0627 | The Untouchable | John Banville
I last read Banville nearly a decade ago. The Sea and The Newton Letter didn’t impress me much. This one was better than both of those put together, I thought….
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0619 | Americanah | Chimamanda Ngozi Aidichie
Recently added to the 1001 Books list in the new October 2018 edition, this title was worthy of its inclusion capturing, as it does, the state of race in a…
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0616 | There but for the | Ali Smith
My second Ali Smith, and I’m starting to get the idea now. Ask questions about who people are by rotating the point of view to show us that, as many…
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0613 | Great Apes | Will Self
20 pages into this, you’d be forgiven for thinking Will Self was a meaningful pseudonym. Pretty much from the get go, this seems to be all about convincing us how…
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0612 | Portrait of a Lady | Henry James
Many regard Portrait as James’ greatest novel. What they mean by this, of course, is that it’s the easiest to read. Written before James went off on the subordinate clause…
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0607 | Martin Chuzzlewit | Charles Dickens
Dickens takes a cultural diversion to the USA in this one (in order to boost flagging sales of the installments the book was released in) and it’s a plot diversion…
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0605 | Daniel Deronda | George Eliot
So often Eliot is held up as the paragon of 19th century English prose. Here is yet another novel to demonstrate why I simply cannot afford her the accolades that…
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0602 | Hallucinating Foucault | Patricia Duncker
Not really sure why this is on the 1001 books list. Didn’t grab me. Seemed a bit too much like navel-gazing for the Cambridge set (e.g. “we went to Browns…
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0599 | The Woodlanders | Thomas Hardy
Six down and one more to go of Hardy’s from the 1001 Books List. Unbeknown to me at the time, I actually finished it to within an hour of 80…
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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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0594 | Murphy | Samuel Beckett
My, this was a strange one. Having not read any Beckett before, I really wasn’t sure what to expect. Being Beckett though, it seems that, even halfway through, it was…
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0593 | Women in Love | D.H. Lawrence
Back when I lived in another world, I listened to The Rainbow, the first of this two volume story of the Brangwens of Nottinghamshire. Rainbow scored 59%. This one has…
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0592 | Cause for Alarm | Eric Ambler
Dear me, this hasn’t aged well at all, and I couldn’t wait to get to the end of this one. According to Wikipedia, Ambler is known for his thrillers. I…
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0587 | The Day of the Triffids | John Wyndham
An even better read than The Midwich Cuckoos, Wyndham’s best-known novel gets off to a great start even if the ending leaves you hoping for a climax which never comes….
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0586 | The Master | Colm Tóibín
It’s been a while since I read this, but the impression it made on me hasn’t left. Tóibín has written a melancholic novel of a man much misunderstood it seems….
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0581 | He Knew he was Right | Anthony Trollope
Trollope’s story of a marriage and a life destroyed by the jealousy of a husband could have been a vivid portrayal of how delicately married life can be balanced. Instead,…
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0577 | North and South | Elizabeth Gaskell
Such was the impression this book left on me that I completely forgot I’d read it. I made no note of it in the list of completed books I keep,…
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0576 | The Golden Notebook | Doris Lessing
A tough read this one, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s long and you are going to wish you were nearer the end than the beginning on many occasions….