0463 | ISOLT IV: Sodom & Gomorrah | Marcel Proust
Yeah this is one of the greatest novels of all time, but I’m getting pretty fed up of the long drawn out prose about nothing much in particular and endless…
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0460 | The Count of Monte Christo | Alexander Dumas
Wow! What a romper stomper this was. Pretty much from the very first page you’re thrown into a torrent of narrative that affords you barely enough time to attempt to…
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0457 | How Proust can Change your Life | Alain de Botton
As I’m tackling Proust’s mammoth In Search of Lost Time (ISOLT) this year (and currently over the halfway mark yeah!), when I saw this in a charity shop, I just…
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0455 | ISOLT III: The Guermantes Way | Marcel Proust
This was a book of two halves for me. The first half starts off with a relocation to Paris from the coast and the obsession with yet another female. After…
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0452 | Fear of Flying | Erica Jong
This book took me very much by surprise. There were mixed reviews online but I thought it was a very bold work of genius. When you consider that this was…
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0450 | ISOLT II: Within a Budding Grove | Marcel Proust
Proust continues with a trip to the seaside resort of Balbek which is the backdrop for the majority of the second volume of In Search of Lost Time. It’s a…
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0442 | ISOLT I: Swann’s Way | Marcel Proust
Reading the first volume of Proust’s mammoth In Search of Lost Time is akin to undergoing an initiation ceremony: the air is rife with rumours of what is to come;…
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0438 | ADMT I: A Question of Upbringing | Anthony Powell
And so we’re up and running with volume 1 of the 12-volume novel A Dance to the Music of Time. Once I discovered Powell’s prose to be very accessible, in…
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0418 | The Great War for Civilisation | Robert Fisk
Like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, this is the agonising tale of humanity bravely told. Fisk displays the full range of his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Middle East, knowledge…
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0415 | Henry VIII: King and Court | Alison Weir
There, in a charity shop, completely unblemished as in a proper bookshop, lay Weir’s encylopaedic description of one of the most magnificent courts of English royalty. And it was mine…
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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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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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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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0388 | Wolf Hall | Hilary Mantel
Context: Recorded an album while I was reading this. REVIEW Now here’s a different kind of novel. Kind of. Mantel has refined her style to provide us with an intimate…
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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…
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0384 | The Three Musketeers | Alexandre Dumas
Context: Started this on my way down from Mt. Wilhelm, PNG’s highest peak. Paused at a stream to get my breath back. REVIEW This is a rollicking tale of derring-do,…