0532 | The Marble Faun | Nathaniel Hawthorne
This was a grind. I really don’t have much time for Hawthorne and this was a bad Hawthorne. On the surface, this is about a group of USAnian young people who spend time in…
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0531 | Girl with Green Eyes | Edna O’Brien
A looooong time ago in the decade old life of Arukiyomi, I read August is a Wicked Month. That was my first taste of O’Brien’s work and it’s been too…
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0530 | The Unfortunate Traveller | Thomas Nashe
Here’s a funny old book. Not very long, for which I am thankful, and possibly the only Tudor ‘novel’ on the 1001 list, for which I am also thankful. It’s…
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0528 | Keep the Aspidistra Flying | George Orwell
Orwell’s flawed but nevertheless important novel about a young man’s single-handed struggle against capitalism is an easy and often amusing read. Gordon Comstock, whose inflexible philosophy drives him further and further into…
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0527 | Tropic of Cancer | Henry Miller
A remarkable novel from start to finish on pretty much every level except, as my rating shows, on the development of any memorable character worth remembering or any plot. But…
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0526 | Tender is the Night | F. Scott Fitzgerald
A lot more readable than The Great Gatsby which I read many years before Arukiyomi was born, this was a decent enough novel. I found that as long as I…
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0525 | Less Than Zero | Bret Easton Ellis
Written when he was just 21, Easton Ellis, made quite an impression on the literary scene with this tale of the morally impoverished youth of wealthy Los Angeles. In it, he…
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0524 | The Colour | Rose Tremain
This was removed from the first edition of the 1001 Books list and it’s not hard to see why. Although Tremain can write a decent yarn, there’s nothing here that…
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0523 | Titus Groan | Mervyn Peake
I had no idea that the world of Gormenghast existed. Quite how I managed to get to my age without ever hearing about it seems a literary crime. It, and…
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0522 | The Bridge on the Drina | Ivo Andrić
This is a masterful portrayal of Balkan history which, for anyone not familiar with it or, like me, familiar but confused, is a great way to gain more understanding. The…
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0521 | The Midwich Cuckoos | John Wyndham
This is a truly original bit of sci-fi which, although not terribly well written, has a great plot and, as all good sci-fi must, continues to raise relevant questions for…
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0519 | No Laughing Matter | Angus Wilson
You know you’re in the presence of literary genius when there are large parts of a novel you feel out of your depth in. I felt like I fell into…
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0518 | The Female Quixote | Charlotte Lennox
For its time, this is a pretty readable and engaging bit of writing that isn’t overlong and makes clever use of wry humour as it takes a dig at romance…
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0517 | The Collector | John Fowles
With this creepy tale of captivity, Fowles slinked onto the literary scene in the early 1960s. It’s one of the strongest debut novels you’re likely to read and also one…
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0516 | The Adventures of Roderick Random | Tobias Smollett
Having read Peregrine Pickle, the novel Smollett wrote after this one, three years ago, I kind of realised that, like with Henderson and Herzog, I’d read these the wrong way…
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0515 | Henderson the Rain King | Saul Bellow
Boy this took ages to read. Just couldn’t really get into it until the last 100 pages or so. Couldn’t really place my finger on why, but I think it…
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0514 | The Graduate | Charles Webb
This is even more fun to read than the famous film that is lifted almost entirely from the written dialogue. It’s deceptively short and, as it consists almost entirely of dialogue,…
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0513 | Troubles | J. G. Farrell
This last book in the series completes my reading of Farrell’s Empire trilogy. I wish I’d read them in order. I actually read them back to front. Troubles is a perfect…