All the different households in my family subscribed to Reader’s Digest. All those great long-running series–“The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met,” and “Life in These United States,” and of course their Book of the Month, condensed for a quick read.
Of all these well-known features, can you guess what was the most popular Reader’s Digest series ever–with over 7 million reprints sold? (No, it was not “Dating Tips for Babbling Jidrools”–that wasn’t even in Reader’s Digest.)
RD’s all-time popular series was “I am Joe’s Body” by J.D. Ratcliff, 33 articles, each focusing on a particular body part belonging to hypothetical Joe, the most frequently examined human on the planet–“I am Joe’s Heart,” “I am Joe’s Kidney,” and so on. I remember reading these in the 1960s. Well, heck, a lot of people read them! Including some who were fired up to become doctors when they grew up.
The essays were later collected into a paperback book, “I Am Joe’s Body,” currently available on amazon.com. Y’know, I think I’ll get it for Patty for her birthday.
And yes, there were a lot of bawdy jokes made at the expense of this series–but I like to think they were made affectionately.
I always read Readers Digest a lot. Can’t say I really remember this
about Joe’s body, but on the other hand, I may have and forgot. I find I have forgotten a lot of things these days. Happens when you are 86.
Readers Digest was wonderful, back in the day. It was wholesome and straightforward.
Had a lot of jokes and funny stories in it, too!
Yep. When I was a child, I read the jokes Forster then went on to whatever interested me. By my teens, I read most of it.
I submitted jokes to RD but they never printed them – their loss.