Some now-lost books I had in 1981, with the covers I remember them having, listed from oldest to newest (based on year of first publication):
Aeschylus: Oresteia (-458) – in the Fagles translation. My favourite character by far: Cassandra! This is one of my favourite Greek books.
Augustine: City of God (426) – I was so impressed with his “Confessions” (398) that I bought this and slogged through it, in amazement. I can still remember reading it while waiting for my mother to get off work.
Martin Gardner: The Annotated Alice (1960) – has both Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (1865) and “Through the Looking Glass” (1871). Probably my favourite book at this point. More of a Bible to me than the Bible itself.
Isaac Asimov: Adding a Dimension (1964) – a book of his science essays. Not only do I no longer have this book, neither does the library! I used to think books were forever. This book first came out in 1964, but, like most of my books, what I had was a paperback edition from the 1970s (pictured above).
Poul Anderson: Ensign Flandry (1966) – I bought this book on the strength of the cover and that my father liked Poul Anderson. But I could not get into it.
Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970) – Larry Niven used to be my favourite science fiction writer. I used to read his books like popcorn, but now I cannot bear them.
John G. Taylor: Black Holes: The End of the Universe? (1973) – where I first read about black holes at length. I remember reading this while my sister was reading “Dombey and Son” (1848) by Charles Dickens. Thanks to English class, I already hated Dickens.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (1974) – I loved dictionaries! I would spend hours just reading them. This was one of the ones I had.
Gerard K. O’Neill: The High Frontier (1976) – about building L5 space colonies equidistant from the Earth and Moon. Jeff Bezos was clearly a fan of this book too – he wants to build one!
World Almanac 1978 (1977) – I used to adore almanacs!
George Alec Effinger: Utopia 3 (1978) – I used this as an example of a terrible book in my post on How to find a good book: the 15 Year Rule.
Stephen King: The Stand (1978) – the first Stephen King book I read. I loved the deep blue cover.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr: Robert Kennedy and His Times (1978) – at least two posts were partly inspired by this book: The Baldwin-Kennedy meeting and Robert Kennedy at Creighton University. Schlesinger worked on his 1968 presidential campaign and that is the best part of the book by far.
Carl Sagan, etc: Murmurs of Earth (1978) – his book about the Golden Record that was put on the two Voyager spacecrafts before they were sent out among the stars.
The Next Whole Earth Catalog (1980) – this book was so big that I used it to keep important papers flat. It also has plenty of book recommendations, like the space colony book listed above.
Compare these to the books I was made to read at school!
– Abagond, 2021.
See also:
- books
- Lost book covers
- Lost book covers, part II
- Books I was made to read at school – same time period. Compare and contrast!
- Books my father read
- My favourite Greek books
- My 1970s media diet
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Abagond 
“Larry Niven used to be my favourite science fiction writer. I used to read his books like popcorn, but now I cannot bear them.”
I feel that way about a lot of vintage/classic science fiction. I was an avid reader of Niven, Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein et al. Now I see their glaring limitations.
Most science fiction prior to the 1990s were aimed at a young, White male audience. If you didn’t fit that profile, non-European people who were recognizable to you were rare.
Perhaps that is why the works of Octavia Butler and other Black science fiction writers were such a revelation.
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