0407 | The Nice and the Good | Iris Murdoch
I’m not getting on too well with Iris Murdoch. Under the Net went pretty much over my head. The Bell was a good read. And this one falls somewhere in…
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0406 | The Yellow Wallpaper | Charlotte Perkins Gilman
This is by a long way the shortest item you’ll read on the 1001 books list. I’m not really sure why it was included at all in a list of…
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0405 | Saturday | Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan’s books fall into two categories for me: those that start superbly and kind of taper off (Atonement, Enduring Love) and those that start well and end well (Amsterdam,…
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0404 | Storm of Steel | Ernst Jünger
Nice to finish off the year as I began it with a book I’m happy to rate as ‘excellent’. This is a remarkable book for so many reasons. Firstly, it’s…
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0401 | The Mayor of Casterbridge | Thomas Hardy
Context: Finished this off in Argyle Sqaure, Bloomsbury, London while I was in London for my brother-in-law’s wedding. REVIEW Haven’t tackled Hardy for a while. I found the last effort…
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0400 | In the Heart of the Seas | Shmuel Yosef Agnon
Context: Finished this off while lying on a new memory foam topper that I bought for our bed. Mmmmmemory foooooaaaaaammmmmm! REVIEW Here’s a strange book. I spent most of this…
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0399 | Mary Barton | Elizabeth Gaskell
Context: Sorted out a load of scrap metal from my late father-in-law’s old office while listening to this. REVIEW My first Gaskell was a bit of an unexpected page turner…
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0397 | Confessions | Jean Jacques Rousseau
Context: Listened to this while we were travelling between Brisbane and Sydney. REVIEW It was radical at the time. It isn’t now. Now we can hardly stop public figures from…
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0396 | A Sentimental Journey | Laurence Sterne
Context: Was spending a relaxing day at Byron Bay, New South Wales when I started reading this. REVIEW Apparently there’s a movement in literature (and probably elsewhere in the arts)…
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0395 | A Home at the End of the World | Michael Cunningham
Context: The second book I finished while we were staying in Port Vila, Vanuatu REVIEW Not read any Cunningham since The Hours waaaay back at review #0057 in September 2007….
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0394 | Doctor Zhivago | Boris Pasternak
Context: One of a couple of books I read while we stayed in Port Vila, Vanuatu with this amazing view of the harbour from our veranda. REVIEW Being Russian, this…
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0393 | Tarzan of the Apes | Edgar Rice Burroughs
Context: kids jumping into an azure lagoon in Vanuatu provided a perfect backdrop for this book! REVIEW I thought this was going to be hard going and a difficult read….
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0392 | The River Between | Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Context: Was reading this when we climbed Mt Yasur in Vanuatu and watched it belch lava into the night. REVIEW This is a very important book and a pretty good…
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0391 | Alias Grace | Margaret Atwood
Context: Was reading this as we pulled into the island of Malaita on a ferry in the Solomon Islands. REVIEW Another Atwood down. She’s quickly becoming an okay author. But…
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0390 | Main Street | Sinclair Lewis
Context: Finished this off while out on a day walking around Brisbane. New mp3 player so a new way of capturing images for the blog. REVIEW Babbitt was a book…
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0389 | Shirley | Charlotte Brontë
Context: Was reading this when we took a final walk up the hills around Ukarumpa before leaving PNG. REVIEW This completed my reading of the canon of Charlotte Brontë’s completed …
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0387 | L’Assommoir | Émile Zola
Context: Started reading this while I was staying in Kokopo, East New Britain for work. REVIEW If you want to know what life’s really like, I’m noticing that the later…
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0386 | The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle | Tobias Smollett
Context: Listened to Vol I of this on a boat from Masarau to Kokopo, East New Britain, PNG with the volcanoes of Rabaul in the distance. REVIEW I started off…