0719 | A History of the Early Church | Hans Lietzmann
This is a rare four-volume set focussing on the history of the Christian church from the time of the apostles through to … well, when Lietzmann died in 1942 with…
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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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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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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…
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0644 | The Kindly Ones | Jonathan Littell
Littell’s meticulously researched memoir of an SS officer is a book that no one who reads it can ever forget, and that’s exactly how it should be. It’s absolutely horrific,…
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0640 | 1000 Years of Annoying the French | Stephen Clarke
This millennial look at the history of Britain and France is told with wry, sometimes childishly irritating, and rarely laugh-inducing humour. It’s pretty comprehensive, coming in at just under 650…
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0637 | Rosshalde | Herman Hesse
This beautiful, sad and moving book is the story of a man at odds with life, himself, his wife and his sons. I enjoyed it very much. Living in luxury…
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0628 | Slaughterhouse Five | Kurt Vonnegut
What a genius this man was to write a novel so short, so deceptively simple, so (frankly) bonkers and yet so very relevant not just for the age in which…
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0591 | Buddenbrooks | Thomas Mann
Now this was a Mann novel I could get into. This masterfully told epic of generations of a German family shows their demise from a close family of business leaders…
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0574 | Against the Day | Thomas Pynchon
Absolutely pointless and not worth anyone’s time, this is a novel by a man entirely self-absorbed. It says nothing about any particular era, has no characters more three dimensional than…
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0551 | Billiards at Half Past Nine | Heinrich Böll
This was an interesting novel to pick up a few days after finishing Cat and Mouse by Günter Grass. There are a lot of parallels in the prose of Grass and…
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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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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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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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0495 | Time’s Arrow | Martin Amis
Not read any of Martin Amis’ stuff since I started out with The Information which I rated mediocre 6 years ago. This, was far, far better. Time’s Arrow starts off a very…
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0491 | The Good Soldier | Ford Madox Ford
What I enjoyed about this most of all was the narrator and the way he tells the story. As the novel opens, you really have no idea what is coming…
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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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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…
