0543 | The Last Chronicle of Barset | Anthony Trollope
My first Trollope and what a one to start with! An exquisitely constructed Victorian world inhabited by vivid characters and a strong plot to carry them along with. Trollope contrives a…
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0542 | Threepenny Novel | Bertold Brecht
This was a strange one. I had no idea about any of the background to the novel at all, not even the play it’s based on, John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera….
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0541 | The Black Prince | Iris Murdoch
What a great read this was. I can also imagine that Murdoch had immense fun writing it too, because that comes across in the writing for too often to be coincidental….
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0540 | 2666 | Roberto Bolaño
Dear Lord, spare me. Another title from Latin/South America and yet another novel that I could have done without. What the heck is it with that continent that I just…
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0539 | Dangling Man | Saul Bellow
Dangling man? Dangling reader more like! Another Bellow under the belt and that’s a good metaphor as yet another protagonist spends most of the novel navel-gazing. Bellow won the Nobel,…
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0538 | Les Miserables | Victor Hugo
Another bookshelf breaker under the belt. Now, I’m a real Les Mis fan having seen the musical in London four times, but this did not actually meet my expectations in…
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0537 | Michael Kohlhaas | Heinrich von Kleist
There’s a lot to glean from this tale of injustice because the issues that the story raises are just as relevant today as they were when this was written over…
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0536 | The Cement Garden | Ian McEwan
Leaving aside any controversy about whether McEwan borrowed the plot for this novel from another source, for an author’s first effort, this isn’t half bad at all. Macabre, disturbing and…
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0535 | The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul | Douglas Adams
This is not one of Adams’ best. I sincerely hope it’s his worst because if there is a worse novel by him out there, it must be atrocious. An explosion…
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0534 | Loving | Henry Green
Really didn’t get into this. It’s not helped by the unorthodox dialogue which I had a hard time following at times. There are some half-memorable characters in here but the…
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0533 | The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby | Charles Dickens
A very, very long time ago, when he was just a wee lad, Arukiyomi attempted to read this and didn’t get too far. This time, I listened to this via…
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0532 | The Marble Faun | Nathaniel Hawthorne
This was a grind. I really don’t have much time for Hawthorne and this was a bad Hawthorne. On the surface, this is about a group of USAnian young people who spend time in…
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0531 | Girl with Green Eyes | Edna O’Brien
A looooong time ago in the decade old life of Arukiyomi, I read August is a Wicked Month. That was my first taste of O’Brien’s work and it’s been too…
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0530 | The Unfortunate Traveller | Thomas Nashe
Here’s a funny old book. Not very long, for which I am thankful, and possibly the only Tudor ‘novel’ on the 1001 list, for which I am also thankful. It’s…
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0529 | The Namesake | Jhumpa Lahiri
Not the best novel I’ve ever read. I can’t really think why this should be on the 1001 list except that it was introduced from the second edition onwards to…
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0528 | Keep the Aspidistra Flying | George Orwell
Orwell’s flawed but nevertheless important novel about a young man’s single-handed struggle against capitalism is an easy and often amusing read. Gordon Comstock, whose inflexible philosophy drives him further and further into…
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0527 | Tropic of Cancer | Henry Miller
A remarkable novel from start to finish on pretty much every level except, as my rating shows, on the development of any memorable character worth remembering or any plot. But…
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0526 | Tender is the Night | F. Scott Fitzgerald
A lot more readable than The Great Gatsby which I read many years before Arukiyomi was born, this was a decent enough novel. I found that as long as I…
