0258 | Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
Context: The blossom was out in force as I worked my way through this one. REVIEW I kind of wish I’d take Palaniuk up on his advice in the opening…
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0257 | Eugene Onegin – Alexander Pushkin
Context: Read this as the sun set over Parker’s Piece in Cambridge as I waited for my wife, sister and her kids to emerge from Parkside swimming pool. REVIEW Not…
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0256 | Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Context: Finished this off as we were heading back in my sister’s car from another day out over the Easter holidays with her family who came to stay. REVIEW I’d…
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0255 | Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
Context: Read this as we visited the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Inside there was a statue commissioned by Hadrian of his lover, Antinous. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let me take a…
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0254 | The Siege of Krishnapur – J. G. Farrell
Context: Read this while we took in a marvellous cream tea in the most idyllic tea garden in Selworthy, Somerset. REVIEW Back in early 1995, I was walking up a…
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0253 | The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Context: Was reading this as we attended a wedding in Somerset. Someone had made a great model of the couple for the cake. REVIEW This is a rare book in…
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0252 | Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
Context: Finished off while driving down to Reading to pick up the wife from a friend’s place. REVIEW The 1001 Books list has totally changed the way I read novels….
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0251 | Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Context: Laboured intensively to produce v4 of the 1001 books spreadsheet while reading this. REVIEW I knew nothing about the Biafran conflict in the late 1960s. I know considerably more…
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0250 | Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
Context: finished this on my way down to Tesco’s to get myself some shopping. REVIEW Yet another Austen and, as I suspected, they’re starting to take on much of a…
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0249 | The Torrents of Spring – Ivan Turgenev
Context: I read this in near-freezing conditions as our boiler broke down and a useless and very expensive plumber took 10 days to fix it. REVIEW Oh, I’ve got an…
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0248 | A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
Context: The wife bought some lovely flowers and the room filled with their scent as I read this. REVIEW “It’s better than the Kite Runner,” said a friend. Even the…
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0246 | A Hero of Our Time – Mikhail Lermontov
Context: This is the first of a few books I’ll be reading from the collection of Russian literature the guy we’re living with has. REVIEW Never heard of Lermontov, Philistine…
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0245 | Fateless – Imre Kertész
Context: As I was reading this, our Dell printer ran out of ink and I got some ink to refill them manually. Never done that before. Dead easy. REVIEW This…
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0242 | White Noise – Don DeLillo
Context: listened to this while I took the car to get its MOT. It failed, then, after some new front brake hoses and a tyre, it passed. REVIEW A loooooong…
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0240 | The Romance of the Three Kingdoms – Lo Kuan-chung
Context: While reading this I started wearing reading glasses and… boy!… they really took some getting used to! REVIEW Battles, rivalry, espionage, subterfuge, love, filial honour, tradition, strategies, mysticism, kingdoms,…
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0239 | She – H. Rider Haggard
Context: finished this off as we made a long and very snowy drive back from up north to Cambridge. REVIEW Influential in terms of its contribution to the sci-fi fantasy…
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0238 | The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson
Context: 2009 became 2010 while I was reading this. REVIEW I don’t read thrillers as a rule so, when I unwrapped this book on Christmas day, I was intrigued to…
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0237 | I’m Not Scared – Niccolo Ammaniti
Context: read while I was suffering from the worst cold I’ve had in years. REVIEW It begins with the discovery, by young Michele, of something horrific which is all his…