Poppyshake's Reading Year 2014

[poppyshake]

Books Read 2009

Books Read 2010

Books Read 2011

Books Read 2012

Books Read 2013

 

Total books read in 2009 ... 49 - incomplete list: 40 fiction & 9 non-fiction (1 audio) } male authors: 24 .. female authors: 25
Total books read in 2010 ... 141 (94 fiction, 9 non-fiction, 4 short stories, 2 plays & 32 audio } male authors: 75 .. female authors: 66)
Total books read in 2011 ... 109 (71 fiction, 26 non-fiction, 1 short story & 11 audio } male authors: 54 .. female authors: 55)
Total books read in 2012 ... 89 (50 fiction, 27 non-fiction, 3 short stories, 1 poem & 8 audio } male authors: 48 .. female authors: 41)

Total books read in 2013 ... 109 (67 fiction, 21 non-fiction, 5 short stories, 1 poem, 1 essay, 1 collection & 13 audio } male authors: 57 .. female authors: 51 plus all those in the short story collection)

 

Good luck everyone with your reading challenges in 2014   Hope it's a good reading year for you all. Make yourself at home .. there's always tea/coffee/cake and toast available though something stronger will be provided for anyone daft enough to read the reviews   Please feel free to tell me I'm talking rubbish (to limit the potential for RSI just use copy & paste) and to point out all the times I went against my own resolution of not buying a book based on its cover. I won't be buying any books in 2014 though .. pretty or otherwise It would most certainly bankrupt me and possibly see me out on my ear. If this does happen though a hotline will be set up so that you can kindly donate beans and underpants and stuff .. please give generously .. after all .. it would be partially your fault   

 

Quicklinks

Mount TBR (look away now )

1001 Challenge

Modern Library

Wishlist

Conquering Mount Virginia 

Book Club Forum Member's Favourite Fiction

Book Club Forum Member's Favourite Non-Fiction

Poached Quotes on Toast

Poppyshake's 133 Books You Must Read Before Your Toes Curl Up

The English Counties Challenge

Most Famous Books Set in Every American State

 

5 - Books I loved 

4 - Books I liked a lot (almost as good as above .. though possibly devoid of toast quotes )
3 - Books I liked (was possibly let down by a bad cover, no toast or no humour .. might even have been read on a Tuesday .. it's hard to love anything then  )

2 - Books I struggled through (well abandon them then .. you idiot!!)
1 - Books I abandoned  (let's hope someone bought me some fortitude for Christmas )

 

January 2014 (7 read and 1 listened to) 

Dear Lumpy: Letters to a Disobedient Daughter - Roger Mortimer and Louise Mortimer 4/5 review

Sisters By a River - Barbara Comyns 5/5 review

Beyond the Great Indoors - Ingvar Ambjørnsen 5/5 review

Bonkers : My Life in Laughs - Jennifer Saunders - Audible d/l 4/5 review

On the Black Hill - Bruce Chatwin 4/5 review

Kilvert's Diary - Francis Kilvert 4/5 review

Mrs Bridge - Evan S. Connell 4/5 review

Love, Nina - Nina Stibbe 5/5 review

 

February 2014 (6 read and 1 listened to)

High Rising - Angela Thirkell 4/5 review

The Library of Unrequited Love - Sophie Divry 5/5 review

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt 4/5 review

Mr Pye - Mervyn Peake 4/5 review

Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body - M.C. Beaton - Audible d/l 3/5

Christmas at High Rising - Angela Thirkell 3/5 (short stories) review

Hollow City - Ransom Riggs 4/5 review

 

March 2014 (6 read)

The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd 4/5 review

Bedsit Disco Queen - Tracey Thorn 4/5 review

The Groucho Letters: Letters from and to Groucho Marx 4/5 review

Paperboy - Christopher Fowler 4/5 review

The Darling Buds of May - H.E. Bates 3/5 review

The Crane Wife - Patrick Ness 3/5 review

 

April 2014 (5 read and 1 listened to)

The Golem and the Djinni - Helene Wecker - Audible d/l 5/5 review

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 - Sue Townsend 5/5 (re-read)

The Shock of the Fall - Nathan Filer 5/5

Ronnie - Ronnie Wood 3/5 review

The Middlesteins - Jami Attenberg 4/5

The Greengage Summer - Rumer Godden 4/5

 

May 2014 (5 read and 1 listened to)

Idiopathy - Sam Byers 4/5 review

Look Who's Back - Timur Vermes - Audible d/l 4/5 review

Perfect - Rachel Joyce 4/5

Heft - Liz Moore 3/5 review

The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman 5/5 review

We Need New Names - NoViolet Bulawayo 5/5 review

 

June 2014 (7 read)

Pippi Longstocking - Astrid Lindgren 4/5 review

The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne 5/5 review

How to be Good - Nick Hornby 4/5

Care of Wooden Floors - Will Wiles 5/5 review

Sketcher - Roland Watson-Grant 3/5

Trawler - Redmond O'Hanlon 3/5 review

Teacher, Teacher - Jack Sheffield 4/5

Edited January 8, 2016 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

July 2014 (6 read)

One of Our Thursdays is Missing - Jasper Fforde 4/5 review

Replay - Ken Grimwood 4/5

Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres 4/5 review

Mrs Ames - E.F Benson 3/5 review

Duende - Jason Webster 4/5

The World Without Us - Alan Weisman 3/5 review

 

August 2014 (5 read)

Clever Girl - Tessa Hadley 4/5  review

Heading Out To Wonderful - Robert Goolrick 4/5 review

The Taste of Apple Seeds - Katharina Hagena 4/5

The Misinterpretation of Tara Jupp - Eva Rice 2/5 review

Frog Music - Emma Donoghue 4/5

 

September 2014 (3 read and 1 listened to)

Uncle Silas - H.E. Bates

The Misunderstanding - Irene Nemirovsky 4/5

How To Build a Girl - Caitlin Moran - Audible d/l 4/5 review

Kate Bush's Before the Dawn Tour Programme 100/5 

 

October 2014 (9 read) 

Frost Hollow Hall - Emma Carroll 5/5

The Rabbit Back Literature Society - Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen 4/5 review

Walking Home - Clare Balding 3/5 review

The Dynamite Room - Jason Hewitt 5/5 review

The Bookstore - Deborah Meyler 3/5

The Body In the Library - Agatha Christie 3/5

The Birds - Daphne du Maurier 4/5 (short story)

The Old Man - Daphne du Maurier 4/5 (short story)

The Halloween Tree - Ray Bradbury 4/5

 

November 2014 (7 read)

The Wimbledon Poisoner - Nigel Williams 5/5

The Apple Tree - Daphne du Maurier 4/5 (short story)

Kiss me Again Stranger - Daphne du Maurier 3/5 (short story)

More Fool Me - Stephen Fry - Audible d/l 4/5

The Panopticon - Jenni Fagan 4/5

The Little Photographer - Daphne du Maurier 4/5 (short story)

Monte Verita - Daphne du Maurier 3/5 (short story)

 

December 2014 (1 read and 1 listened to)

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 5/5 (re-read)

The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Elizabeth Gaskell 4/5 review

Edited January 29, 2015 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

The Shameful Reckoning of My Books TBR   

 

Last year's TBR was based solely on books on bookshelves ... and not on books in boxes .. lofts .. cupboards and inaccessible places. This year's list is based on fact .. and very shameful it is too. You will be wondering how I have the audacity to buy any more books when I should be reading these .. I'm wondering it myself actually and can only blame fresh air and all the bookstores for their devilishly enticing shop window displays (and you .. of course ) It's patently clear that I will have to insist that The Book People remove me from their mailing list .. I might even sue them for damages I won't be buying any more books this year but here's a books acquired in 2014 link just in case 

 

Progress 18/242 

Fiction:
Aaronovitch, Ben - Whispers Underground

Abercrombie, Joe - The Heroes

Abercrombie, Joe - Red Country

Alison, Rosie - The Very Thought of You
Almond, David - The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean

Amis, Kingsley - The Old Devils
Anderson, James - The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy
Atkinson, Kate - Started Early Took My Dog
Atwood, Margaret - The Blind Assassin
Barker, Pat - The Ghost Road

Barker, Pat - Regeneration

Barker, Pat - Toby's Room
Benson, EF - Mrs Ames (Bloomsbury)

Beauman, Ned - The Teleportation Accident

Benson, E.F. - Lucia Rising (on loan) 

Binchy, Maeve - Whitethorn Woods
Bloom, Amy - Away

Boyd, William - Any Human Heart

Bradley, James - The Resurrectionist

Bulgakov, Mikhail - The Master and Margarita
Bullington, Jesse - The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

Burnett, Frances Hodgson - A Little Princess

Burnett, Frances Hodgson - The Secret Garden
Byatt, AS - Possession
Carey, Peter - Oscar and Lucinda

Carter, Angela - Nights at the Circus
Carter, Angela - The Passion of New Eve

Chang, Jung - Wild Swans
Christie, Agatha - Appointment with Death

Christie, Agatha - At Bertram's Hotel
Christie, Agatha - Curtain: Poirot's Last Case

Christie, Agatha - Death on the Nile
Christie, Agatha - Dumb Witness

Christie, Agatha - Five Little Pigs

Christie, Agatha - Hercule Poirot's Christmas

Christie, Agatha - Lord Edgware Dies

Christie, Agatha - The Murder at the Vicarage

Christie, Agatha - Murder on the Orient Express
Christie, Agatha - The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Christie, Agatha - One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
Christie, Agatha - Peril at End House
Christie, Agatha - Third Girl

Clements, Abby - Vivien's Heavenly Ice Cream Shop
Coe, Jonathan - The Rotters Club

Comyns, Barbara - Sisters By a River

Connolly, John - Nocturnes
Craig, Amanda - Hearts and Minds
Cunningham, Michael - The Hours
Dahl, Roald - The BFG
Dahl, Roald - Charlie & the Glass Elevator
Dahl, Roald - The Witches
De Bernieres, Louis - Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Dennys, Joyce - Henrietta Sees it Through (Bloomsbury)
De Waal, Edmund - The Hare with Amber Eyes

Dickens, Charles - Dickens at Christmas

Divry, Sophie - The Diary of Unrequited Love
Drabble, Margaret - The Red Queen

Dumas, Alexandre - Robin Hood

Du Maurier, Daphne - The Birds and other stories

Du Maurier, Daphne - The House on the Strand
Du Maurier, Daphne - Jamaica Inn

Eco, Umberto - The Name of the Rose

Eggers, Dave - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Englander, Nathan - The Ministry of Special Cases
Eugenides, Jeffrey - My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead

Fairbairn, Charlotte - With the Sound of the Sea
Fallada, Hans - Alone in Berlin

Faulks, Sebastian - Birdsong
Fforde, Jasper - The Big Over Easy
Fforde, Jasper - The Fourth Bear

Fforde, Jasper - One of our Thursday's is Missing

Fforde, Jasper - The Woman Who Died a Lot
Fitzgerald, F.Scott - The Beautiful and the Damned
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - Tender is the Night
Fox, Essie - The Somnambulist

Flynn, Gillian - Gone Girl
French, Dawn - A Tiny Bit Marvellous
French, Vivien - The Robe of Skulls
Freud, Esther - The Sea House
Funke, Cornelia - Reckless

Galloway, Steven - The Cellist of Sarajevo

Gardner, Sally - The Red Necklace
Gibbons, Stella - Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm

Gogol, Nikolai - The Collected Tales
Gold, Glen David - Carter Beats the Devil

Goss, Theodora - The Thorn and The Blossom
Grassic Gibbon, Lewis - Sunset Song

Green, Roger Lancelyn - King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
Greene, Graham - Brighton Rock

Haddon, Mark - The Red House
Haig, Matt - The Last Family in England

Harkaway, Nick - Angelmaker
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Hay, Sheridan - The Secret of Lost Things

Hill, Susan - The Man in the Picture
Hoare, Philip - Leviathan
Hoeg, Peter - Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow
Hornby, Nick - About a Boy
Hornby, Nick - A Long Way Down
Hornby, Nick - How to be Good
Hornby, Nick - Juliet Naked
Hornby, Nick - Slam

Hustvedt, Siri - What I Loved
Irving, John - The Cider House Rules

Irving, John - The World According to Garp
Jacobson, Howard - The Finkler Question
Jones, Sadie - The Outcast
Kingsolver, Barbara - The Lacuna

Kipling, Rudyard - The Jungle Book

Lakhous, Amara - Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio
Lawrence, DH - Women in Love

Le Carre, John - The Spy who Came in from the Cold

Lessing, Doris - The Golden Notebook

Lindgren, Astrid - Emil and the Great Escape

Lindgren, Astrid - Emil and the Sneaky Rat

Lindgren, Astrid - Emil's Clever Pig

Lindgren, Astrid - Karlson Flies Again

Lindgren, Astrid - Karlson on the Roof

Lindgren, Astrid - Lotta Makes a Mess

Lindgren, Astrid - Lotta Says No

Lindgren, Astrid - Pippi Goes Abroad

Lindgren, Astrid - Pippi in the South Seas

Lindgren, Astrid - Pippi Longstocking

Mantel, Hilary - Fludd

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - The Autumn of the Patriarch

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - Leaf Storm
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - No One Writes to the Colonel

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - Of Love and Other Demons

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor

Maugham, Somerset - Ashenden

Maugham, Somerset - Christmas Holiday

Maugham, Somerset - Don Fernando

Maugham, Somerset - Liza of Lambeth

Maugham, Somerset - The Magician

Maugham, Somerset - The Narrow Corner

Maugham, Somerset - The Painted Veil

Maugham, Somerset - Up at the Villa
McGregor, Jon - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
McPherson, Catriona - Dandy Gilver & the Proper Treatment of Blood Stains
Mistry, Rohinton - A Fine Balance

Mitford, Nancy - Don't Tell Alfred
Moers, Walter - The 13¹⁄₂ Lives of Captain Bluebear

Montgomery, LM - Anne of Green Gables

Morrall, Clare - Natural Flights of the Human Mind
Morton, Kate - The House at Riverton
Murdoch, Iris - The Black Prince
Murdoch, Iris - The Flight from the Enchanter
Murdoch, Iris - The Unofficial Rose

Nesbit, E - The Railway Children

Norton, Juster - The Phantom Tollbooth

Oksanen, Sofi - Purge
O'Neill, Joseph - Netherland
Orwell, George - Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Peake, Mervyn - Mr Pye

Pratchett, Terry and Baxter, Stephen - The Long Earth

Preston, Caroline - Gatsby's Girl

Radcliffe, Ann - The Mysteries of Udolpho
Ransome, Arthur - Winter Holiday

Rhodes, Dan - This is Life

Rodriguez, Deborah - The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

Rymer, James Malcolm - Sweeney Todd
Schlink, Bernard - The Reader
Smith, Ali - The Accidental
Spark, Muriel - Robinson
Spark, Muriel - The Comforters

Steinbeck, John - Cannery Row

Steinbeck, John - East of Eden

Steinbeck, John - The Pearl

Steinbeck, John - The Red Pony
Stevenson, DE - Mrs Tim of the Regiment (Bloomsbury)

Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Tartt, Donna - The Little Friend
Taylor, G.P. - Mariah Mundi & the Ghost Diamonds

Thirkell, Angela - Christmas at High Rising

Thirkell, Angela - High Rising

Toksvig, Sandi - Valentine Grey
Townsend, Sue - Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years
Townsend, Sue - Adrian Mole & the Weapons of Mass Destruction
Udall, Brady - The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Vickers, Sally - Miss Garnet's Angel

Walter, Jess - Beautiful Ruins
Waters, Sarah - Fingersmith
Waters, Sarah - The Night Watch

Welsh, Irvine - Trainspotting

Whipple, Dorothy - Someone at a Distance (Persephone)

Wilde, Oscar - The Importance of being Earnest

Wiles, Will - Care of Wooden Floors

Williams, Nigel - East of Wimbledon

Williams, Nigel - They Came From SW19

Williams, Nigel - The Wimbledon Poisoner
Winterson, Jeanette - Sexing the Cherry

Winton, Tim - Cloudstreet

Wodehouse, PG - Right Ho, Jeeves

Non Fiction:
Baker, Danny - Going to Sea in a Sieve

Betjeman, John - Trains and Buttered Toast

Bryson, Bill - Down Under

Child, Julia - My Life in France

Claridge L - Tamara De Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence

Defoe, Daniel - A Journal of the Plague Year
De Waal, Edmund - The Hare with Amber Eyes

Faulks, Sebastian - Faulks on Fiction
Fitzgerald, Penelope - So I Have Thought of You: The Letters of Penelope Fitzgerald

Grove, Valerie - Laurie Lee: The Well Loved Stranger

Hodgson, Vere - Few Eggs and No Oranges (Persephone)
Holroyd, Michael - A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Helen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families
Keats, John - Bright Star: The Complete Poems and Selected Letters

Last, Nella - Nella Last's Peace

Manguel, Alberto - A Reading Diary

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - Living to Tell the Tale
McCourt, Frank - Angela's Ashes
McCourt, Frank - Tis

McGrath, Alistair E - CS Lewis: A Life

Milligan, Spike - Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall

Milligan, Spike - It Ends with Magic

Milligan, Spike - 'Rommel?' 'Gunner Who?'

Mortimer, Roger - Dear Lumpy
Mosley, Diana - The Pursuit of Laughter
Murdoch, Iris - A Writer at War: the Letters and Diaries of Iris Murdoch 1939-1945
Nicholson, Virginia - Among the Bohemians
Ozma, Alice - The Reading Promise
Pasternak, Boris - Letters to Georgian Friends

Phillips, John - Vita to Violet: The Letters
Powell, Julie - Julie & Julia
Proulx, Annie - Bird Cloud

Ronson, Jon - The Psychopath Test
Rugg, Julie & Murphy, Lynda - A Book Addicts Treasury

Sheffield, Jack - Teacher, Teacher (on loan)

Sitwell, Edith - Selected Letters

Stibbe, Nina - Love Nina

Strachey, Lytton - Eminent Victorians

Van Gogh, Vincent - The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

Webster, Jason - Andalus (on loan)

Webster, Jason - Duende (on loan)

White, Florence - Good Things in England (Persephone)

Wood, Ronnie - Ronnie

Woolf, Virginia - The Letters of Virginia Woolf Vol 1

Woolf, Virginia - The Letters of Virginia Woolf Vol 2

Woolf, Virginia - The Letters of Virginia Woolf Vol 3

Woolf, Virginia - The Letters of Virginia Woolf Vol 4

Woolf, Virginia - The Letters of Virginia Woolf Vol 5

Woolf, Virginia - The Letters of Virginia Woolf Vol 6

Edited October 30, 2014 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

Books I'd like to lick own 

 

Fiction:

Baker, Tiffany - The Gilly Salt Sisters

Black, Holly - Doll Bones

Bonfiglioli, Kyril - Don't Point that Thing at Me
Bradley, Alan - I Am Half Sick of Shadows
Bukowski, Charles - Ham on Rye

Butcher, Jim - Storm Front
Chabon, Michael - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Comyns, Barbara - Who was Changed and Who was Dead
Connolly, John - The Gates
Doshi, Tishani - The Pleasure Seekers
Earle, Steve - I'll Never Get Out of This World
Egan, Jennifer - The Invisible Circus

Elphinstone, Margaret - Light
Eugenides, Jeffrey - The Marriage Plot
Ewing, Barbara - The Circus of Ghosts

Fenollera, Natalia Sanmartin - The Awakening of Miss Prim

Foster, Alyson - God is an Astronaut
Gaiman, Neil & Pratchett, Terry - Good Omens

Gavalda, Anna - French Leave

Haig, Matt - The Humans
Haig, Matt - The Radleys

Hartley, L.P. - The Go-Between
Healy, Dermot - Long Time, No See
Hill, Susan - Dolly

Kaye, I.J. - Mountains of the Moon
Kennedy Toole, John - A Confederacy of Dunces

Laurain, Antoine - The President's Hat 
Meloy, Colin - Wildwood

Mitchell, David - The Bone Clocks

Mitchell, Gladys - Watson's Choice

Moggach, Deborah - Heartbreak Hotel

Morrall, Clare - The Roundabout Man
Murray, Paul - An Evening of Long Goodbyes
Nesbo, Jo - The Redbreast

Niffenegger, Audrey - Raven Girl

Parkin, Gaile - Baking Cakes in Kigali
Patchett, Ann - Bel Canto
Pears, Tim - Disputed Land
Pierre, DBC - Vernon God Little
Pratchett, Terry - Dodger

Richardson, CS - The Emperor of Paris
Rogan, Charlotte - The Lifeboat

Segal, Erich - The Class
Silverstone, Shel - Falling Up

Sloan, Robin - Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Steinbeck, John - The Short Novels of John Steinbeck
Watson, S.J. - Before I Go to Sleep
Waugh, Evelyn - A Handful of Dust
Waugh, Evelyn - Vile Bodies
Wetta, Stephen - If Jack's In Love
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth

Williams, Tennessee - A Streetcar Named Desire
Woolf, Virginia - The Waves

Zevin, Gabrielle - The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Non Fiction:
Bair, Deirdre - Simone de Beauvoir : A Biography
Beach, Sylvia - The Letters of Sylvia Beach
Bowker, Gordon - George Orwell
Brody, Leslie - Irrepressible: The Life and Times of Jessica Mitford
Carter, Angela - Expletives Deleted

Henshaw, Sarah - The Bookshop that Floated
Hughes, Gerald - Ted & I
Kafka, Franz - Letters to Friends, Family and Editors
Knight, Lynn - Lemon Sherbert and Dolly Blue
Lurie, Leslie Gilbert & Rita - Bending Toward the Sun : A Mother and Daughter Memoir

Mitford, Nancy - A Talent to Annoy
Moore, Lucy - Anything Goes : A Biography of the Roaring Twenties
Nabakov, Vladimir - Speak, Memory

O'Brien, Edna - Country Girl
Plath, Sylvia - The Unabridged Journals
Reid, Christopher - The Letters of Ted Hughes

Ross, Abbie - Hippy Dinners
Sewell, Brian - Outsider: Always Almost: Never Quite
Shilling, Jane - The Stranger in the Mirror
Walker, Alice - The Chicken Chronicles
Walls, Jeanette - The Glass Castle: A Memoir
Welty, Eudora & Maxwell, William - What There Is to Say We Have Said 
Werber, Millie & Keller, Eve - Two Rings: A Story of Love and War
Wheeler, Thom - One Steppe Beyond

Weiss, Luisa - My Berlin Kitchen 

Edited September 15, 2014 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

Books read from the 1001 Books You Must Read before You Die by Peter Boxall - 2006
Progress so far: 139/1001

987. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
985. Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
971. Candide - Voltaire
959. Evelina – Fanny Burney
940. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
938. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
937. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
936. Emma - Jane Austen
933. Persuasion - Jane Austen
932. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
931. Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
919. The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
916. The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
913. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
910. Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
909. The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
905. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
904. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
903. Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
902. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
900. Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
898. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
897. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
896. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
892. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
891. Villette – Charlotte Brontë
890. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
887. North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
886. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
883. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
876. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
873. Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
871. Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
869. Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
868. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
867. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
865. The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
863. Little Woman - Louisa May Alcott
859. Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
854. Alice Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Caroll
853. Middlemarch - George Eliot
846. Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
840. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
825. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

821. The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
820. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
808. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
805. News from Nowhere – William Morris
804. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
803. Diary of a Nobody - George & Weedon Grossmith
794. Dracula - Bram Stoker
790. The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
789. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
776. The Ambassadors – Henry James

740. The Voyage Out - Virginia Woolf
699. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
698. Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
695. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie
686. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
680. Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
675. Orlando - Virginia Woolf
671. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

656. Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
650. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
643. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
619. Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
611. The Years - Virginia Woolf
610. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
608. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
603. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
601. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day - Winifred Watson
596. Goodbye to Berlin - Christopher Isherwood

584. Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
566. The Pursuit of Love - Nancy Mitford
564. Animal Farm - George Orwell
563. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
561. Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake

547. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

542. Love in a Cold Climate - Nancy Mitford
529. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
526. Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
521. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
495. The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
494. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tokien
484. On the Road – Jack Kerouac
481. The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
478. The Bell – Iris Murdoch
474. Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
467. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
465. Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
459. Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
457. Rabbit, Run – John Updike
456. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
451. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
450. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
446. A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
445. Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
433. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
431. The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
399. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
367. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
365. The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
354. Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
352. The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
305. The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
278. On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin review
275. Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
274. A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
272. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
260. Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
237. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
236. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
222. Beloved - Toni Morrison

196. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
172. Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
147. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
143. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
133. The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
129. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
120. Mr Vertigo - Paul Auster

112. The Information – Martin Amis
92. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
90. Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
86. The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
69. Pastoralia – George Saunders
54. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
52. The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
49. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
38. Gabriel's Gift - Hanif Kureishi

33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
28. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
26. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
15. The Colour – Rose Tremain
13. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
9. The Master – Colm Tóibín
6. The Sea – John Banville
3. On Beauty – Zadie Smith
1. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

Edited January 11, 2015 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

The Modern Library: 200 Best Novels in English since 1950
Progress 23/200

1. A Murder is Announced
2. Nothing - Henry Green
3. Power Without Glory - Frank Hardy
4. The Grand Sophy - Georgette Heyer
5. December Bride - Sam Hanna Bell
6. My Cousin Rachel - Daphne Du Maurier
7. The West Pier - Patrick Hamilton
8. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe - Carson McCullers
9. A Dance to the Music of Time - Anthony Powell
10. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
11. Invisible Man: A Novel - Ralph Ellison
12. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
13. The Natural - Bernard Malamud
14. The Financial Expert - R.K. Narayan
15. Wise Blood: A Novel - Flannery O'Connor
16. East of Eden - John Steinbeck
17. The Sword of Honour Trilogy - Evelyn Waugh
18. Private Life of an Indian Prince - Mulk Raj Anand
19. Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin
20. The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
21. The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
22. The Go-Between - L.P. Hartley
23. The Echoing Grove - Rosamond Lehman
24. The Palm-Wine Drunkard - Amos Tutola
25. Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
26. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
27. The Tortoise and the Hare - Elizabeth Jenkins
28. The Flint Anchor - Sylvia Townsend Warner
29. Molloy: Malone Dies - Samuel Beckett
30. Recognitions - William Gaddis

31. The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
32. Lolita - Vladimir Nabakov
33. A Legacy - Sybille Bedford
34. Train to Pakistan - Khushwant Singh
35. Owls Do Cry - Janet Frame
36. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
37. Angel - Elizabeth Taylor
38. The Fountain Overflows - Rebecca West
39. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
40. Anecdotes of Destiny - Isak Dineson
41. From the Terrace - John O'Hara
42. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning - Alan Sillitoe
43. Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs
44. A Heritage and its History - Ivy Compton-Burnett
45. The Little Disturbances of Man - Grace Paley
46. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
47. Balkan Trilogy - Olivia Manning
48. Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetrology: (Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest) - John Updike
49. Jeeves in the Offing - P.G. Wodehouse
50. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
51. A House for Mr Biswas - V.S. Naipaul 
52. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
53. Riders in the Chariot - Patrick White
54. That's How it Was - Maureen Duffy
55. The Reivers - William Faulkner
56. The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
57. The Lonely Girl - Edna O'Brien
58. Ship of Fools - Katherine Anne Porter
59. The Little Girls - Elizabeth Bowen
60. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - John le Carre
61. The Group - Mary McCarthy
62. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
63. Herzog - Saul Bellow
64. Heartland - Wilson Harris
65. Last Exit to Brooklyn - Hubert Selby
66. Memoirs of a Peon - Frank Sargeson
67. Interpreters - Wole Soyinka
68. A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence
69. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
70. The Jewel in the Crown - Paul Scott
71. Cotters England - Christina Stead
72. The Confessions of Nat Turner - William Styron
73. A Grain of Wheat - Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
74. In the Heart of the Country - William H. Gass
75. The Nice and the Good - Iris Murdoch
76. The Unfortunates - B.S. Johnson
77. Happiness and other Stories - Mary Lavin
78. The Godfather - Mario Puzo
79. Fifth Business - Robertson Davies
80. Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian
81. The Day of the Jackal - Frederick Forsyth
82. St. Urbain's Horseman - Mordecai Richler
83. Black List, section H - Francis Stuart
84. The Optomist's Daughter - Eudora Welty
85. The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell
86. Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
87. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
88. Heat and Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
89. Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses - David Lodge
90. The Lost Salt Gift of Blood - Alistair Macleod
91. Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice
92. Saville - David Storey
93. Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge
94. Falconer - John Cheever
95. A Book of Common Prayer - Joan Didion
96. Ice Age - Margaret Drabble
97. Tirra Lirra by the River - Jessica Andersen
98. Plumb - Maurice Gee
99. The Human Factor - Graham Greene
100. Murderer - Roy Heath
101. The Cement Garden - Ian McEwan
102. The Year of the French - Thomas Flanagan
103. From the Fifteenth District - Mavis Gallant
104. Burger's Daughter - Nadine Gordimer
105. Sleepless Nights - Elizabeth Hardwick
106. The Executioner's Song - Norman Mailer
107. A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul
108. Earthly Powers - Anthony Burgess
109. The Transit of Venus - Shirley Hazzard
110. Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban
111. Lamb - Bernard MacLaverty
112. Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
113. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
114. Puffball - Fay Weldon
115. Lanark - Alasdair Gray
116. Red Dragon - Thomas Harris
117. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
118. A Flag for Sunrise - Robert Stone
119. On the Black Hill - Bruce Chatwin
120. Schindler's Ark - Thomas Keneally 
121. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
122. A Boys Own Story -
123. Money - Martin Amis
124. Empire of the Sun - J.G. Ballard
125. Flaubert's Parrot - Julian Barnes
126. In Custody - Anita Desai
127. Nation of Fools - Balraj Khanna
128. Machine Dreams - Jayne Anne Phillips
129. Family and Friends - Anita Brookner
130. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
131. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurty
132. Black Robe - Brian Moore
133. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
134. The Sportswriter - Richard Ford
135. An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro
136. A Summons to Memphis - Peter Taylor
137. Dark Adapted Eye - Barbara Vine
138. Ellen Foster - Kaye Gibbons
139. Double Whammy - Carl Hiaasen
140. Misery - Stephen King
141. Beloved - Toni Morrison
142. In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje
143. Other Garden - Francis Wyndham
144. Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey
145. Where I'm Calling From - Raymond Carver
146. Paris Trout - Pete Dexter
147. Sugar Mother - Elizabeth Jolley
148. Forty-seventeen - Frank Moorhouse
149. Ice Candy Man - Bapsi Sidhwa
150. Breathing Lessons - Anne Tyler
151. The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe
152. The Book of Evidence - John Banville
153. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love - Oscar Hijuelos

154. The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan
155. Possession - A.S. Byatt
156. Age of Iron - J.M. Coetzee
157. A Home at the End of the World - Michael Cunningham
158. The Snapper - Roddy Doyle
159. Get Shorty - Elmore Leonard
160. Amongst Women - John McGahern
161. The Great World - David Malouf
162. Friend of My Youth - Alice Munro
163. Regeneration Trilogy - Pat Barker
164. Wise Children - Angela Carter
165. A Strange and Sublime Address - Amit Chaudhuri
166. American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
167. Redundancy of Courage - Timothy Mo
168. Mating - Norman Rush
169. Downriver - Iain Sinclair
170. A Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley
171. Reading Turgenev - William Trevor
172. Cloudstreet - Tim Winton
173. Death and Nightingales - Eugene McCabe
174. The Butcher Boy - Patrick McCabe
175. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
176. The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides
177. River Sutra - Gita Mehta
178. My Idea of Fun - Will Self
179. The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
180. Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh
181. What a Carve Up - Jonathan Coe
182. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
183. The Folding Star - Alan Hollinghurst
184. Original Sin - P.D. James
185. How Late it Was, How Late - James Kelman
186. The Tortilla Curtain - T. Coraghessan Boyle
187. The Blue Flower - Penelope Fitzgerald
188. A Fine Balance - Mistry Rohinton
189. Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
190. Asylum - Patrick McGrath
191. Last Orders - Graham Swift
192. Night in Question - Tobias Wolff
193. Quarantine - Jim Crace
194. Underworld - Don Delillo
195. American Pastoral - Philip Roth
196. Lady from Guatemala - V.S. Pritchett
197. The Magus - John Fowles
198. So Long, See You Tomorrow - William Maxwell
199. Children's Bach - Helen Garner
200. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

Edited July 13, 2014 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

Book Club Forum Member's Favourite Fiction Reads

 

Kylie's Favourite Fiction (progress 23/40)
Jane Austen - Emma
Jane Austen - Pride & Prejudice
John Banville - The Body of Evidence
Ray Bradbury - Farenheit 451
Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
Italo Calvino - If On a Winter's Night a Traveller
John Connolly - The Book of Lost Things
Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
Alexandre Dumas - Count of Monte Christo
Mark Dunn - Ella Minnow Pea
Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex
Michel Faber - The Crimson Petal and the White
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything is Illuminated
George & Weedon Grossmith - Diary of a Nobody
Joseph Heller - Catch 22
Susan Hill - The Woman in Black
Jack Kerouac - On the Road
Jack Kerouac - The Town and the City
Ken Kesey - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
Steig Larsson - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird
Erich Maria Marquez - All Quiet on the Western Front
Margaret Mitchell - Gone With the Wind
Vladimir Nabakov - Lolita
George Orwell - Animal Farm
Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
John Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men
Bram Stoker - Dracula
Hunter.S. Thompson - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Tim Winton - Cloudstreet
Markus Zusak - The Book Thief

Frankie's Favourite Fiction (progress 32/103)
Boris Akunin - The Winter Queen

Ingvar Ambjørnsen - Elling series
Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen - Persuasion
Iain Banks - Wasp Factory

Muriel Barbery - The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home
Robert Bloch - Psycho
John Boyne - Crippen
John Boyne - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Poppy Z. Brite - Exquisite Corpse

Karin Brunk Holmqvist - Pieni potenssipuoti

Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange

Chelsea Cain - Heartsick
Truman Capote - Breakfast at Tiffany's
Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Stephen Chbosky - The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Agatha Christie - Ten little Niggers
Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Jeffery Deaver - Lincoln Rhyme series
Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities
Lucy Dillon - The Secret of Happy Ever After

Emma Donoghue - Room
Daphne du Maurier - My Cousin Rachel
Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex
Michel Faber - Under the Skin
Jasper Fforde - The Eyre Affair
Helen Fielding - Bridget Jones's Diary
Fannie Flagg - Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Peter Franzén - Tumman veden päällä

Stephen Fry - The Hippopotamus

Alex Garland - The Beach

Guy Gavriel Kay - The Lions of Al-Rassan

Linda Gillard - Emotional Geology

William Goldman - The Marathon Man

John Grogan - Marley and Me
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Matt Haig - The Last Family in England
Anna-Leena Härkönen - Häräntappoase

Daniil Harms - Incidences

Charlaine Harris - Sookie Stackhouse series
Joanne Harris - Gentleman & Players
Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises

Nick Hornby - Juliet, Naked
Siri Hustvedt - The Summer Without Men
Kazuo Ishiguro - A Pale View of Hills
Lloyd Jones - Mister Pip

Katja Kallio - Kuutamolla

John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces

Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon

Stephen King - Cujo

Stephen King - Green Mile

Stephen King - The Stand

Sophie Kinsella - Twenties Girl
Andrey Kurkov - Death & the Penguin
Tuomas Kyrö - Mielensäpahoittaja

Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
Dennis Lehane - Shutter Island

Ira Levin - Rosemary's Baby

Jeff Lindsay - Dexter
Vaino Linna - The Unknown Soldier
Jennifer Lynch - The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (and you need to watch the TV show!!)

Vladimar Nabokov - Lolita

Irene Nemirovsky - The Ball

Grace Metalious - Peyton Place

David Mitchell - Black Swan Green
Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the Wind
Sue Monk Kidd - The Secret of Bees

L.M. Montgomery - The Blue Castle
Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons - Watchmen
Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart
Sofi Oksanen - Purge
Ann Patchett - Bel Canto
Inna Patrakova - Naapurit

Dan Rhodes - Gold
Anne Rice - Interview with a Vampire

Kauko Röyhkä - Kaksi aurinkoa

Antoine de Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince

Pirkko Saisio - Punainen erokirja

Sapphire - Push!

Erich Segal - Love Story
Mary Ann Shaffer - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
George Bernard Shaw - Pygmalion
Anita Shreve - The Weight of Water
Linda Lay Shuler - She Who Remembers

Nevil Shute - Pied Piper

Dai Sijie - Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Karin Slaughter - Grant County + Will Trent series
Robert Louis Stevenson - Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
Garth Stein - The Art of Racing in the Rain
John Steinbeck - The Wayward Bus

Kathryn Stockett - The Help

Bram Stoker - Dracula
Patrick Suskind - Perfume
Vikas Swarup - Q&A
Donna Tartt - The Secret History
Jari Tervo - Pyhiesi yhteyteen

Voltaire - Candide
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five
Sarah Waters - Fingersmith
Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting
Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest
Carlos Ruiz Zafon - The Shadow of the Wind
Markus Zusak - The Book Thief

Edited January 11, 2014 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

 Book Club Forum Member's Favourite Non-Fiction

Kylie's Favourite Non-Fiction (progress 3/13)
Bill Bryson - Down Under
Bill Bryson - A Walk in the Woods
Bill Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything
Truman Capote - In Cold Blood
AB Facey - A Fortunate Life
Tim Flannery - The Explorers
Tim Flannery - The Birth of Sydney
Anne Frank - The Diary of Anne Frank
Helene Hanff - 84 Charing Cross Road
Steven D. Levitt - Freaconomics
Sylvia Plath - The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Andrew Solomon - The Noonday Demon
Martin Toseland - A Steroid Hit the Earth

Frankie's Favourite Non-Fiction (progress 3/28)
Sylvia Beach - Shakespeare and Company
Constance Briscoe - Ugly
Vincent Bugliosi - Helter Skelter
Augusten Burroughs - A Wolf at the Table
Augusten Burroughs - Dry
Augusten Burroughs - Magical Thinking
Augusten Burroughs - Possible Side Effects
Augusten Burroughs - Running with Scissors
Alain de Botton - How Proust Can Change Your Life
Peggy Claude-Pierre - The Secret Language of Eating Disorders
Pamela Druckerson - French Children Don't Throw Food
Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl
Philip Gonzalez - The Dog Who Rescues Cats
John Grogan - Marley and Me
Ronald Hayman - The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath
Nick Hornby - The Complete Polysyllabic Spree
Lesley McDowell - Between the Sheets - The Literary Liaisons of Nine 20th Century Women Writers
Motley Crue - The Dirt
Vicki Myron - Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World
Christopher V.V. Parnell - Hell's Prisoner
Dave Peltzer - A Child Called It
Flora Rheta Scheiber - Sybil
Mary Roach - Stiff - The Life of the Human Cadavers
Ann Rule - The Stranger Beside Me
Deborah Spungen - And I Don't Want to Live This Life: A Mother's Story of her Daughter's Murder
Danny Wallace - Yes Man
Tobias Wolff - This Boys Life
Tuula-Liina Varis - Kilpikonna ja olkimarsalkka

Edited January 11, 2014 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

Books bought/acquired 2014

 

Progress 26/37      

 

Fiction:

Aaronovitch, Ben - Broken Homes (Borrowed from lovely Claire)

Ambjørnsen, Ingvar - Beyond the Great Indoors  (from lovely frankie   )

Attenburg, Jami - The Middlesteins (from lovely Claire )

Bates, H.E. - The Darling Buds of May

Bates, H.E. - My Uncle Silas 

Bradley, Alan - A Red Herring Without Mustard

Bradley, Alan - The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag

Bulawayo, NoViolet - We Need New Names

Byers, Sam - Idiopathy

Carroll, Emma - Frost Hollow Hall (Borrowed from lovely Claire)

Chatwin, Bruce - On the Black Hill

Collis, John Stewart - The Worm Forgives the Plough (from lovely Kylie )

Connell, Evan S. - Mrs Bridge

Fagan, Jenni - The Panopticon (from lovely Claire )

Filer, Nathan - The Shock of the Fall

Gaiman, Neil - The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Grimwood, Ken - Replay (from lovely chaliepud   )

Hagena, Katharina - The Taste of Apple Seeds (borrowed from lovely Claire)

Hewitt, Jason - The Dynamite Room

Hines, Barry - A Kestrel for a Knave

Jääskeläinen, Pasi Ilmari - The Rabbit Back Literature Society

Jonasson, Jonas - The Girl who Saved the King of Sweden

Joyce, Rachel - Perfect

Meyler, Deborah - The Bookstore (Borrowed from lovely Claire)

Nemirovsky, Irene - The Misunderstanding 

Ness, Patrick - The Crane Wife

North, Claire - The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Riggs, Ransom - Hollow City

Solomons, Natasha - The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

Tey, Josephine - The Franchise Affair (from lovely Claire )

Townsend, Sue - The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4

 

Non-Fiction:

Crystal, Ben - Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard

Fowler, Christopher - Paperboy

Gaskell, Elizabeth - The Life of Charlotte Bronte

Kilvert, Francis - Kilvert's Diary (edited by William Plomer)

Marx, Groucho - The Groucho Letters (from lovely Kylie )

Thorn, Tracey - Bedsit Disco Queen

Edited November 8, 2014 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

Poached Quotes on Toasts
 
Toast Quotes 2012
Toast Quotes 2013
 
Most of these have been taken from books as I've read them ... though I did add my faves to begin with but .. all in all .. I've accumulated about 84. Not sure what I'm going to do with them but it keeps me out of mischief and stops me playing on train tracks etc. If you happen upon a toast quote I'd be very grateful if you could point me in its general direction
 
I'll add a few down here .. just to get us warmed up (or nice and toasty .. as I call it )
 
The weirdest: A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess: So up I went to the tenth floor, and there I saw 10-8 as it had been before, and my rooker trembled and shook as I took out of my carman the little klootch I had for opening up. But I very firmly fitted the klootch in the lock and turned, then opened up then went in, and there I met three pairs of surprised and almost frightened glazzies looking at me, and it was pee and em having their breakfast, but it was also another veck that I had never viddied in my jeezny before, a bolshy thick veck in his shirt and braces, quite at home, brothers, slurping away at the milky chai and munchmunching at his eggiweg and toast    
 
One of the funniest: The Wrong Boy - Willy Russell: Then she whispered in my ear again and she said, 'Have you ever made love ... with Chris de Burgh ... in the background?' And I thought that was the most spectacularly disgusting thing of all! I said, 'I wouldn't even make toast with Chris de Burgh in the background!'   
 
The most philosophical: Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith: Steam rises off teacups. We've got the taste of buttered toast in our mouths. At least, I assume we all have it, since we've all been eating the same toast. Then I start to worry. Because what if we all taste things differently? What if each bit of toast tastes completely different? After all, the two bits I've eaten tasted a bit different even from each other.
 
The most disgusting: Down and out in Paris and London - George Orwell: A customer orders, for example, a piece of toast. Somebody, pressed with work in a cellar deep underground, has to prepare it. How can he stop and say to himself. 'This toast is to be eaten - I must make it eatable'? All he knows is that it must look right and must be ready in three minutes. Some large drops of sweat fall from his forehead onto the toast. Why should he worry? Presently the toast falls among the filthy sawdust on the floor. Why trouble to make a new piece? It is much quicker to wipe the sawdust off. On the way upstairs the toast falls again, butter side down. Another wipe is all it needs   
 
The most comforting: Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh: There was a silver tea-pot, and a silver kettle with a little spirit-lamp underneath, and a silver cream jug and a covered silver dish full of muffins. There was also hot buttered toast and honey and gentleman's relish and a chocolate cake, a cherry cake, a seed cake and a fruit cake and some tomato sandwiches and pepper and salt and currant bread and butter.

 

Sisters By a River - Barbara Comyns: When he was at last ready, with his silver flask filled with brandy in case he was overcome by the journey, we all had to flock to the door to see him off, and until the carrage had disapeared from sight we had to say Good Luck, Good Luck and then go on saying more Good Lucks. Once I wouldn't say good Luck at all, just went on eating my toast and marmalaid, the grown-ups Granny in particular were horrorfied and I was smacked and locked in the bootroom, usually when I was locked up there I used to eat the galoches, but this time it was too soon after breakfast so I cried until I was sick, they had to let me out after that. (I know how easy it is to be distracted by toast ... though have never been locked in a bootroom for it .. I've never lived anywhere that had a bootroom and I'm rather glad of it. Can't see the appeal in snacking on 'galoches' .. things would have to be desperate for me to consider it as an option ) 

 

On the Black Hill - Bruce Chatwin: Dr Bulmer came and diagnosed pneumonia. For two weeks Mary hardly left the bedside. She ladled liquorice and elderberry down his throat and, at the least sign of a rally, she fed him spoonfuls of egg-custard and slips of buttered toast. He would cry out, 'When am I going to die, Mama?' 'I'll tell you when,' she'd say. 'And it'll be a long while yet.' (Exactly what I'd do to keep someone in the land of the living .. though very much on a 'one for me .. one for you' basis =D) 

 

Mr Pye - Mervyn Peake: 'Pull for the shore sailor! Pull for the shore! Heed not the roll ... ing waves but bend to the oar! Safe in the lifeboat, sailor ... Tumpty-tumpty taw, Tiddly-widdly-pidly, sailor! Pull .. for .. the .. shore! Pull on your clothes! Let's have some breakfast, sailor! Porridge and loaves, safe in the kitchen, sailor! There'll be toast galore!' (This was a bit of an impromptu song made up by Mr Pye and his landlady Miss Dredger .. I can't say I thought much of it until the last line .. it ended rather triumphantly =D)

 

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt: 'The plate of food, when he set it before me, was nothing to look at - puffy, yellow stuff on toast. But it smelled good. Cautiously, I tasted it. It was melted cheese, with chopped-up tomato and cayenne pepper and some other things I couldn't figure out, and it was delicious.' (Proof positive that toast can make anything taste good .. even puffy, yellow stuff.)

 

The Darling Buds of May - H.E. Bates: Mariette was eating toast and golden marmalade. As she opened her mouth to eat he saw, for the first time, how beautifully white her teeth were and how pink, in a pure rose-petal shade, her tongue now appeared as it darted out and caught at golden shreds of marmalade. (It's obviously early days in their relationship!) 

Edited March 18, 2014 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

Poppyshake's English Counties Challenge (the most famous books associated with each English county)

 

For more info visit the English Counties Challenge forum

 

Progress 27/48 (but some of those read will be re-read)

 

Bedfordshire: My Uncle Silas by H. E. Bates
Berkshire: The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Bristol: The Misses Mallett by E. H. Young
Buckinghamshire: The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper
Cambridgeshire: The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers
Cheshire: Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
City of London: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Cornwall: Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier (on shelf)
Cumbria: Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
Derbyshire: Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
Devon: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
Dorset: Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
County Durham: Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
East Riding of Yorkshire: South Riding by Winifred Holtby
East Sussex: Winnie-The-Pooh by A. A. Milne
Essex: The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James
Gloucestershire: Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee
Greater London: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Greater Manchester: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Hampshire: Watership Down by Richard Adams

Herefordshire: On The Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
Hertfordshire: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Isle of Wight: The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
Kent: The Darling Buds of May by H. E. Bates
Lancashire: Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Leicestershire: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend
Lincolnshire: The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
Merseyside: An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge
Norfolk: The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley
North Yorkshire: Dracula by Bram Stoker
Northamptonshire: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Northumberland: The Stars Look Down by A. J. Cronin
Nottinghamshire: Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
Oxfordshire: The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Rutland: Set In Stone by Robert Goddard
Shropshire: Summer Lightning by P. G. Wodehouse
Somerset: Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore
South Yorkshire: A Kestral For A Knave by Barry Hines
Staffordshire: The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett
Suffolk: The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
Surrey: The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
Tyne and Wear: Another World by Pat Barker
Warwickshire: Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes
West Midlands: Middlemarch by George Eliot
West Sussex: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
West Yorkshire: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Wiltshire: Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
Worcestershire: The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

Edited March 18, 2014 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

The Most Famous Book Set in Every (American) State Challenge 

Progress 10/51 (map)

AL: To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
AK: Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
AZ: The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver
AR: A Painted House - John Grisham
CA: East of Eden - John Steinbeck
CO: The Shining - Stephen King
CT: Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates
DE: The Saint of Lost Things - Christopher Castellani
FL: To Have and Have Not - Ernest Hemingway
GA: Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
HI: Hawaii - James Michener
ID: Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
IL: The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
IN: The Magnificent Ambersons - Booth Tarkington
IA: A Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley
KS: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Frank Baum (of course )
KY: Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
LA: Interview with a Vampire - Anne Rice
ME: Carrie - Stephen King
MD: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler
MA: Walden - Henry David Thoreau
MI: The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides
MN: Main Street - Sinclair Lewis
MS: The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner (aaarrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! )
MO: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
MT: A River Runs Through It - Norman Maclean
NE: My Antonia - Willa Cather
NV: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
NH: The Hotel New Hampshire - John Irving
NJ: Drown - Junot Diaz
NM: Red Sky at Morning - Richard Bradford
NY: The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald
NC: A Walk to Remember - Nicholas Sparks
ND: The Round House - Louise Eldrich
OH: The Broom of the System - David Foster Wallace
OK: Paradise - Toni Morrison
OR: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
PA: The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
RI: My Sisters Keeper - Jodi Picoult
SC: The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd
SD: A Long Way From Home - Tom Brokaw
TN: The Firm and The Client - John Grisham
TX: No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
UT: The 19th Wife - David Ebershoff
VT: Pollyanna - Eleanor H. Porter
VA: Bridge to Terabithia - Katherine Paterson
WA: Twilight - Stephenie Meyer
DC: The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown
WV: Shiloh - Phillis Reynolds Naylor
WI: Little House in the Big Woods - Laura Ingalls Wilder
WY: The Laramie Project - Moises Kaufman

Edited January 11, 2014 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

My Favourite Books    (list can also be used as a 'best avoided' )

 

Progress 133/133 (Go me! )  

 

Fiction
Ben Aaronovitch - Rivers of London series
Joe Abercrombie - The First Law Trilogy
Edward Albee - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Clare Allen - Poppy Shakespeare (yes ... that's how it all began )
Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen - Persuasion
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility
Julian Barnes - Arthur & George
David Benioff - City of Thieves
Emily Brontë - Wuthering Heights
Agatha Christie - And Then There Were None
Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
John Connolly - The Book of Lost Things
Patrick deWitt - The Sisters Brothers
Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens - Bleak House 
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities
Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime & Punishment
Mark Dunn - Ella Minnow Pea
Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex
Jasper Fforde - The Thursday Next series
Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything is Illuminated
Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere
Paul Gallico - Mrs Harris Goes to Paris 
George & Weedon Grossmith - Diary of a Nobody
Joseph Heller - Catch 22
Emma Henderson - Grace Williams Says it Loud
John Irving - A Prayer for Owen Meany
Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go
Eowyn Ivey - The Snow Child 
Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Mette Jakobsen - The Vanishing Act 
Thomas Keneally - Schindler's Ark 
Stephen Kelman - Pigeon English
Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible
Andrey Kurkov - Death and the Penguin
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lauren Liebenberg - The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter & Jam
Karen Maitland - Company of Liars
Hilary Mantel - Bring Up the Bodies
Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Daphne du Maurier - My Cousin Rachel
Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca
Cormac McCarthy - The Road
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the Wind
Nancy Mitford - The Pursuit of Love
Erin Morgenstern - The Night Circus
Toni Morrison - Beloved
Iris Murdoch - The Sea, The Sea
Paul Murray - Skippy Dies
Irene Nemirovsky - Suite Francaise
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Annie Proulx - The Shipping News
Dan Rhodes - Gold
Ransom Riggs - Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Willy Russell - The Wrong Boy
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Maria Semple - Where'd You Go Bernadette
Mary Ann Shaffer - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Lynn Shepherd - Tom All-Alones
Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle
Kathryn Stockett - The Help
Bram Stoker - Dracula
Mari Strachan - The Earth Hums in B Flat
Donna Tartt - The Secret History
Voltaire - Candide 
Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger
Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse
Markus Zusak - The Book Thief

Young Adult
Richard Adams - Watership Down
Joan Aiken - The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Stephen Chbosky - The Perks of being a Wallflower
Eoin Colfer - The Artemis Fowl series
Roald Dahl - Matilda
Cornelia Funke - Inkheart
Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book
Sally Gardner - I Coriander
Kenneth Grahame - Wind in the Willows
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
C.S. Lewis - The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe
A.A. Milne - Winnie the Pooh
Patrick Ness - A Monster Calls
Mary Norton - The Borrowers
Terry Pratchett - Wintersmith
Chris Priestley - Tales of Terror series
J.K. Rowling - The Harry Potter series
Jonathan Stroud - The Bartimaeus Trilogy
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien - Lord of the Rings
Sue Townsend - The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13¾
P.L. Travers - Mary Poppins
Catherynne M.Valente - The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

Non-fiction
Andrea Ashworth - Once in a House on Fire
Clare Balding - My Animals and Other Family
John Bayley - The Iris Trilogy
William Blacker - Along the Enchanted Way
James Bowen - A Streetcat Named Bob   
Bill Bryson - Notes from a Big Country
Bill Bryson - Notes from a Small Island
Bill Bryson - The Lost Continent
Augusten Burroughs - Running with Scissors
Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl
Stephen Fry - Moab is My Washpot
Stephen Fry - The Fry Chronicles
Angelica Garnett - Deceived with Kindness
Susan Hill - Howards End is on the Landing
Nick Hornby - The Complete Polysyllabic Spree
William Horwood - The Boy With No Shoes
Brian Keenan - An Evil Cradling
Richard Kennedy - A Boy at the Hogarth Press
Hermione Lee - Virginia Woolf
Laurie Lee - Cider with Rosie
Mary S. Lovell - The Mitford Girls
Alexander Masters - Stuart: A Life Backwards
Sarah Miles - Right Royal B*stard
David Mitchell - Back Story
Caitlin Moran - How To Be A Woman

Charlotte Mosley - Letters Between Six Sisters (Mitford's)
Steven Naifeh & Gregory White Smith - Steven Naifeh & Gregory White Smith - Van Gogh: The Life
George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London
Sylvia Plath - The Journals of Sylvia Plath
Lorna Sage - Bad Blood
Oscar Wilde - De Profundis
Jeanette Winterson - Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal?
Elie Wiesel - Night
Virginia Woolf - A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf - Selected Diaries
Virginia Woolf - Selected Letters

Edited January 11, 2014 by poppyshake

[poppyshake]

Poppyshake's 2014 thread is now open for business .. welcome one and all

 

Please feel free to come in and make yourself comfy   .. there are drinks and nibbles on the side. I am raising a glass to you all as I type (which is a skill in itself  ) to wish you all the best in 2014 and Happy Reading of course. May all your reads be tolerable at the very least   

 

I'm already getting excited about the absolutely brilliant books I'm bound to read in 2014   I didn't set any goals this year (2013)  but did rather better than last year so will carry on in the same style with hopefully the same results. My house is probably at groaning point now with regard to books so I need to think of other ways of acquiring them. I'm still not at home with my Kindle (well I am obviously .. but .. you know .. we're not best friends  ) but that might change .. however .. I need to re-acquaint myself with the library and use their reservation services etc as much as possible .. especially if I'm to crack on with the county challenge.

 

Will probably have to pluck my eyes out to stop myself from being attracted to all the nice covers .. it's just not possible to own every one ... it's very hard on the rest of you but I will be wishing to see only ugly books this year  

 

When writing up my books TBR in 2013 I came to the figure of 130 .. since doing an 'infantry' (a howler of epic proportions but it was a mammoth task so not wholly inaccurate  ) I realised that the figure is much nearer to 250   It would be entirely reasonable for my husband to confiscate my purse and lock me in the attic (where most of the TBR's are) until I have at least got the figure down below 100   .. thank God he relies on me to make his sandwiches for work. 

 

Anyway .. this wasn't supposed to be generalised waffling ... I've left a space for that. I'll just add (without emoticons .. I've emoted enough apparently) Happy New Year! xx

 

Don't be strangers ... please make a nuisance of yourself here as I will certainly be doing the same in your thread. 

[chesilbeach]

Happy new reading year to you, Kay   

• May all the covers you see be ugly to prevent overspending and increasing of TBR (although you still need to find that elusive pink spine from somewhere ) 
• May all your library reservations come quickly (how long can it take to deliver a book to an eager reader, after all?  )
• May all your reading be interesting ('coz you gotta have some rubbish in there to show how good the good stuff is )
• And may all your reviews be waffling and funny (this one's for us, as we need something to keep our spirits up at the end of the day )

 
Happy 2014!   

[Athena]

I love your thread already! I hope 2014 will be a good reading year for you .

[bobblybear]

Happy reading for 2014.

 

I suspect your "BCF Member's Favourites" post will be quite a long one by the time the year is up!

[chaliepud]

Happy 2014, in every which way Kay!

[Janet]

Your blog is one of the best there is. I only wish my own was half as interesting!

 

Happy reading 2014, lovely Kay.

[Karsa Orlong]

Happy reading in 2014, Kay 

[Marie H]

Happy reading/toast munching in 2014 poppychake    

[julie]

Miss Poppy

 The best of luck in 2014 . I'm sure you'll do fine with your reading ,as you always do . The No-Buying -Books Rule might be a bit harder to handle. I know the feeling myself .

 

 Maybe Alan could spray paint a pair of sunglasses for you ,and  get you a seeing-eye -dog  so that you won't be distracted by the flashy book covers in the windows of the stores . 

 

* Note- you'd have to train the dog well so he could lead you to the correct section of the grocery for your TOAST ingredients . We wouldn't want you to miss out on that .

 

 And if Alan does take your purse and lock you in the attic, if that's where your books are, it really wouldn't be a bad place to be . You might wanna stash some candy bars or something up there too so you have some treats to keep on hand .

[Ben]

.. and a laptop because we'll miss you otherwise!

 

In all seriousness, I hope you have the best of reading years in 2014 - filled with lovely, bright covers (even though it'll test your resolve, you don't really want to just view ugly books, surely?) and wonderful reads galore. I'm going to attempt to be more active in book blogs this year, so make sure you save me a seat.

[chaliepud]

I've just spotted you have Birdsong on your TBR list, I hope you get to read it soon, it has to be in my top ten books of all time, not quite as fantastic as Human Traces but very close. I have a copy of Replay that you are welcome to have, much as I liked it I rarely read books twice and I'm not a book collector/hoarder, you may even lick it then but I must warn you it does come from a doggy household and whilst all attempts would be made to post it hair free this isn't always possible!

[Karsa Orlong]

I have a copy of Replay that you are welcome to have, much as I liked it I rarely read books twice and I'm not a book collector/hoarder

 

But . . . But . . . But it's Replay!    

 

Mind you, I suppose, being Replay, if you wanted to read it again you should really buy it again    And then give it to Kay again    And then buy it again    Etc, ad infinitum