0669 | The Engineer of Human Souls | Josef Skvorecky
If Iain Sinclair wants to know how to eradicate plot but nevertheless write a novel that is at once funny, poignant, moving, funny, sad and tragic, he should put down…
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0668 | Dining on Stones | Iain Sinclair
You know you’re in for a rough ride when the book you’re about to read is recommended by the lamentable Will Self. When everything else fails, fall back on doctored…
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0667 | LaBrava | Elmore Leonard
If you like hard-boiled detective stuff, this is for you. Leonard even throws in a faded 1950s movie star so you get a bit of film noir along the way….
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0666 | The Labyrinth of Solitude | Octavio Paz
This is for die-hard fans of literature really. Very philosophical, this collection of essays wasn’t my cup of tea at all despite whatever place it may hold in Latin America…
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0665 | The Goldfinch | Donna Tartt
Some people say this is overlong. I’m not entirely sure I agree. At the pace the novel moves at, I can’t see what might be omitted. What I will state…
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0664 | City Primeval | Elmore Leonard
I’m writing this a good 11 months after finishing this novel. It was the first Elmore Leonard I’d read and shortly afterwards, I also read LaBrava. The latter has eclipsed…
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0663 | Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids | Kenzaburo Oe
Very poignant. Very raw. A booked that rocked Japan when published just 13 years after the Japanese surrender in 1945. This is Japan’s Lord of the Flies with important exceptions:…
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0662 | Paradise of the Blind | Duong Thu Huong
I thought this was going to be really good. It was the first novel translated from Vietnamese to English even though it was only published in 1988. That says a…
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0661 | The Man Without Qualities | Robert Musil
This unfinished tome of a book is an extremely strange one to experience. Written in a very Magic-Mountain-like way, we find ourselves party to the life of Ulrich, a minor…
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0659 | Reasons to Live | Amy Hempel
A book of short stories that are very easy to read and very engaging. I would probably read this again if I came across it again. Sadly, I had no…
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0658 | The Left-Handed Woman | Peter Handke
A strange novel that faded from my memory within a few days of reading it. My third short novel in a row and, like the others, it runs out of…
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0657 | Miss Lonelyhearts | Nathanael West
A tiny novella which reminded me of The Postman Always Rings Twice or pretty much anything by Raymond Chandler. The protagonist hides behind the pseudonym Miss Lonelyhearts as he writes…
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0656 | The Pigeon | Patrick Suskind
This is a little slip of a book and quite why it should make the 1001 Books list at all is a mystery to me. There’s nothing wrong with it,…
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0655 | Sentimental Education | Gustave Flaubert
The story of youth, this is a great example of how someone acts when they grow up simply with the morality given to them by the society they emerge from….
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0654 | The Museum of Unconditional Surrender | Dubravka Ugresic
I can see how this book is important. It appears to be mostly autobiographical and shares memories of a woman which coalesce around the Balkan War and exile from. The…
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0653 | Everything You Need | A. L. Kennedy
This one really got me. Maybe it was because I was also reading the abonimable In Search of Klingsor at the time, a novel that would make any other author…
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0652 | The Talk of the Town | Ardal O’Hanlon
Had I not read Angela’s Ashes then this would have been unique and would have totally captivated me. But seeing as this was published just three years after Ashes, I…
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0651 | In Search of Klingsor | Jorge Volpi
On the flyleaf of my edition, it says that this has been compared to The Name of the Rose. Either the person who wrote this has never read The Name…