0692 | The Professor’s House | Willa Cather
This is the moving story of a man reaching the end of himself. In many ways, it reminded me of Rosshalde. We have a man who has achieved much yet…
0671 | Platform | Michel Houellebecq
A very strange novel not least because it must be one of the only novels that takes place in the context of the tourism industry. However, lest that conjure up…
0655 | Sentimental Education | Gustave Flaubert
The story of youth, this is a great example of how someone acts when they grow up simply with the morality given to them by the society they emerge from….
0644 | The Kindly Ones | Jonathan Littell
Littell’s meticulously researched memoir of an SS officer is a book that no one who reads it can ever forget, and that’s exactly how it should be. It’s absolutely horrific,…
0640 | 1000 Years of Annoying the French | Stephen Clarke
This millennial look at the history of Britain and France is told with wry, sometimes childishly irritating, and rarely laugh-inducing humour. It’s pretty comprehensive, coming in at just under 650…
0638 | Testament of Youth | Vera Brittain
While this is one of the classic war books and written from the almost unique perspective of a woman, if you can find an abridged version to read, get that…
0625 | Islands | Dan Sleigh
Absolutely fantastic book. Just one of those that you come across and know immediately that you’re going to end up buying someone a copy because you just want to share…
0611 | Germinal | Emile Zola
Britain has The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. The US has The Jungle. France has Germinal. It falls somewhere between the two in terms of its readability, but it is far, far ahead in…
0602 | Hallucinating Foucault | Patricia Duncker
Not really sure why this is on the 1001 books list. Didn’t grab me. Seemed a bit too much like navel-gazing for the Cambridge set (e.g. “we went to Browns…
0597 | The Forsyte Saga | John Galsworthy
The last book of 2017 is the one and only book of the year that reaches the lofty heights of the 90%+ rating needed to enter Arukiyomi’s Hall of Fame….
0595 | Silk | Alessandro Baricco
This is a tiny jewel of a novel and, like a jewel, I felt that it deserves to be looked at for longer than it’s size perhaps might initially indicate….
0590 | The Adventures of Augie March | Saul Bellow
Another Bellow, another fellow. This time it’s Augie, a Jewish kid from the ghetto who we follow entirely randomly as he grows and flows out into the world and all…
0584 | Promise at Dawn | Romain Gary
This memoir is basically a eulogy to Gary’s mother. Seeing as I have never really had a mother to speak of, this was an interesting one for me to read…
0570 | Princess of Cleves | Madame de La Fayette
Massively influential in French literature at least, this story of unrequited love is a eulogy to virtue whose message should be more widely known outside its native land. Wikipedia will…
0566 | Journey to the End of the Night | Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Here’s a novel powerful enough to suck the life out of Amazon’s entire self-help catalogue in seconds. In terms of sheer pessimistic cynicism of humanity, Céline’s Night is unparalleled with its tale…
0564 | The Well of Loneliness | Radclyffe Hall
With the expiration in the EU of its copyright, this initially suppressed novel is now, somewhat ironically, in the public domain in Europe. Almost 88 years to the day after it…
0563 | Pierre and Jean | Guy de Maupassant
304 books ago, I reviewed Bel Ami, my first Maupassant novel and, coincidentally, the one he wrote just before this one. Thankfully, although it still deals with the worst of…
0562 | Inferno | Henri Barbusse
Not a very long novel and not a completely entertaining one either. Barbusse has constructed a hotel room where the unnamed protagonist discovers a hole which allows him to see…