0088 | Vathek – William Beckford
Context: read this on the train to St Petersburg from Moscow REVIEW A bonkers adventure really of Vathek’s passion ending predictably enough.
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0087 | Kiss & Tell – Alain de Botton
Context: Finished this in a day on the Trans-Mongolian railway somewhere around Novosibirsk.REVIEW I’ve read, and greatly enjoyed, Status Anxiety and The Romantic Movement by de Botton and I honestly didn’t…
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0086 | Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar – Simon Sebag Montefiore
Context: Finished on the Trans-Mongolian Express as we headed from Irkutsk to Moscow. REVIEW This is stellar piece of research and the book, once you get used to Montefiore’s style,…
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0085 | Gulag: A History – Anne Applebaum
Context: Finished on the Trans-Mongolian railway somewhere in the Gobi desert. REVIEW A very compelling description of the infamous Russian camp system which strikes a great balance between the politico-historical…
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0084 | 1421 – Gavin Menzies
Context: Finished this in Shanghai at the house of my mate Gavin whose collection of novels got me back into fiction after many years away. REVIEW According to Menzies, it…
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0083 | Wild Swans – Jung Chang
Context: Finished this at Stephen & Abigail’s house where we first met Matthew their son. REVIEW Finally read this book. Twice I’ve started it and I realised I needed to…
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0082 | Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
Context: Read this as we travelled from Korea by sea and train to Japan.REVIEW This started out as an interesting alternative to American Psycho, which I read before Arukiyomi got…
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0081 | The Shack ~ William Young
Context: My mate Chuck suggested I read this. I read it in a day as that’s all the time I had at his house in Kumamoto, Japan.REVIEW Not bad but…
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0080 | A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
Context:company on the train from the tea hills to Colombo in Sri Lanka REVIEW This is a mammoth book at 1474 pages and, although it wasn’t always easy going, it…
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0079 | Captain Corelli’s Mandolin ~ de Bernières
Context: Took on the plane to Sri Lanka with me. Nearly finished it by the time we’d arrived. REVIEW I really liked this actually. I wasn’t prepared to having seen…
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0078 | Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
Context:Read this in a day at the Dutch House, Bandarawela, Sri Lanka REVIEW Hot on the heels of Jazz by Toni Morrison, my brain was reeling from all the metaphysical…
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0077 | Jazz – Tony Morrison
Context: Read this in a day in an easy chair. REVIEW I thought this was pants actually.
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0076 | The Bible in English ~ David Daniell
Context: Read over two years after I picked this up on a snowy day at Borders in Stockton.REVIEW This took me two years to read. But it wasn’t because it…
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0075 | Foundation – Isaac Asimov
Context: Audiobook I listened to in a couple of days before going to Sri Lanka. REVIEW This gave me unpleasant flashbacks to Atlas Shrugged with it’s paranoid cast of characters…
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0074 | Memoirs of a Geisha ~ Arthur Golden
Context: Audiobook which I listened to on the way to and from private business classes.REVIEW Poetic, intimate and moving at times, this is a good book. However, the novel is…
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0073 | A Fine Balance ~ Rohinton Mistry
Book in Context: This book kept me company one long weekend on the Seoul subway. REVIEW What a powerfully moving book. After a year of my life in India, this…
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0072 | The World According to Garp ~ John Irving
Book in Context: The wife was making Christmas cards in the room when I finished this. REVIEW A readable social commentary with occasional witty moments, this was a book I’d…
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0071 | A Tale of Two Cities ~ Charles Dickens
REVIEW Now I love Dickens but this wasn’t my cup of tea at all. What I really love is the amazing characters he creates. This book disappointed in that respect.