0708 | The Gospel According to John | D. A. Carson
I read this meticulously over three years and loved every single minute of it. Previously, I’ve not been an avid fan of Bible commentaries. You can often find yourself following…
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0643 | Watchmen | Alan Moore
Before the mid-1980s, superheroes were pretty simple. They had special powers, they fought baddies, they fought on our side, and they won. Wathmen changed all that. Moore single-handedly deconstructed the…
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0597 | The Forsyte Saga | John Galsworthy
The last book of 2017 is the one and only book of the year that reaches the lofty heights of the 90%+ rating needed to enter Arukiyomi’s Hall of Fame….
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0498 | Independent People | Halldór Laxness
Prior to this, forgetting the purile Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the only Nordic literature I’d read was also by Nobel laureates (Kristin Lavransdatter and Growth of the Soil). Laxness was therefore…
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0493 | Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov
This is a novel which should be approached and dealt with very, very carefully indeed. What Nabokov has done here remains as liable to detonate and rip the world apart…
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0420 | Growth of the Soil | Knut Hamsun
The 1001 books list does it again and throws something superb my way. This one just crept into Arukiyomi’s Hall of Fame, a brooding saga of a novel with symbolism…
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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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0371 | Of Human Bondage | W. Somerset Maugham
Context: Finished this off the day that we hiked up Tavurvur, an active volcano just outside Rabaul surrounded by sea so hot it boiled! REVIEW The only Maugham I’ve tackled…
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0303 | The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
Context: Read this on my e-reader while walking to and from work. First book I’ve read on my 5 min commute. REVIEW Wow. What a book! And not just because…
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0273 | On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
Context: Read this while we were meeting the church staff for lunch at our immense church in Seoul, South Korea. REVIEW This is the most amazing book. It’s the fourth…
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0265 | Regeneration – Pat Barker
Context: Read this while we visited our friends’ lovely house in Newcastle. REVIEW I’ve had this on my shelf for a very long time and imminent emigration to Papua New…
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0254 | The Siege of Krishnapur – J. G. Farrell
Context: Read this while we took in a marvellous cream tea in the most idyllic tea garden in Selworthy, Somerset. REVIEW Back in early 1995, I was walking up a…
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0240 | The Romance of the Three Kingdoms – Lo Kuan-chung
Context: While reading this I started wearing reading glasses and… boy!… they really took some getting used to! REVIEW Battles, rivalry, espionage, subterfuge, love, filial honour, tradition, strategies, mysticism, kingdoms,…
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0229 | The Waves – Virginia Woolf
Context: Mrs Arukiyomi made some great flower decorations for her parents’ anniversary while I was reading this. REVIEW Wow wow wow wow. What an amaaaaazing book. It’s in fact the…
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0157 | The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Context: Finished this off as we packed up to head away for a holiday over Easter weekend. REVIEW Steinbeck establishes himself, in my mind, as the USAnian Orwell with this…
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0150 | An Evil Cradling – Brian Keenan
Context: My bedtime book in our wonderful bed at Piddington. REVIEW I was at a friend’s house and spied this on the shelf. “One of the best books that I’ve…
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0141 | War & Peace – Leo Tolstoy
Context: Finished off the last of this epic (a Christmas pressie from the mother-in-law) over coffee with Mrs Arukiyomi. She was the one with the coffee. REVIEW What can I…
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0125 | Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
Context: Finished this off in an afternoon in my room at the Wycliffe centre. REVIEW Wow. Little books (127 pages in my edition from the 50s) can certainly pack some…