0550 | July’s People | Nadine Gordimer
I’ve read a fair few books from South Africa that deal (unsurprisingly) with the issue of relationships between the black and white communities. Nadine Gordimer’s novel is, sadly, not the…
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0549 | The Human Stain | Philip Roth
This is Philip Roth in his element, cruising along drawing on contemporary themes in public and political USAnian life and distilling them through the lens of a single individual who,…
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0548 | Cat and Mouse | Günter Grass
I know, I know, I should have read The Tin Drum before this as that’s the first of the trilogy and this is the second book. But, charity store book beggars…
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0547 | The Art of Fielding | Chad Harbach
No, no, no, no…. NO! This is absolutely NOT the kind of novel we should be seeing on the 1001 list. Absolutely not. This is not a novel anyone needs…
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0546 | Adam Bede | George Eliot
The only reason that this got a “good” rating from me and not “okay” was the legacy of the novel in terms of its depiction of country life at the…
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0545 | Slow Man | J M Coetzee
What at first seems like a fairly straightforward novel about a guy dealing with the loss of his leg takes a quite unexpected turn when a character turns up to…
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0544 | Justine | Lawrence Durrell
Nope. This didn’t quite do it for me. Don’t get me wrong, Durrell can write beautiful prose, and I honestly thought that this would completely entrance me and that the…
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0543 | The Last Chronicle of Barset | Anthony Trollope
My first Trollope and what a one to start with! An exquisitely constructed Victorian world inhabited by vivid characters and a strong plot to carry them along with. Trollope contrives a…
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0542 | Threepenny Novel | Bertold Brecht
This was a strange one. I had no idea about any of the background to the novel at all, not even the play it’s based on, John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera….
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0541 | The Black Prince | Iris Murdoch
What a great read this was. I can also imagine that Murdoch had immense fun writing it too, because that comes across in the writing for too often to be coincidental….
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0540 | 2666 | Roberto Bolaño
Dear Lord, spare me. Another title from Latin/South America and yet another novel that I could have done without. What the heck is it with that continent that I just…
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0539 | Dangling Man | Saul Bellow
Dangling man? Dangling reader more like! Another Bellow under the belt and that’s a good metaphor as yet another protagonist spends most of the novel navel-gazing. Bellow won the Nobel,…
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0538 | Les Miserables | Victor Hugo
Another bookshelf breaker under the belt. Now, I’m a real Les Mis fan having seen the musical in London four times, but this did not actually meet my expectations in…
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0537 | Michael Kohlhaas | Heinrich von Kleist
There’s a lot to glean from this tale of injustice because the issues that the story raises are just as relevant today as they were when this was written over…
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0536 | The Cement Garden | Ian McEwan
Leaving aside any controversy about whether McEwan borrowed the plot for this novel from another source, for an author’s first effort, this isn’t half bad at all. Macabre, disturbing and…
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0535 | The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul | Douglas Adams
This is not one of Adams’ best. I sincerely hope it’s his worst because if there is a worse novel by him out there, it must be atrocious. An explosion…
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0534 | Loving | Henry Green
Really didn’t get into this. It’s not helped by the unorthodox dialogue which I had a hard time following at times. There are some half-memorable characters in here but the…
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0533 | The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby | Charles Dickens
A very, very long time ago, when he was just a wee lad, Arukiyomi attempted to read this and didn’t get too far. This time, I listened to this via…
