0067 | Walden ~ Thoreau
REVIEW This started out really well with some very erudite remarks about the way the material world, if you, Atlas-like, manage to find a position to observe it correctly from,…
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0066 | Trainspotting ~ Irvine Welsh
REVIEW This was an amazing read. It’s violent, offensive, stomach-churning, tragic and yet somehow, under all this, deeply poignant.
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0065 | Underworld ~ Don DeLillo
REVIEW Having got to the end of this finally last night, I can be very glad of one thing: I can speed-read. This has to be one of the most…
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0064 | Metamorphoses ~ Ovid
REVIEW This is a 400-page poem. It’s over 2000 years old to boot. If ancient poetry grabs you, this is your thing. Is it mine?
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0063 | Orlando ~ Virginia Woolf
REVIEW I’m firmly convinced now that, for all her genius, Woolf was also bonkers. This novel had me completely lost until the Wikipedia entry gave me the key to understanding…
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0062 | Junky ~ William Burroughs
REVIEW After battling my way through Naked Lunch, I wasn’t sure what to expect from my second Burroughs novel. It wasn’t half as bad though thankfully.
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0060 | Uncle Tom’s Cabin ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
REVIEW Finally got through what was one of the best librivox.org recordings I’ve heard. Coming only a couple of months after Cloudsplitter, I don’t think I was really ready for…
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0059 | The Godfather ~ Mario Puzo
REVIEW The films are great (well, at least I and II are) and the book is well worth a read whether you’ve seen them or not.
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0058 | Lady Chatterley’s Lover ~ D.H.Lawrence
REVIEW My second Lawrence book and he is turning into one of my favourite writers. This didn’t disappoint. In fact, in places, this unexpurgated 1928 edition downright startled me.
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0057 | The Hours ~ Michael Cunningham
REVIEW This was a surprise. Here’s when reading something because it’s on a list pays off. I wouldn’t have touched this book if it hadn’t been on the 1001 list….
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0056 | Unless ~ Carol Shields
REVIEW Described on the back as “breathtaking… a masterpiece” I was delighted to find that a healthy cynicism of cover blurb reviews is entirely justified.
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0055 | Cider With Rosie ~ Laurie Lee
REVIEW Beautifully evocative, this is a classic memoir of the English idyll, where even winter is ‘summery’ and death has a romantic sheen.
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0053 | Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ~ Hunter Thompson
REVIEW Definitely a product of it’s time and country. Having visited Las Vegas twice now (once I had no choice, once I wanted to see why I’d been taken there),…
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0052 | The Devil & Miss Prym ~ Paulo Coelho
REVIEW Now I liked this, I really did. Wasn’t expecting to because I’d hated Veronika Decides to Die. But this was different.
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0050 | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time ~ Mark Haddon
REVIEW Well this book has received more acclaim than most over the last few years so I was curious (ha ha) to see what it was like when a friend…
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0049 | England Made Me ~ Graham Greene
REVIEW Not one of Greene’s best but certainly a novel that plots his development as a novelist on his way to his later greats.
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0048 | Cloudsplitter ~ Russell Banks
REVIEW This is a huge book at just over 750 pages. But, while it is an interesting insight into life and events running up to the start of the American…
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0047 | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ~ John Le Carre
REVIEW Not read an overt spy novel before. Never read any Carre either. Not sure I’ll read either anytime soon…