depend on fresh translation to reach new generations of English-speaking readers. The last decade has seen a flowering of top-shelf work by Edith Grossman (Cervantes), Lydia Davis (Proust, Flaubert) and Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky), giving old masters new currency.

SELF-PUBLISHING Twenty years ago, if you wanted to see your book in print you had to get past the gatekeepers at New York literary agencies and publishing houses. No more. Thanks to the rise of print-on-demand outfits such as iUniverse and AuthorHouse -- and now e-book publishers such as Smashwords -- anybody with a manuscript (and, usually, a few hundred bucks) can reach the masses.

A SWEDISH 'GIRL' Who'd have thought that a moody and political thriller from Sweden, written by a dead author, would translate for American readers? Boy, did it ever. Stieg Larsson's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (2008) and its two sequels were the publishing equivalent of a Viking invasion, introducing us to the chilly, dark pleasures of Nordic crime fiction.

CELEBRITY BOOKS Sure, celebrities have always written books. But were there ever so many celebrities? In the age of the Internet and reality television, anyone can be famous -- and land a book deal. Who, 20 years ago, could have foreseen all the forgettable memoirs, down-home cookbooks and perky self-help guides? Or the day when a big-haired, supertanned girl from the Jersey Shore could flood bookstores with her very own novel?

E-BOOKS Remember when a book was printed on paper and reading meant turning pages? OK, many of us still do things the old-fashioned way, but there's no question that portable electronic readers -- like Amazon's Kindle, introduced in 2007 -- are revolutionizing the way we read.

WE KEPT READING It's become a cliche, in the past two decades, to wring our hands and moan that "nobody reads anymore." First television was the culprit; then the Internet. And there's some evidence to support the case: A 2002 National Education Association survey found that fewer than half of all Americans read "literature." And yet: book clubs are thriving, people carry their e-readers everywhere and the conversation about books -- in person, on blogs, via Twitter -- is as passionate as ever. The End of Reading? We think not.