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Willoyd's Reading Log 2012


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Book List 2012

 

Previous book lists: 2009, 2010-2011

 

January

1. Ratking by Michael Dibdin (Jan 3) ****

2. Stone's Fall by Iain Pears (Jan 15) U **

3. Alison Wonderland by Helen Smith (Jan 21) **

 

February

4. The Angel's Game by Carlos Luiz Zafon (Feb 2) **

5. From Sea to Shining Sea by Gavin Young (Feb 11) ****

6. Keeping Up With the Germans by Philip Oltermann (Feb 12) ***

7. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (Feb 21) *****

 

March

8. Capital by John Lanchester (Mar 5) ****

9. Tom-All-Alone's by Lynn Shepherd (Mar 13) *****

10. Almost French by Sarah Turnbull (Mar 17) ****

 

April

11. A Brief History of Britain 1066-1485 by Nicholas Vincent (Apr 1) ***

12. The Family Tree by Carole Cadwalladr (Apr 4) ***

13. To The River by Olivia Laing (Apr 10) ****

14. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell (Apr 11) ***

15. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Apr 14) *****

16. Blackout by John Lawton (Apr 20) ****

17. The Waves by Virginia Woolf (Apr 27) *****

 

May

18. Vendetta by Michael Dibdin (May 7) ****

19. Cakes and Ale by William Somerset Maugham (May 11) *****

20. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (May 13) ****

21. Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch (May 21) *****

 

June

22. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Moby Dick by Gideon Defoe (Jun 1) *

23. Full Moon by PG Wodehouse (Jun 5) ***

24. The Final Act of Mr Shakespeare by Robert Winder (Jun 9) ****

25. Whispers Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch (Jun 24) ****

26. Pure by Andrew Miller (Jun 30) ******

 

July

27. Dam Busters by James Holland (Jul 12) ******

28. The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller (Jul 16) ***

29. Moo by Jame Smiley (Jul 21) ***

30. L'Auberge by Julia Stagg (Jul 22) ****

31. Sky's The Limit by Richard Moore (Jul 24) ***

32. The Harlot's Press by Helen Pike (Jul 28) ***

33. The Parisian Returns by Julia Stagg (Jul 31) ****

 

August

34. Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski (Aug 12) ***

35. The Warden by Anthony Trollope (Aug 22) R ***

 

September

36. Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope (Sep 10) R *****

 

October

37. Canada by Richard Ford (Oct 7) ****

38. An Honourable Man by Gillian Slovo (Oct 13) ****

39. My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell (Oct 21) ***

40. Ash by James Herbert (Oct 29) U *

 

November

41. The Pinecone by Jenny Uglow (Nov 4) ******

42. City of Fortune by Roger Crowley (Nov 18) *****

43. Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (Nov 25) **

44. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Nov 28) **

 

December

45. The Lighthouse by Alison Moore (Dec 1) ***

46. Transgressions by Sarah Dunant (Dec 5) ****

47. Spell It Out by David Crystal (Dec 9) ***

48. The Return of John Macnab by Andrew Greig (Dec 10) R ******

49. The Spire by William Golding (Dec 13) ***

50. The Sea Detective by Mark Douglas-Home (Dec 17) ****

51. Romanno Bridge by Andrew Greig (Dec 23) ***

52. The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M Boston (Dec 24) *****

53. The Chimes by Charles Dickens (Dec 25) ***

54. Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (Dec 25) ******

55. The Bar on the Seine by Georges Simenon (Dec 26) ***

56. Summoned by Bells by John Betjeman (Dec 26) *****

57. Liza of Lambeth by W Somerset Maugham (Dec 26) ***

58. The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd (Dec 27) ****(*)

59. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (Dec 28) **** A

60. Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf (Dec 30) ******

 

 

Ratings

* Disliked intensely, almost certainly unfinished.

** Disappointing. Sometimes unfinished.

*** Solid enjoyable read, but nothing I could get particularly excited about.

**** A really good, involving read, hard to put down - recommended.

***** Excellent, unputdownable, with something a bit special about it.

****** An all-time favourite.

U=unfinished, A=audiobook, R=reread

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1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

 

105 books read to start of 2011, 5 read in 2012.

Total = 110

 

Pre-1700

1001. Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus ***

1000. Metamorphoses – Ovid

999. Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton

998. Aithiopika – Heliodorus

997. The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius

996. The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous

995. Gargantua and Pantagruel – François Rabelais

994. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly

993. The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe

992. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

991. The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan

990. The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette

989. Oroonoko – Aphra Behn

 

1700s

988. A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift

987. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe

986. Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood

985. Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe **

984. Roxana – Daniel Defoe

983. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift

982. A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift

981. Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding

980. Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift

979. Pamela – Samuel Richardson

978. Clarissa – Samuel Richardson

977. Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett

976. Tom Jones – Henry Fielding

975. Fanny Hill – John Cleland

974. Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett

973. Amelia – Henry Fielding

972. The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox

971. Candide - Voltaire ****

970. Rasselas – Samuel Johnson

969. Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

968. Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot

967. Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

966. The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole

965. The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith

964. Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne

963. A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne

962. The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie

961. Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett

960. The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

959. Evelina – Fanny Burney

958. Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

957. Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

956. Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

955. Cecilia – Fanny Burney

954. The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade

953. Vathek – William Beckford

952. Justine – Marquis de Sade

951. The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin

950. The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano

949. The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe

948. Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

947. The Monk – M.G. Lewis (TBR)

946. Camilla – Fanny Burney

945. Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot

944. The Nun – Denis Diderot

943. Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin

 

1800s

942. Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth

941. Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

940. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen ******

939. The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth

938. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen ******

937. Mansfield Park – Jane Austen *****

936. Emma – Jane Austen ******

935. Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott

934. Ormond – Maria Edgeworth

933. Persuasion – Jane Austen *****

932. Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen *****

931. Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

930. Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott ***

929. The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott

928. Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin

927. The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin

926. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg

925. Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper

924. The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni

923. The Red and the Black – Stendhal

922. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo

921. Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac

920. Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac

919. The Nose – Nikolay Gogol

918. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens *****

917. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens

916. The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe

915. The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal

914. Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol

913. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens ***

912. Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac

911. The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe

910. Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens

909. The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe

908. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

907. La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas

906. The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas *****

905. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray ******

904. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë ******

903. Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë

902. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë ******

901. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë

900. Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell *****

899. Shirley – Charlotte Brontë

898. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

897. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne

896. Moby Dick – Herman Melville ******

895. The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne

894. The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne

893. Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe

892. Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell ****

891. Villette – Charlotte Brontë

890. Bleak House – Charles Dickens ******

889. Walden – Henry David Thoreau

888. Hard Times – Charles Dickens

887. North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell

886. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert *****

885. Adam Bede – George Eliot

884. Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov

883. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

882. Max Havelaar – Multatuli

881. The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne

880. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins *****

879. The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot

878. Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope

877. On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev

876. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens ****

875. Silas Marner – George Eliot ***

874. Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev

873. Les Misérables – Victor Hugo

872. The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley

871. Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky

870. Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu

869. Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens

868. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll ****

867. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky

866. Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne***

865. The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope

864. Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola

863. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott ***

862. The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins ****

861. The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky (TBR)

860. Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont

859. Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope

858. Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert

857. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy ******

856. He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope

855. King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev

854. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll ****

853. Middlemarch – George Eliot *****

852. Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev

851. Erewhon – Samuel Butler

850. The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky

849. In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu

848. Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne ***

847. The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov

846. Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

845. The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert

844. The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy

843. Daniel Deronda – George Eliot

842. Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev

841. Drunkard – Émile Zola

840. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

839. Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy ****

838. The Red Room – August Strindberg

837. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky

836. Nana – Émile Zola

835. Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace

834. Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert

833. The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James ****

832. The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga

831. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson *****

830. A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant

829. The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy

828. Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans

827. Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater

826. Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant

825. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain ****

824. Germinal – Émile Zola

823. King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard

822. Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson ******

821. The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy

820. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson ****

819. She – H. Rider Haggard

818. The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy

817. The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg

816. Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés

815. Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant

814. The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson

813. Hunger – Knut Hamsun

812. By the Open Sea – August Strindberg

811. La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola ****

810. The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy

809. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde ***

808. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

807. Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf

806. New Grub Street – George Gissing

805. News from Nowhere – William Morris

804. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle *****

803. Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith *

802. Born in Exile – George Gissing

801. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman

800. The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross

799. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

798. Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane

797. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells

796. The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells

795. Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz

794. Dracula – Bram Stoker ****

793. Fruits of the Earth – André Gide

792. What Maisie Knew – Henry James

791. The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells

790. The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells

789. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James

788. The Awakening – Kate Chopin

787. The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane

786. Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross

 

1900s

785. Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad

784. Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser

783. Kim – Rudyard Kipling

782. Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann

781. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ****

780. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

779. The Wings of the Dove – Henry James

778. The Immoralist – André Gide

777. The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers ******

776. The Ambassadors – Henry James

775. The Golden Bowl – Henry James

774. Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe

773. Nostromo – Joseph Conrad

772. Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster

771. Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann

770. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton

769. The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy

768. Young Törless – Robert Musil

767. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair

766. The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad

765. Mother – Maxim Gorky

764. The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson

763. The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett

762. The Iron Heel – Jack London

761. A Room With a View – E.M. Forster *****

760. The Inferno – Henri Barbusse

759. Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells

758. Strait is the Gate – André Gide

757. Martin Eden – Jack London

756. Three Lives – Gertrude Stein

755. Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel

754. Howards End – E.M. Forster

753. Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre

752. Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton

751. The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens

750. Death in Venice – Thomas Mann

749. Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence

748. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell

747. Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs

746. Rosshalde – Herman Hesse

745. Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel

744. Kokoro – Natsume Soseki

743. The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan ****

742. The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence

741. Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham

740. The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf

739. The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford

738. Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke

737. Under Fire – Henri Barbusse

736. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce

735. Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton

734. Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen

733. Summer – Edith Wharton

732. The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad

731. The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West

730. Tarr – Wyndham Lewis

729. Night and Day – Virginia Woolf

728. Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence

727. Main Street – Sinclair Lewis

726. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton

725. Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley

724. The Fox – D.H. Lawrence

723. Ulysses – James Joyce

722. Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis

721. Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence

720. The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus

719. Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair

718. The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton

717. Siddhartha – Herman Hesse

716. Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf *****

715. The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings

714. The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield

713. Amok – Stefan Zweig

712. Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley

711. Cane – Jean Toomer

710. Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo

709. The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet

708. A Passage to India – E.M. Forster

707. We – Yevgeny Zamyatin

706. The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann

705. The Green Hat – Michael Arlen

704. Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville

703. The Professor’s House – Willa Cather

702. The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky

701. The Trial – Franz Kafka

700. The Counterfeiters – André Gide

699. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald **

698. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf ******

697. Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos

696. The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein

695. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie ***

694. One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello

693. The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence

692. The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek

691. The Castle – Franz Kafka

690. Blindness – Henry Green

689. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway

688. Amerika – Franz Kafka

687. Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson

686. To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf ******

685. Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust

684. Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse

683. Nadja – André Breton

682. Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford

681. Quicksand – Nella Larsen

680. Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh

679. Quartet – Jean Rhys

678. The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis

677. The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall

676. Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence *

675. Orlando – Virginia Woolf ****

674. Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille

673. Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe

672. Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau

671. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner

670. Harriet Hume – Rebecca West

669. The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen

668. Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin

667. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque **

666. The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia

665. Living – Henry Green

664. Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett

663. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway

662. Passing – Nella Larsen

661. Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico

660. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett ***

659. Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh

658. Her Privates We – Frederic Manning

657. The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis

656. Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham *****

655. The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett

654. The Waves – Virginia Woolf *****

653. The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth

652. The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett

651. To the North – Elizabeth Bowen

650. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons *****

649. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

648. Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline

647. A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon

646. The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil

645. A Day Off – Storm Jameson

644. Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain

643. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein (TBR)

642. Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers

641. Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West

640. Call it Sleep – Henry Roth

639. Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

638. Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald

637. A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh

636. Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller

635. The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain

634. Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev

633. Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht

632. The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers ****

631. Burmese Days – George Orwell

630. England Made Me – Graham Greene

629. The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen

628. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy

627. The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood

626. Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti

625. Independent People – Halldór Laxness

624. Nightwood – Djuna Barnes

623. At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft

622. Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner

621. Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson

620. Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell

619. Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell

618. The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West

617. Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley

616. Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner

615. To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway

614. Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)

613. The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis

612. In Parenthesis – David Jones

611. The Years – Virginia Woolf ******

610. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien ***

609. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

608. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

607. Murphy – Samuel Beckett

606. U.S.A. – John Dos Passos

605. Brighton Rock – Graham Greene

604. Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler

603. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier

602. Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre

601. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson *****

600. After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner

599. The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler ****

598. Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys

597. Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller

596. Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood

595. Coming Up for Air – George Orwell

594. At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien

593. Finnegans Wake – James Joyce

592. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

591. Party Going – Henry Green

590. The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati

589. The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene

588. Native Son – Richard Wright

587. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway

586. Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler ****

585. The Hamlet – William Faulkner

584. Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf

583. Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton

582. The Living and the Dead – Patrick White

581. The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien

580. Conversations in Sicily – Elio Vittorini

579. The Outsider – Albert Camus *

578. Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner

577. Embers – Sandor Marai

576. The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse

575. Caught – Henry Green

574. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

573. Dangling Man – Saul Bellow

572. Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges

571. Transit – Anna Seghers

570. The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham

569. Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi

568. Arcanum 17 – André Breton

567. Loving – Henry Green

566. The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford *****

565. Cannery Row – John Steinbeck

564. Animal Farm – George Orwell ****

563. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

562. The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andric

561. Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake

560. Back – Henry Green

559. The Plague – Albert Camus **

558. The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino

557. Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry

556. If This Is a Man – Primo Levi

555. Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau

554. The Victim – Saul Bellow

553. Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann

552. Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton

551. The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene

550. Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot

549. Disobedience – Alberto Moravia

548. All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani

547. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell *

546. The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren

545. Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier

544. The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen

543. The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge

542. Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford *****

541. The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk

540. The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese

539. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov ***

538. The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing

537. Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake

536. The 13 Clocks – James Thurber

535. The Third Man – Graham Greene

534. The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz

533. The Abbot C – Georges Bataille

532. The End of the Affair – Graham Greene

531. Molloy – Samuel Beckett

530. The Rebel – Albert Camus

529. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

528. The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq

527. Foundation – Isaac Asimov ****

526. Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham

525. Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett

524. Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar

523. The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson

522. Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor

521. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway ***

520. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison

519. The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt

518. Casino Royale – Ian Fleming

517. Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin

516. The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow

515. Junkie – William Burroughs

514. Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis

513. Watt – Samuel Beckett

512. The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett

511. The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler

510. The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley **

509. Under the Net – Iris Murdoch

508. Lord of the Flies – William Golding ****

507. A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia

506. The Story of O – Pauline Réage *

505. Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis

504. I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch

503. Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan

502. The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini

501. The Recognitions – William Gaddis

500. The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis

499. The Quiet American – Graham Greene

498. The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett

497. A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen

496. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

495. The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith

494. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien ******

493. The Floating Opera – John Barth

492. Seize the Day – Saul Bellow

491. The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary

490. The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon

489. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin

488. Justine – Lawrence Durrell *

487. The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber

486. Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak

485. Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov

484. On the Road – Jack Kerouac

483. Homo Faber – Max Frisch

482. Blue Noon – Georges Bataille

481. The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham

480. Voss – Patrick White

479. Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet

478. The Bell – Iris Murdoch

477. The Once and Future King – T.H. White

476. The End of the Road – John Barth

475. Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan

474. Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico

473. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe

472. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

471. The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon

470. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

469. Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe

468. The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

467. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote

466. Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll

465. Memento Mori – Muriel Spark

464. Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow

463. Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes

462. The Tin Drum – Günter Grass

461. Naked Lunch – William Burroughs

460. Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse

459. Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee

458. Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary

457. Rabbit, Run – John Updike

456. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee ******

455. The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien

454. Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino

453. How It Is – Samuel Beckett

452. The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor

451. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

450. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark ****

449. Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass

448. Solaris – Stanislaw Lem

447. Faces in the Water – Janet Frame

446. A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch

445. Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger

444. Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein

443. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani

442. Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien

441. Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges

440. The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing

439. The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard

438. Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov

437. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess

436. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey

435. The Collector – John Fowles

434. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (TBR)

433. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

432. Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess

431. The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark

430. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré **

429. Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol

428. The Graduate – Charles Webb ***

427. Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut

426. V. – Thomas Pynchon

425. Herzog – Saul Bellow

424. The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras

423. Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe

422. Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson

421. Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme

420. Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey

419. The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector

418. Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor

417. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut

416. August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien

415. The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o

414. Things – Georges Perec

413. The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon

412. Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth

411. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys

410. The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras

409. The Magus – John Fowles

408. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

407. Trawl – B.S. Johnson

406. The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West

405. A Man Asleep – Georges Perec

404. The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien

403. No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson

402. The Joke – Milan Kundera

401. Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson

400. The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov ****

399. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez

398. The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa

397. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe

396. Chocky – John Wyndham

395. The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf

394. A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines

393. In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan

392. The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz

391. Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry

390. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick

389. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke ***

388. The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

387. Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

386. Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen

385. The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch

384. Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal

383. Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen

382. A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec

381. Them – Joyce Carol Oates

380. Ada – Vladimir Nabokov

379. The Godfather – Mario Puzo ***

378. Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth

377. The Green Man – Kingsley Amis

376. The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles

375. Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr *

374. Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines

373. Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover

372. Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado

371. The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard

370. Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson

369. Troubles – J.G. Farrell

368. Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett

367. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou

366. Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke

365. The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison

364. The Ogre – Michael Tournier

363. The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark

362. The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima

361. Rabbit Redux – John Updike

360. The Wild Boys – William Burroughs

359. Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll

358. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson

357. The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow

356. In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul

355. House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson

354. Surfacing – Margaret Atwood

353. G – John Berger

352. The Summer Book – Tove Jansson

351. The Breast – Philip Roth

350. Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino

349. Sula – Toni Morrison

348. The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch

347. Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon

346. The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene

345. Crash – J.G. Ballard

344. The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino

343. The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell

342. A Question of Power – Bessie Head

341. Fear of Flying – Erica Jong

340. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

339. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré ******

338. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll

337. Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee

336. The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle

335. Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow

334. Correction – Thomas Bernhard

333. Dead Babies – Martin Amis

332. Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow

331. High Rise – J.G. Ballard

330. Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan

329. Fateless – Imre Kertész

328. The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme

327. Grimus – Salman Rushdie

326. A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell

325. W, or the Memory of childhood – Georges Perec

324. Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez

323. Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf

322. Amateurs – Donald Barthelme

321. Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg

320. Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice

319. The Public Burning – Robert Coover

318. Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo

317. The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke

316. The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector

315. Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison

314. Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

313. Dispatches – Michael Herr

312. The Shining – Stephen King

311. Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin

310. The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter

309. In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee

308. The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt

307. Yes – Thomas Bernhard

306. The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell

305. The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch

304. Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec

303. The World According to Garp – John Irving

302. The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan

301. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams *****

300. If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino

299. The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll

298. Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer

297. A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul

296. Shikasta – Doris Lessing

295. Smiley’s People – John Le Carré

294. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera

293. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco ******

292. City Primeval – Elmore Leonard

291. Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

290. Rituals – Cees Nooteboom

289. Rites of Passage – William Golding

288. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie ******

287. Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee

286. Broken April – Ismail Kadare

285. Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin

284. July’s People – Nadine Gordimer

283. The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan

282. Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray

281. Rabbit is Rich – John Updike

280. The Names – Don DeLillo

279. Concrete – Thomas Bernhard

278. On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin

277. The Newton Letter – John Banville

276. The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende

275. Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally

274. A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro

273. Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard

272. The Color Purple – Alice Walker

271. A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White

270. If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi

269. The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus

268. The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek

267. The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing

266. The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee

265. Waterland – Graham Swift ******

264. La Brava – Elmore Leonard

263. Fools of Fortune – William Trevor

262. Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett

261. Shame – Salman Rushdie

260. Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis

259. Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes

258. Neuromancer – William Gibson

57. Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker

256. The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera

255. Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter

254. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

253. Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard

252. The Lover – Marguerite Duras

251. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago

250. The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman

249. Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?

248. Legend – David Gemmell

247. Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd ******

246. Queer – William Burroughs

245. White Noise – Don DeLillo

244. Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard

243. Perfume – Patrick Süskind

242. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

241. Contact – Carl Sagan

240. Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis

239. A Maggot – John Fowles

238. The Cider House Rules – John Irving

237. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson

236. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez

235. The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann

234. Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel

233. The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi

232. Foe – J.M. Coetzee

231. Extinction – Thomas Bernhard

230. An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro

229. Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt

228. The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis

227. Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons

226. Marya – Joyce Carol Oates

225. Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

224. Anagrams – Lorrie Moore

223. The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae

222. Beloved – Toni Morrison )

221. Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul

220. World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle

219. The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster

218. The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe

217. Cigarettes – Harry Mathews

216. The Child in Time – Ian McEwan

215. The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind

214. The Passion – Jeanette Winterson

213. The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy

212. The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke

211. The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble

210. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams ****

209. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams****

208. Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga

207. The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks

206. Libra – Don DeLillo

205. Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey

204. The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst

203. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie

202. Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson

201. The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White

200. Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco

199. Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood

198. The Book of Evidence – John Banville

197. London Fields – Martin Amis

196. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving

195. Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel

194. The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago

193. The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway

192. The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker

191. The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai

190. Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro ****

189. Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow

188. Moon Palace – Paul Auster

187. Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson

186. A Disaffection – James Kelman

185. The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle

184. The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi

183. Possession – A.S. Byatt

182. Like Life – Lorrie Moore

181. A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham

180. The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien

179. The Music of Chance – Paul Auster

178. Stone Junction – Jim Dodge

177. Vertigo – W.G. Sebald

176. Vineland – Thomas Pynchon

175. Amongst Women – John McGahern

174. Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard

173. Wise Children – Angela Carter

172. Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres

171. Downriver – Iain Sinclair

170. Regeneration – Pat Barker

169. Typical – Padgett Powell

168. Mao II – Don DeLillo

167. Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis

166. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis

165. Wild Swans – Jung Chang

164. Arcadia – Jim Crace

163. Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud

162. Black Dogs – Ian McEwan

161. Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)

160. The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín

159. Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates

158. The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe

157. Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg ******

156. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje

155. Jazz – Toni Morrison

154. Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson

153. The Crow Road – Iain Banks ****

152. Indigo – Marina Warner

151. Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker

150. A Heart So White – Javier Marias

149. The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch

148. Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar

147. The Secret History – Donna Tartt

146. The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald

145. The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood

144. The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd

143. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides

142. The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields

141. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth ******

140. What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe

139. On Love – Alain de Botton

138. Complicity – Iain Banks

137. Operation Shylock – Philip Roth

136. Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy

135. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

134. Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh

133. The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx

132. The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm

131. Disappearance – David Dabydeen

130. Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor

129. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres

128. How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman

127. City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol

126. Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi

125. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami

124. The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee

123. Land – Park Kyong-ni

122. Whatever – Michel Houellebecq

121. The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst

120. Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster

119. The End of the Story – Lydia Davis

118. Love’s Work – Gillian Rose

117. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

116. The Reader – Bernhard Schlink *

115. The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald **

114. Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth

113. The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie

112. The Information – Martin Amis

111. Morvern Callar – Alan Warner

110. The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro

109. Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood

108. The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin

107. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace

106. Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse

105. The Ghost Road – Pat Barker

104. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels

103. Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker

102. Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard

101. Silk – Alessandro Baricco

100. The Untouchable – John Banville

99. American Pastoral – Philip Roth

98. The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin

97. Jack Maggs – Peter Carey

96. Underworld – Don DeLillo

95. Enduring Love – Ian McEwan *

94. Great Apes – Will Self

93. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

92. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

91. Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon

90. Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho

89. The Hours – Michael Cunningham ******

88. Another World – Pat Barker

87. Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis

86. The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver

85. Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters (TBR)

84. The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon

83. All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom

82. Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks

81. Amsterdam – Ian McEwan ****

80. Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi

79. Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq

78. Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami

77. Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee

76. The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie

75. Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb

74. Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy

73. As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakulic

72. Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson ******

71. The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra

70. Timbuktu – Paul Auster

 

2000s

69. Pastoralia – George Saunders

68. Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates

67. House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski

66. Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard

65. Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande

64. After the Quake – Haruki Murakami

63. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood

62. The Human Stain – Philip Roth

61. How the Dead Live – Will Self

60. City of God – E.L. Doctorow

59. Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy

58. Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace

57. Ignorance – Milan Kundera

56. Under the Skin – Michel Faber

55. The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda

54. White Teeth – Zadie Smith

53. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare

52. The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho

51. An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma

50. The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa

49. Life of Pi – Yann Martel *****

48. Choke – Chuck Palahniuk

47. At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill

46. Fury – Salman Rushdie

45. The Body Artist – Don DeLillo

44. Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini

43. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen

42. Atonement – Ian McEwan

41. Schooling – Heather McGowan

40. Platform – Michael Houellebecq

39. Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald

38. Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi

37. The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster

36. Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon

35. Dead Air – Iain Banks

34. Youth – J.M. Coetzee

33. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides ***

32. Shroud – John Banville

31. In the Forest – Edna O’Brien

30. That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern

29. The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor *****

28. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami

27. Unless – Carol Shields

26. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer

25. The Double – José Saramago

24. Fingersmith – Sarah Waters

23. Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry

22. London Orbital – Iain Sinclair

21. Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee

20. Islands – Dan Sleigh

19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon ******

18. What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt

17. The Light of Day – Graham Swift

16. Thursbitch – Alan Garner

15. The Colour – Rose Tremain

14. Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle

13. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

12. Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair

11. The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd *****

10. Vanishing Point – David Markson

9. The Master – Colm Tóibín

8. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth

7. The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble

6. The Sea – John Banville

5. Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson

4. Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee

3. On Beauty – Zadie Smith

2. Saturday – Ian McEwan

1. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

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501 Must Read Books

 

75 Books read to date (October 2012).

 

CHILDREN'S FICTION

 

01. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott

02. Fairy Tales – Hans Christian Andersen

03. Peter Pan – J.M. Barrie

04. The Wonderful World of Oz – L. Frank Baum

05. The Last Unicorn – Peter S. Beagle

06. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

07. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

08. Pinocchio – Carlo Collodi

09. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

10. Sophie's World – Jostein Gaarder

11. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen – Alan Garner

12. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

13. Children's and Household Tales – Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

14. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon

15. Emil and the Detectives – Erich Kästner

16. Just So Stories – Rudyard Kipling

17. The Complete Nonsense Books – Edward Lear

18. A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L'Engle

19. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis

20. Pippi Longstocking – Astrid Lindgren

21. Dr Dolittle – Hugh Lofting

22. At the Back of the North Wind – George Macdonald

23. Nobody's Boy – Hector Malot

24. Winnie-the-Pooh – A.A. Milne

25. Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery

26. Five Children and It – E. Nesbit

27. Tom's Midnight Garden – Philippa Pearce

28. The War of the Buttons – Louis Pergaud

29. Fairy Tales – Charles Perrault

30. The Tale of Peter Rabbit – Beatrix Potter

31. The Colour of Magic – Terry Pratchett

32. Northern Lights – Philip Pullman

33. Swallows and amazons – Arthur Ransome

34. Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang – Mordecai Richler

35. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone – J.K. Rowling

36. The King of the Golden River – John Ruskin

37. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

38. The Human Comedy – William Saroyan

39. The Misfortunes of Sophie – Comtesse de Segur

40. Where the Wild Things Are – Maurice Sendak

41. And To Think That I Saw It On Mulburry Street – Dr Seuss

42. Black Beauty – Anna Sewell

43. The Golem – Isaac Bashevis Singer

44. Heidi – Johanna Spyri

45. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson

46. The Fellowship of the Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien

47. Mary Poppins – P.L. Travers

48. Charlotte's Web – E.B. White

49. The Sword in the Stone – T.H. White

50 .Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm – Kate Douglas Wiggin

51. The Happy Prince and Other Tales – Oscar Wilde

 

CLASSIC FICTION

 

52. The Epic of Gilgamesh – Anonymous

53. The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous

54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55. Old Goriot – Honoré de Balzac

56. Vathek: an Arabian Tale – William Beckford

57. Lady Audley's Secret – Mary Elisabeth Braddon

58. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë

59. Wuthering Heights – Emil Brontë

60. The Pilgrim's Progress – John Bunyan

61. The Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer

62. The Collected Stories – Anton Chekhov

63. The Man Who Was Thursday – G.K. Chesterton

64. Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure – John Cleland

65. The Moonstone: a Romance – Wilkie Collins

66. The Hound of Baskerville – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

67. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

68. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe

69. The Christmas Books – Charles Dickens

70. Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens

71. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

72. Middlemarch: A Study in Provincial Life – George Eliot

73. Tom Jones – Henry Fielding

74. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

75. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

76. Howards End – E.M. Forster

77. North and South – Elisabeth Gaskell

78. The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

79. The Vicar of Wakefiled – Oliver Goldsmith

80. The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene

81. King Solomon's Mines – H. Rider Haggard

82. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

83. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne

84. Moby Dick – Herman Melville

85. The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James

86. The Iliad – Homer

87. Les Misérables – Victor Hugo

88. Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K. Jerome

89. Kim – Rudyard Kipling

90. Bliss and Other Stories – Katherine Mansfield

91. Utopia – Sir Thomas More

92. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque – Edgar Alan Poe

93. In Search of Lost Time – Marcel Proust

94. A Silician Romance – Anne Radcliffe

95. Clarissa – Samuel Richardson

96. Waverley – Sir Walter Scott

97. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

98. The Red and the Black – Stendhal

99. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson

100. Dracula – Bram Stoker

101. Gulliver's Travels – Jonathan Swift

102. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thakeray

103. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

104. Barchester Towers – Anthony Trollope

105. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

106. Candide, or Optimism – Voltaire

107. The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole

108. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton

109. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

110. To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf

111. La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola

 

HISTORY

 

112. London The Biography – Peter Ackroyd

113. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life – John Lee Anderson

114. The Hour of Our Death – Philippe Aries

115. Berlin The Downfall – Antony Beevor

116. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II – Fernand Braudel

117. The Pleasures of Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century – John Brewer

118. Frozen Desire: An Enquiry Into the Meaning of Money – James Buchan

119. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives – Alan Bullock

120. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy – Jacob Burckhardt

121. Daily Life in Ancient Rome – Jerome Carcopino

122. The Accursed Kings – Maurice Druon

123. The Age of the Cathedrals – Georges Duby

124. The Stripping of the Altars – Eamon Duffy

125. Rites of Spring – Modris Eksteins

126. The Wretched of the Earth – Franz Fanon

127. Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire – Niall Ferguson

128. Millennium – Felipe Fernández-Armesto

129. Pagans and Christians – Robin Lane Fox

130. The End of History and the Last Man – Francis Fukuyama

131. The Naked Heart – Peter Gay

132. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – Edward Gibbon

133. The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy – Martin Gilbert

134. The Cheese and the Worms – Carlo Ginzburg

135. God's First Love – Friedrich Heer

136. Histories – Herodotus

137. Hiroshima – John Hersey

138. The Fatal Shore – Robert Hughes

139. Pandaemonium – Humphrey Jennings

140. A History of Warfare – John Keegan

141. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies – Bartolomé de las Casas

142. Seven Pillars of Wisdom – Thomas Edwards Lawrence

143. Islam in History – Bernard Lewis

144. Chinese Shadows – Simon Leys

145. The Crusades through Arab Eyes – Amin Maalouf

146. The Defeat of the Spanish Armada – Garrett Mattingly

147. The Story of English – Robert Mccrum, William Cran, Robert Macneil

148. The Ornament of the World – Maria Rosa Menocal

149. The Women's History of the World – Rosalind Miles

150. Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire – Jan Morris

151. Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade – Henri Pirenne

152. Parallel Lives – Plutarch

153. Flesh in the Age of Reason – Roy Porter

154. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution – Simon Schama

155. Leviathan and the Air-Pump – Steven Shapin, Simon Schaffer

156. The Decline of the West – Oswald Spengler

157. The Trial of Socrates – Isador Stone

158. Annals of Imperial Rome – Tacitus

159. The Origins of the Second World War – A.J.P. Taylor

160. A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous 14th Century – Barbara M. Tuchman

161. A People's History of the United States – Howard Zinn

 

MEMOIRS

 

162. Paula – Isabel Allende

163. Journal Intime – Henri-Frédéric Amiel

164. Aubrey's Brief Lives – John Aubrey

165. Confessions – Augustine

166. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter – Simone de Beauvoir

167. My Left Foot – Christy Brown

168. The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini – Benvenuto Cellini

169.The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus – Cyril Connolly

170. Boy: Tales of Childhood – Roald Dahl

171. My Family and Other Animals – Gerald Durrell

172. An Angel at my Table – Janet Frame

173. The Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank

174. Journals 1889-1949 – Andre Paul Guillaume Gide

175. Poetry and Truth: From My Own Life – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

176. Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments – Edmund Gosse

177. Ways of Escape – Graham Greene

178. Black Like Me – John Howard Griffin

179. 84, Charing Cross Road – Helene Hanff

180. Pentimento – Lillian Hellman

181. Childhood, Youth and Exile – Alexander Herzen

182. The Diary of Alice James – Alice James

183. Memoirs, Dreams, Reflections – Carl Gustav Jung

184. Diaries 1919-23 – Franz Kafka

185. The Story of My Life – Helen Keller

186. The Book of Margery Kempe – Margery Kempe

187. I Will Bear Witness – Victor Klemperer

188. In the Castle of My Skin – George Lamming

189. A Grief Observed – C.S. Lewis

190. The Towers of Trebizond – Rose Macauley

191. Journal of Katherine Mansfield – Katherine Mansfield

192. The Seven Storey Mountain – Thomas Merton

193. The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford

194. Borrowed Time – Paul Monette

195. My Place – Sally Morgan

196. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited – Vladimir Nabokov

197. Reading Lolita in Teheran: A Memoir in Books – Azar Nafisi

198. Memoirs – Pablo Neruda

199. Portrait of a Marriage – Nigel Nicolson

200. Running in the Family – Michael Ondaatje

201. Down an Out in Paris and London – George Orwell

202. Autobiography of a Yogi – Paramahansa Yogananda

203. Diary – Samuel Pepys

204. Letters – Pliny The Younger

205. Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

206. Words – Jean-Paul Sartre

207. Journal of a Solitude – May Sarton

208. Walden – Henry David Thoreau

209. De Profundis – Oscar Wilde

210. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson

211. Autobiographies – William Butler Yeats

 

MODERN FICTION

 

212. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

213. Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands – Jorge Amado

214. Le Grand Meaulnes – Alain-Fournier

215. Take a Girl Like You – Kingsley Amis

216. Winesburg, Ohio – Sherwood Anderson

217. Surfacing – Margaret Atwood

218. The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster

219. Tales of Odessa – Isaak Babel

220. Giovanni's Room – James Baldwin

221. The Sweet Hereafter – Russell Banks

222. The Regeneration Trilogy – Pat Barker

223. Herzog – Saul Bellow

224. Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges

225. Nadja – André Breton

226. The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov

227. The Naked Lunch – William Burroughs

228. Possession – A.S. Byatt

229. If On a Winter's Night a Traveller – Italo Calvino

230. The Outsider – Albert Camus

231. Auto da Fé – Elias Canetti

232. Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey

233. The Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier

234. The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter

235. What We Talk about When We Talk about Love – Raymond Carver

236. The Horse's Mouse – Joyce Carey

237. Journey to the End of Night – Louis-Ferdinand Celine

238. Soldier of Salamis – Javier Cercas

239. The Stories of John Cheever – John Cheever

240. Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee

241. Chéri – Colette

242. Victory – Joseph Conrad

243. A House and Its Head – Ivy Compton-Burnett

244. Fifth Business – William Robertson Davies

245. Captain Corelli's Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

246. Underworld – Don Delillo

247. Seven Gothic Tales – Isak Dinesen ( also known as Karen Blixen )

248. Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Doblin

249. Once Were Warriors – Alan Duff

250. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

251. The Lover – Marguerite Duras

252. The Alexandria Quartet – Lawrence George Durrell

253. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco

254. The Neverending Story – Michael Ende

255. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner

256. The Wars – Timothy Findley

257. The Good Soldier – Ford Maddox Ford

258. Wildlife – Richard Ford

259. A Passage to India – E.M. Forster

260. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen

261. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

262. The Blue Flower – Penelope Fitzgerald

263. From the Fifteenth District – Mavis Gallant

264. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez

265. Our Lady of the Flowers – Jean Genet

266. Lord of the Flies – William Golding

267. July's People – Nadine Gordimer

268. FerdyDurke – Witold Gombrowicz

269. The Tin Drum – Günter Grass

270. Hunger – Knut Hamsun

271. The Blind Owl – Sadegh Hedayat

272. The Old Man and the Sea – Earnest Hemingway

273. The Glass Bead Game – Hermann Hesse

274. Lost Horizon – James Hilton

275. A High Wind in Jamaica – Richard Hughes

276. The World According to Garp – John Irving

277. Berlin Stories – Christopher Isherwood

278. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

279. Ulysses – James Joyce

280. The File on H – Ismail Kadare

281. The Trial – Franz Kafka

282. It – Stephen King

283. The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera

284. The Leopard – Guiseppe Di Lampedusa

285. The Diviners – Margaret Laurence

286. Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence

287. The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing

288. The Periodic Table – Primo Levi

289. Changing Places – David Lodge

290. The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas – J.M. Machado de Assis

291. The Cairo Trilogy – Naguib Mahfouz

292. The Executioner's Song – Norman Mailer

293. God's Grace – Bernard Malamud

294. An Imaginary Life – David Malouf

295. The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann

296. Embers – Sándor Márai

297. Life of Pi – Yann Martel

298. Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham

299. The Group – Mary McCarthy

300. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers

301. Enduring Love – Ian McEwan

302. The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima

303. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

304. Cold Heaven – Brian Moore

305. Beloved – Toni Morrison

306. The Progress of Love – Alice Munro

307. The Sea, the Sea – Iris Murdoch

308. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

309. A House for Mr Biswas – V.S. Naipaul

310. The Third Policeman – Flann O'Brian

311. A Good Man is Hard to Find – Flannery O'Connor

312. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje

313. Where the Jackals Howl – Amos Oz

314. The Messiah of Stockholm – Cynthia Ozick

315. Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake

316. Mr. Weston's Good Wine – T.F. Powys

317. The Nephew – James Purdy

318. Interview with the Vampire – Anne Rice

319. Barney's Version – Mordecai Richler

320. Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe

321. The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth

322. The Human Stain – Philip Roth

323. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie

324. Pedro Páramo – Juan Rulfo

325. Bonjour Tristesse – Francoise Sagan

326. Short Stories – Saki

327. Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

328. Staying On – Paul Scott

329. Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald

330. Last Exit to Brooklyn – Hubert Selby Jr.

331. Unless – Carol Shields

332. The Magician of Lublin – Isaac Bashevis Singer

333. The Engineer of Human Souls – Josef Skvorecky

334. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark

335. The Man Who Loved Children – Christina Stead

336. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

337. Sophie's Choice – William Styron

338. Perfume – Patrick Süskind

339. The Confessions of Zeno – Italo Svevo

340. Declares Pereira – Antonio Tabucchi

341. The White Hotel – D.M. Thomas

342. The Master – Colm Toibin

343. Felicia's Journey – William Trevor

344. The Palm-Wine Drinkard – Amos Tutuola

345. The Accidental Tourist – Anne Tyler

346. Couples – John Updike

347. The Time of the Hero – Mario Vargas Llosa

348. In Praise of Older Women – Stephen Vizinczey

349. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

350. Voss – Patrick White

351. Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar

 

SCIENCE FICTION

 

352. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Noel Adams

353. Hothouse – Brian Aldiss

354. Brain Wave – Poul Anderson

355. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov

356. The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood

357. The Crystal World – J.G. Ballard

358. The Demolished Man – Alfred Bester

359. Who Goes There – John W. Campbell

360. The Invention of Moral – Adolfo Bioy Casares

361. Planet of the Apes – Pierre Boule

362. The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury

363. The Sheep Look Up – John Brunner

364. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess

365. Erewhon – Samuel Butler

366. Cosmicomics – Italo Calvino

367. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke

368. A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder – James De Mille

369. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K. Dick

370. To Your Scattered Bodies Go – Philip Jose Farmer

371. Neuromancer – William Gibson

372. Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert A. Heinlein

373. Dune – Frank Herbert

374. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

375. Two Planets – Kurd Lasswitz

376. Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin

377. Solaris – Stanislaw Lem

378. Shikasta – Doris Lessing

379. Stepford Wives – Ira Levin

380. Out of the Silent Planet – C.S. Lewis

381. I Am Legend – Richard Matheson

382. Dwellers in the Mirage – Abraham Merritt

383. A Canticle for Leibowitz – Walter Miller

384. Ringworld – Larry Niven

385. Time Traders – Andre Norton

386. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell

387. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket – Edgar Allan Poe

388. The Inverted World – Christopher Priest

389. The Green Child – Herbert Read

390. The Laxian Key – Robert Sheckley

391. City – Clifford D. Simak

392. Donovan's Brain – Curt Siodmak

393. Lest Darkness Fall – L. Sprague De Camp

394. Last and First Men – Olaf Stapledon

395. More than Human – Theodore Sturgeon

396. Slan – A.E. Van Vogt

397. A Journey to the Center of the Earth – Jules Verne

398. Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade – Kurt Vonnegut

399. The Island of Dr Moreau – H.G. Wells

400. Islandia – Aistin Tappan Wright

401. The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham

 

THRILLERS

 

402. More Work for the Undertaker – Margery Allingham

403. Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly – John Franklin Bardin

404. Trent's Last Case – E.C. Bentley

405. Trial and Error – Anthony Berkeley

406. The Poisoned Chocolates Case – Anthony Berkeley

407. The Beast Must Die – Nicholas Blake

408. Psycho – Robert Bloch

409. Double Indemnity – James Cain

410. Thus Was Adonis Murdered – Sarah Caudwell

411. Farewell, My Lovely – Raymond Chandler

412. No Orchids for Miss Blandish – James Hadley Chase

413. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie

414. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

415. Unnatural Exposure – Patricia Cornwell

416.The Moving Toyshop – Edmund Crispin

417. In the Last Analysis – Amanda Cross

418. Rose at Ten – Marco Denevi

419. Vendetta – Michael Dibdin

420. The Glass-sided Ants' Nest – Peter Dickinson

421. He Who Whispers – John Dickson Carr

422. The Big Clock – Kenneth Fearing

423. Blood Sport – Dick Francis

424. Quiet as a Nun – Lady Antonia Fraser

425. The Sunday Woman – Carlo Fruttero, Franco Lucentini

426. Death in the Wrong Room – Anthony Gilbert

427. Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett

428. Suicide Excepted – Cyril Hare

429. Bones and Silence – Reginald Hill

430. A Rage in Harlem – Chester Himes

431. Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow – Peter Hoeg

432. Malice Aforethought – Francis Iles

433. Hamlet, Revenge! - Michael Innes

434. The Murder Room – P.D. James

435. The Sleeping-Car Murders – Sebastien Japrisot

436. Death of My Aunt – C.H.B. Kitchin

437. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold – John Le Carre

438. The Mystery of the Yellow Room – Caston Leroux

439. The Last Detective – Peter Lovesey

440. Final Curtain – Ngaio Marsh

441. An Oxford Tragedy – J.C. Masterman

442. The Steam Pig – James McClure

443. The Seven Per Cent Solution – Nicholas Meyer

444 .The Red House Mystery – A.A. Milne

446. A Red Death – Walter Mosley

447. Deadlock – Sara Paretsky

448. Dover One – Joyce Porter

449. The Chinese Orange Mystery – Ellery Queen

450. The Man in the Net – Patrick Quentin

451. A Judgement in Stone – Ruth Rendell

452. Gaudy Night – Dorothy L. Sayers

453. Mr Hire's Engagement – Georges Simeon

454. The Laughing Policeman – Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö

455. The Red Box – Rex Stout

456. The Man Who Killed Himself – Julian Symons

457. A Pin to See the Peep-Show – F. Tennyson Jesse

458. The Daughter of Time – Josephine Tey

459. Above the Dark Circus – Sir Hugh Walpole

460. Born Victim – Hillary Waugh

461. The Bride Wore Black – Cornell Woolrich

 

TRAVEL WRITING

 

462. Travels – Ibn Battuta

463. The Scorpion-Fish – Nicholas Bouvier

464. The Road to Oxiana – Robert Byron

465. In Patagonia – Bruce Charles Chatwin

466. The Voyage on HMS Beagle – Charles Darwin

467. My Journey to Lhasa – Alexandra David-Neel

468. On the Narrow Road to the Deep North – Lesley Downer

469. The Traveller's Tree – Patrick Leigh Fermor

470. Seven Years in Tibet – Heinrich Harrer

471. Kon Tiki – Thor Heyerdahl

472. The Purple Land – W.H. Hudson

473. The Last Place on Earth – Roland Huntford

474. Video Night in Kathmandu – Pico Iyer

475. Journey to the Hebrides – Samuel Johnson, James Boswell

476. Eothen – A.W. Kinglake

477. The Seasick Whale – Emphraim Kishon

478. A Rose for Winter – Laurie Lee

479. Golden Earth: Travels in Burma – Norman Lewis

480. Arctic Dreams – Barry Lopez

482. The Danube – Claudio Magris

483. The Snow Leopard – Peter Matthiessen

484. Destinations – Jan Morris

485. Never Cry Wolf – Farley Mowat

486. Among the Believers: an Islamic Journey – V.S. Naipaul

487. A short Walk in the Hindu Kush – Eric Newby

488. Roads to Santiago – Cees Nooteboom

489. La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West – Francis Parkman

490. Into the Heart of Borneo – Raymond O'Hanlon

491. The Travels – Marco Polo

492. Dead Man's Chest: Travels after Robert Louis Stevenson – Nicholas Rankin

493. Sailing Alone Around the World – Joshua Slocum

494. Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile – J.H. Speke

495. Travels with Charley: In Search of America – John Steinbeck

496. Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes – Robert Louis Stevenson

497. The Valley of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels – Freya Stark

498. The Great Railway Bazaar – Paul Theroux

499. Southern Cross to Pole Star – A.F. Tschiffely

500. A Tramp Abroad – Mark Twain

501. On Fiji Islands – Ronald Wright

Edited by willoyd
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BBC Top 200 list

 

78 out of 187 read to date

(with all those Jacqueline Wilsons the 200 will never be completed - have crossed out those I will definitely not be reading. Am not sure about all those Terry Pratchetts either!).

 

01. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

02. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

03. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

04. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

05. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling

06. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

07. Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne

08. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

09. The Lion by the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis

10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

11. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

12. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

13. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

14. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

15. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

16. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

17. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

18. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

20. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

21. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling

23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets by JK Rowling

24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban by JK Rowling

25. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

27. Middlemarch by George Eliot

28. A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving

29. The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck

30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson

32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

33. The Pillars Of The Earth by Ken Follett

34. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

36. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

37. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

38. Persuasion by Jane Austen

39. Dune by Frank Herbert

40. Emma by Jane Austen

41. Anne Of Green Gables by LM Montgomery

42. Watership Down by Richard Adams

43. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

44. The Count Of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

45. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

46. Animal Farm by George Orwell

47. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

48. Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

49. Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian

50. The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher

51. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

52. Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck

53. The Stand by Stephen King

54. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

55. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

56. The BFG by Roald Dahl

57. Swallows And Amazons by Arthur Ransome

58. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

59. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

60. Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

61. Noughts And Crosses by Malorie Blackman

62. Memoirs Of A Geisha by Arthur Golden

63. A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

64. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCollough

65. Mort by Terry Pratchett

66. The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton

67. The Magus by John Fowles

68. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

69. Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

70. Lord Of The Flies by William Golding

71. Perfume by Patrick Süskind

72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell

73. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

74. Matilda by Roald Dahl

75. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

76. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

77. The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins

78. Ulysses by James Joyce

79. Bleak House by Charles Dickens

80. Double Act by Jacqueline Wilson

81. The Twits by Roald Dahl

82. I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith

83. Holes by Louis Sachar

84. Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake

85. The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

86. Vicky Angel by Jacqueline Wilson

87. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

88. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

89. Magician by Raymond E Feist

90. On The Road by Jack Kerouac

91. The Godfather by Mario Puzo

92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear by Jean M Auel

93. The Colour Of Magic by Terry Pratchett

94. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

95. Katherine by Anya Seton

96. Kane And Abel by Jeffrey Archer

97. Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

98. Girls In Love by Jacqueline Wilson

99. The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

101. Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

102. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

103. The Beach by Alex Garland

104. Dracula by Bram Stoker

105. Point Blanc by Anthony Horowitz

106. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

107. Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz

108. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

109. The Day Of The Jackal by Frederick Forsyth

110. The Illustrated Mum by Jacqueline Wilson

111. Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy

112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend

113. The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat

114. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

116. The Dare Game by Jacqueline Wilson

117. Bad Girls by Jacqueline Wilson

118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

119. Shogun by James Clavell

120. The Day Of The Triffids by John Wyndham

121. Lola Rose by Jacqueline Wilson

122. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

123. The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy

124. House Of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

125. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

126. Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

127. Angus Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

129. Possession by A. S. Byatt

130. The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

131. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

132. Danny The Champion Of The World by Roald Dahl

133. East Of Eden by John Steinbeck

134. George's Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl

135. Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett

136. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

137. Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

138. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

139. Girls In Tears by Jacqueline Wilson

140. Sleepovers by Jacqueline Wilson

141. All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum by Kate Atkinson

143. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

144. It by Stephen King

145. James And The Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

146. The Green Mile by Stephen King

147. Papillon by Henri Charriere

148. Men At Arms by Terry Pratchett

149. Master And Commander by Patrick O'Brian

150. Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz

151. Soul Music by Terry Pratchett

152. Thief Of Time by Terry Pratchett

153. The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett

154. Atonement by Ian McEwan

155. Secrets by Jacqueline Wilson

156. The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier

157. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

158. Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

159. Kim by Rudyard Kipling

160. Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon

161. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

162. River God by Wilbur Smith

163. Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

164. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

165. The World According To Garp by John Irving

166. Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore

167. Girls Out Late by Jacqueline Wilson

168. The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye

169. The Witches by Roald Dahl

170. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White

171. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

172. They Used To Play On Grass by Terry Venables and Gordon Williams

173. The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway

174. The Name Of The Rose by Umberto Eco

175. Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder

176. Dustbin Baby by Jacqueline Wilson

177. Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl

178. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach

180. The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery

181. The Suitcase Kid by Jacqueline Wilson

182. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

183. The Power Of One by Bryce Courtenay

184. Silas Marner by George Eliot

185. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

186. The Diary Of A Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith

187. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

188. Goosebumps by R. L. Stine

189. Heidi by Johanna Spyri

190. Sons And Lovers by D. H. LawrenceLife of Lawrence

191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

192. Man And Boy by Tony Parsons

193. The Truth by Terry Pratchett

194. The War Of The Worlds by H. G. Wells

195. The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans

196. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

197. Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

198. The Once And Future King by T. H. White

199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

200. Flowers In The Attic by Virginia Andrews

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The Ultimate Teen Book Guide

 

Many thanks to Lauraloves for all the work on this one.

 

739 books, and 27 series = 766

 

115 read: 15%

 

1066 and all that - W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman

The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Blue Bear - Walter Moers

52 Pick - Up - Elmore Leonard

84 Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff

87th Precinct Series - Ed McBain

Abarat - Clive Barker

The Abortion - Richard Brautigan

About a Boy - Nick Hornby

Across the Nightingale Floor - Lian Hearn

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain

After the First Death - Robert Cormier

Against the Day - Michael Cronin

Airborn - Kenneth Oppel

Al Copone Does my Shirts - Gennifer Choldenko

Alanna - The First Adventure

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist's Apprentice - Kate Thompson

Alchemy - Margaret Mahy

The Aldous Lexicon - Michael Lawrence

Alex Rider Series - Anthony Horowitz

Alice Series - Susan Juby

All American Girl - Meg Cabot

All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque

All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents - Terry Pratchett

The Amulet of Samarkand - Jonathan Stroud

And the Ass of an Angel - Nick Cave

Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt

Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging - Louise Rennison

Animal Farm - George Orwell

Anita and Me - Meera Syal

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

Another Roadside Attraction - Tom Robbins

Anthem for the Doomed Youth - Ed. Jon Stallworthy

An Anthropologist on Mars - Oliver Sacks

Apocalypse - Tim Bowler

Arabella - Georgette Heyer

Archers Goon - Diana Wynne Jones

Are You Dave Gorman? - Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace

Are you Experienced? William Sutcliffe

Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer

The Seeing Stone - Kevin Crossley - Holland

At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien

At the Sign of the Sacred Plum - Mary Hooper

Atonement - Ian McEwan

Automated Alice - Jeff Noon

Bad Alice - Jean Ure

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie

Barrel Fever - David Sedaris

Be More Chilled - Ned Vizzini

The Beach - Alex Garland

Beau Geste - P.C. Wren

Beauty - Robin Mckinley

The Beet Fields - Gary Paulsen

The Belgariad - David Eddings

The Bell - Iris Murdoch

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Beloved - Toni Morrison

Beyond the Deepwoods - Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell

The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

Bilgewater - Jane Gardam

Bindi Babes - Narinder Dhami

The Birds in the Trees - Nina Bawden

Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

Bitter Fruit - Brian Keaney

The Black Magican Trilogy - Trudi Canavan

Blame my Brain - Nicola Morgan

Blankets - Craig Thompson

Blinded by the Light - Sherry Ashworth

The Blood Stone - Jamila Gavin

Bloodtide - Melvin Burgess

Blue - Sue Mayfield

Blue Moon - Julia Green

The Body in the Library - Agatha Christie

Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan

Born Confused - Tanuja Desai Hidier

Bows Against the Barons - Geoffrey Trease

Boy2girl - Terence Blacker

The Boy in the Burning House - Tim Wynne-Jones

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne

Boy Kills Man - Matt Whyman

Boy Meets Boy - David Levithan

Boy Soldier - Andy McNab and Robert Rigby

Brat Farrar - Josephine Tey

Brave New World - Aldos Huxley

The Breadwinner - Deborah Ellis

Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote

Breaktime - Aiden Chambers

Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

Bridge to Terabithia - Katherine Paterson

Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding

Brighton Rock - Graham Green

The Bromland Trilogy - Terry Pratchett

Brother of the Famous Jack - Barbara Trapido

Brothers - Ted Van Lieshout

The Buddha of Suburbia - Hanif Kureishi

The Burning City - Ariel and Joaquin Dorfman

The Butterfly Tattoo - Philip Pullman

The Call of the Wind - Jack London

Calling a Dead Man - Gillian Cross

Can you Keep a Secret? Sandra Glover

Candy - Kevin Brooks

Cannery Row/Sweet Thursday - John Steinbeck

Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

Carwash - Lesley Howarth

Cat Among the Pigeons - Agatha Christie

Catalyst - Laurie Halse Anderson

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut

Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood

Caught in the Crossfire - Alan Gibbons

Cause Celeb - Helen Fielding

The Cement Garden - Ian McEwen

The Changeover - Margaret Mahy

A Child Called IT - David Pelzer

Child X - Lee Weatherly

Children of the Dust - Louise Lawrence

Chinese Cinderella - Adeline Yen Mah

Chocolat - Joanne Harris

The Chocolate War - Robert Cormier

Christine - Stephen King

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

The Chrysalids - John Wyndham

Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee

Claudine at School - Colette

Clay - David Almond

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

The Colditz Story - P.R. Reid

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

Come Clean - Terri Paddock

Coming up for Air - George Orwell

Complete Short Stories - J.G. Ballard

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen - Dyan Sheldon

Consider Phlebas - Iain M. Banks

Coraline - Neil Gaiman

Coram Boy - Jamila Gavin

Corbenic - Catherine Fisher

Counting Stars - David Almond

Crazy - Benjamin Lebert

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Cry of the Icemark - Stuart Hill

The Crystal Cave - Mary Stewart

The Crystal Singer - Anne McCaffrey

Cue for Treason - Geoffrey Trease

The Cup of the World/The Widow and the King - John Dickenson

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

Cut - Patricia McCormick

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

Daisy Miller - Henry James

Dance on my Grave - Aiden Chambers

Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury

The Dark Beneath - Alan Gibbons

The Dark Ground - Gillian Cross

The Dark is Rising Series - Susan Cooper

The Dark Lord of Derkholm - Diana Wynne Jones

Darkhenge - Catherine Fisher

Daughters of Jerusalem - Charlotte Mendelson

The Day of the Jackal - Frederick Forsyth

The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham

Daz 4 Zoe - Robert Swindells

Dead Famous - Ben Elton

Dead Negative - Nick Manns

Deadkidsongs - Toby Litt

Dear Nobody - Bertie Doherty

Death and the Penguin - Andrey Kurkov

Deep Secret - Bertie Doherty

The Defender - Alan Gibbons

Desire Lines - Jack Gantos

The Diamond Girls - Jacqueline Wilson

Diary of a Nobody - George and Weedon Grossman

The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank

Disconnected - Sherry Ashworth

Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett

Divided City - Theresa Breslin

Dizzy - Cathy Cassidy

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Phillip K Dick

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson

Dr Zhivago - Boris Pasternak

Does my Bum Look Big in This? - Arabella Weir

Doing it - Melvin Burgess

Don't Let's go to the Dogs Tonight - Alexandra Fuller

Down With Skool - G. Willans and R. Serle

Dracula - Bram Stoker

The Dragonriders of Pern Series - Annie McCaffrey

Drama Queen - Chloe Rayban

The Dun Avacado - Elaine Dundy

Dune - Frank Herbert

Dusk - Susan Gates

The Eclipse of the Century - Jan Mark

Elsewhere - Gabrielle Zevin

Empire of the Sun - J.G Ballard

Empty World - John Christopher

Ender's Game = Orson Scott Card

Eragon - Christopher Paolini

Escape = Kate Cann

Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton

Ethel and Ernest - Raymond Briggs

An Evil Cradling - Brian Keenan

Exile and the Kingdom - Albert Camus

Exodus - Julie Bertagna

The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde

Face - Bejamin Zephaniah

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

Fake - K.K. Beck

Faking It - Pete Johnson

Falling for Mandy - Chris d'Lacey

Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

The Farseer Trilogy - Robin Hobb

Fat Boy Swim - Catherine Forde

Fat Kid Rules the World - K.L. Going

Fatherland - Robert Harris

Feather Boy - Nicky Singer

Feed - M.T. Anderson

Festival - David Belbin

Fever Pitch - Nick Hornby

Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones

Fire from Heaven - Mary Renault

Firedrake's Eye - Patricia Finney

The Fire Eaters - David Almond

Fireweed - Jill Paton Walsh

Fleshmarket - Nicola Morgan

Floodland - Marcus Sedgwick

Flowers in the Attic - Virgina Andrews

The Flowing Queen - Kai Mayer

Follow Me Down - Julie Hearn

For Esme - With Love and Squalor - J.D. Salinger

Forbidden - Judy Waite

Forever - Judy Blume

The Fortune Teller - Alison Prince

The Foundation Trilogy - Issac Asimov

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger

Frenchman's Creek - Daphne Du Maurier

Friendly Fire - Patrick Gale

Frost in May - Antonia White

Frost on my Moustache - Tim Moore

The Garbage King - Elizabeth Laird

A Gathering Light - Jennifer Donnelly

Generation X - Douglas Coupland

Georgie - Malachy Doyle

Getting Rid of Karenna - Helena Pielichaty

Ghost Stories - M.R. James

Gifts - Ursula Le Guin

Gigi - Colette

Girl, 15 (Charming But Insane) - Sue Limb

The Girl in the Attic - Valerie Mendes

Girl With a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier

Girlfriend in a Coma - Douglas Coupland

Girls in Love - Jacqueline Wilson

Girls Like You: Alex - Kate Petty

Go and Come Back - Joan Abelove

Go Ask Alice - Anonymous

The Go-Between - L.P. Hartley

Going for Stone - Philip Gross

Goldkeeper - Sally Prue

Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

Good Omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Goodbye to all That - Robert Graves

The Goose Girl - Shannon Hale

The Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake

The Great Blue Yonder - Alex Shearer

The Great Divorce - C.S. Lewis

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Railway Bazaar - Paul Theroux

The Greenage Summer - Rumer Godden

Gulf - Robert Westall

Gulliver - Martin Jenkins and Chris Riddell

Hamlet - William Shakespeare

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton

Happy - Keith Gray

Hard Cash - Kate Cann

The Hard Man of the Swings - Jeanne Willis

The Harry Potter Series - J.K. Rowling

Hatchet - Gary Paulsen

The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray - Chris Wooding

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullern

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

A Heakbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers

The Heaven Shop - Deborah Ellis

The Henry Game - Susan Davis

Heroes - Robert Cormier

Hex - Rhiannon Lassiter

High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

His Dark Materials Trilogy - Phillip Pullman

The Hitchhickers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkein

Hole in my Life - Jack Gantos

Holes - Louis Sacher

Hombre - Elmore Leonard

Homecoming - Cynthia Voigt

Hoot - Carl Hiaasen

Hope was Here - Joan Bauer

Horace - Chis d'Lacey

The Hours - Michael Cunningham

The House in Norham Gardens - Penelope Lively

The House of Sleep - Jonathan Coe

House of the Scorpion - Nancy Farmer

House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende

How I live Now - Meg Rosoff

How to Disappear and Never be found - Sara Nickerson

Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones

Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

Hunter's Heart - Julia Green

I Am David - Anne Holm

I Am The Cheese - Robert Cormier

I Capture the Castle - Dodoe Smith

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

I. Robot - Issac Asimov

I was a Teenager Worrier - Ros Asquith

The Ice Road - Jaap Ter Haar

If Only They Could Talk - James Herriot

If You Come Softly - Jacqueline Woodson

The Illustrated Mum - Jacqueline Wilson

The Iliad and The Odyssey - Homer

I'm Not Scared - Niccolo Ammaniti

I'm the King of the Castle - Susan Hill

In the Shadow of the Arc - Anne Provoost

The Inheritors - William Golding

Innocent Blood - P.D. James

The Innocent's Story - Nicky Singer

Inspector Morse Books - Colin Dexter

Interview with a Vampire - Anne Rice

Inventing Elliot - Graham Gardner

Is Anybody There? - Jean Ure

Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott

Jake's Tower - Elizabeth Laird

Jamaica Inn - Daphne Du Maurier

The James Bond Books - Ian Fleming

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

Jeannie of White Peak Farm - Berlie Doherty

The Jeeves Stories - P.G. Wodehouse

Jemima J - Jane Green

Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth - Chris Ware

Johnnie's Blitz - Bernard Ashley

Jonathan Livingstone Seagull - Richard Bach

Jonathan Strange and Mrs Norrell - Susannah Clarke

Journey to the Rive Sea - Eva Ibbotson

Junk - Melvin Burgess

Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton

Just Sixteen - Jean Ure

The Just William Series - Richmal Crompton

Katherine - Anya Seton

Keeper - Mal Peet

Keeping the Moon - Sarah Dessen

A Kestrel for the Knave - Barry Hines

Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson

Kim - Rudyard Kipling

The Kin - Peter Dickinson

The King Must Die - Mary Renault

The Kingdom by the Sea - Robert Westall

Kiss The Dust - Elizabeth Laird

Kissing The Rain - Kevin Brooks

The Kite Rider - Geraldine McCaughrean

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

Kit's Wildness - David Almond

The L-Shaped Room - Lynne Reid Banks

Lady Chatterley's Lover - D.H. Lawrence

The Land - Mildred D. Taylor

Last Chance to See - Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine

The Last of the Wine - Mary Renault

Last Seen Wearing Trainers - Rosie Rushton

The Last Siege - Jonathan Stroud

Last Train From Kummersdorf - Leslie Wilson

The Lastling - Philip Gross

LBD - Its a Girl Thing - Grace Dent

Le Grand Meaulnes - Alain-Fournier

The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula Le Guin

Letters From the Inside - John Marsden

The Liar - Stephen Fry

Life of Pi - Yann Martel

A Little Piece of Ground - Elizabeth Laird

Lola Rose - Jacqueline Wilson

Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurty

The Long Walk - Stephen King/Richard Bachman

The Long Walk - Slavomir Rawicz

A Long Walk From Verona - Jane Gardam

Looking for JJ - Anne Cassidy

The Looking Glass Wars - Frank Beddor

Lord Loss - Darren Shan

Lord of the Flies - William Golding

Lord of the Rings Trilogy - JRR Tolkien

The Lord Peter Wimsey Books - Dorothy Sayers

Lost and Found - Valerie Mendes

Love, Fifteen - Ros Asqith

Love in a Cold Climate - Nancy Mitford

Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marques

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

Lucas - Kevin Brooks

The Machine-Gunners - Robert Westall

The Magic Toyshop - Angela Carter

The Maigret Books - Georges Simenon

Make Lemonade - Virginia Euwer Wolff

Making Sense - Nadia Marks

Malarkey - Keith Gray

Man and Boy - Tony Parsons

The Man in the High Castle - Phillip K. Dick

Mansfield Park - Jane Austen

Martyn Pig - Kevin Brooks

Massive - Julia Bell

Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian

The Master of Ballantrae - Robert Louis Stevenson

Mates, Dates . . . Series - Cathy Hopkin

Maus - Art Spiegelman

Maximum Ride - The Angel Experiment - James Patterson

Megan Trilogy - Mary Hooper

Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

Memoirs of an Infantry Officer - Seigfried Sassoon

The Merrybegot - Julie Hearn

Midget - Tim Bowler

Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt

Midshipmans Hope - David Feintuch

Milkweed - Jerry Spinelli

The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot

Millions - Frank Cottrell Boyce

Milo's Wolves - Jenny Nimm

Mine - Caroline Pilcher

Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow - Peter Hoeg

Moab is My Washpot - Stephen Fry

Mondays are Red - Nicola Morgan

Montmorency - Eleanor Updale

The Moon Riders - Theresa Tomlinson

The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins

Mortal Engines - Phillip Reeve

The Moth Diaries - Rachel Klien

The Motorcycle Diaries - Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway

Mr Midshipman Easy - Captain Marryat

Murkmere - Patricia Elliot

My Brilliant Career - Miles Franklin

My Darling, My Hamburger - Paul Zindel

My Family and other Animals - Gerald Durrell

My Side of the Mountain - Jean George

Naked Without a Hat - Jeanne Willis

Narziss and Goldmund - Hermann Hesse

The Nature of the Beast - Janni Howker

Never Ever - Helena Pielichaty

The Neverending Story - Michael Ende

New Boy - William Sutcliffe

Nicola and the Viscount - Meg Cabot

The Night County - Stewart O'Nan

The Night World: Secret Vampire

Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell

No Shame, No Fear - Ann Turnbull

Noodlehead - Jonathan Kebbe

Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen

Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less - Jeffrey Archer

Not Dressed Like That You Don't - Yvonne Coppard

Not the End of the Word - Gerladine McCaughrean

Notes From a Small Island - Bill Bryson

Notes on a Scandal - Zoe Heller

Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman

The Number 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination - Helen Fielding

On the Road - Jack Kerouac

The Once and Future King - T.H. White

Once in a House on Fire - Andrea Ashworth

One Day In the life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

One for the Money - Janet Evanovich

One Girl, Two Decks, Three Degrees of Love - Jonny Zucker

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Only Forward - Michael Marshall Smith

Operation Red Jericho - Joshua Mowll

The Opposite of Chocolate - Julie Bertagna

The Oracle - Catherine Fisher

Oranges are not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson

Orlando - Virginia Woolf

The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory

Other Echoes - Adele Geras

The Other Side of Truth - Beverley Naidoo

Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene

Out of Bounds - Beverkey Naidoo

Out of the Blue - Sue Welford

Out of the Dust - Karen Hesse

The Outsider - Albert Camus

The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton

The Owl Service - Alan Garner

Paddy Clarke ha ha ha - Roddy Doyle

Pagen's Crusade - Catherine Jinks

Paper Faces - Rachel Anderson

Peace Like a River - Lief Enger

Peace Weavers - Julia Jarman

Penningtons 17th Summer - K.M. Peyton

Perfume - Patrick Suskind

Persepolis - The Story of a Childhood - Marjane Satrapi

Phosphorescence - Raffaella Barker

Picnic At Hanged Rock - Joan Lindsay

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Pied Piper - Nevil Shute

The Pigman - Paul Zindel

Pirates! - Celia Rees

Plague - Malcolm Rose

Pobby and Dingan - Ben Rice

Polo - Jilly Cooper

A Portrait of the Artist of a Young Man - James Joyce

Postcards From No Man's Land - Aiden Chambers

Power of Three - Diana Wynne Jones

A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

Prey - Michael Crichton

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark

The Princess Bride - William Goldman

The Princess Diaries - Meg Cabot

The Prisoner of Zenda - Anthony Hope

Private Peaceful - Michael Morpurgo

A Question of Courage - Marjorie Darke

The Rachel Papers - Martin Amis

Rachel's Holiday - Marian Keyes

Radio Radio - Graham Marks

The Rag and Bone Shop - Robert Cormier

Rani and Sukh - Bali Rai

Raspberries on the Yangtze - Karen Wallace

Rat - Catcher - Chris Ryan

Raven's Gate - Anthony Horowitz

The Reader - Bernhard Schlink

Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

Reckless - Sue Mayfield

The Recruit - Robert Muchamore

Red Shift - Alan Garner

Red Wall - Brian Jacques

Refugee Boy - Benjamin Zephaniah

Regeneration - Pat Barker

Remembrance - Theresa Breslin

The Riddle of the Sands - Erskine Childers

River Boy - Tim Bowler

Roll of Thunder,Here Me Cry - Mildred D. Taylor

The Romance of Tristan and Iseult - Retold by Joseph Bedier

A Room of Ones Own - Virginia Woolf

A Room With A View - E. M. Forster

Round Behind the Ice-House - Anne Fine

Round Ireland with a Fridge - Tony Hawks

Roxy's Baby - Catherine MacPhail

Ruby Holler - Sharon Creech

Ruby Tanya - Robert Swindells

Rumblefish - S.E. Hinton

The Runaway Jury - John Grisham

Sabriel - Garth Nix

Sabrina's Fludde - Pauline Flisk

Saffy's Angel - Hillary McKay

Salem's Lot - Stephen King

The Sally Lockhart Books - Phillip Pullman

Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood - Benjamin Alire Saenz

The Sandman Series - Neil Gaiman

The Scarecrows - Robert Westall

The Scarlett Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy

Scoop - Evelyn Waugh

The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis

Sea of Trolls - Nancy Farmer

Scond From Last in the Sack Race - David Nobbs

Second Star from the Right - Deborah Hautzig

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13.5 - Sue Townsend

The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Secret History - Donna Tartt

Secrets in the Fire/Playing With Fire - Henning Mankell

Seeker -William Nichols

A Separate Peace - John Knowles

A Series of Unfortnate Events - Lemony Snicket

The Serious Kiss - Mary Hogan

Set in Stone - Linda Newbery

Seventh Heaven - Alice Hoffman

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafron

Shadowmancer - G.P. Taylor

The Shamer's Daughter - Lene Kaaberbol

Sharp North - Patrick Cave

Sharpe's Company - Bernard Cornwell

She - H. Rider Haggard

The Shell House - Linda Newbery

The Sherlock Holmes Stories - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Short Stories - H.G. Wells

The Short Stories of Saki - H.H. Munro

Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse

A Sight for Sore Eyes - Ruth Rendell

Silas Marner - George Eliot

Silent Snow, Secret Snow - Adele Geras

Silverfin - Charlie Higson

The Simple Gift - Steven Herrick

The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants - Ann Brashares

Sisterland - Linda Newbery

Skarrs - Catherine Forde

Skellig - David Almond

Skinny B, Skaz and Me - Jogn Singleton

Slake's Limbo - Felice Holeman

Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut

Sleepwalking - Nicola Morgan

The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley - Martine Murray

Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson

The Snow Goose - Paul Gallico

Something in the Air - Jan Mark

The Song of the Innocent Bystander - Ian Bone

Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder

The Speed of the Dark - Alex Shearer

Spiggots Quest - Garry Kilworth

Spindle's End - Robin McKinley

Spy High Series - A.J. Butcher

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

Star of The Sea - Joseph O'Connor

Stargirl - Jerry Spinelli

Starseeker - Tim Bowler

StarshipTroopers - Robert Heinlein

Stealing Stacey - Lynne Reid Banks

The Sterkham Handshake - Susan Price

Stone Cold - Robert Swindells

The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral - Robert Westall

Storm - Suzanne Fisher Staples

Stormbreaker - Anthony Horowitz

Strait is the Gate - Andre Gide

The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris - Leon Garfield

Strange Boy - Paul Magrs

Strange Meeting - Susan Hill

Strangers on a Train - Patricia Highsmith

Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf - Sonya Hartnett

Sugar Rush - Julie Birchill

A Summer Bird-Cage - Margaret Drabble

The Summerhouse - Alison Prince

The Supernaturalist - Eoin Colfer

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith

Tales of Mystery and Imagination - Edgar Allan Poe

Tales of the City - Armistead Maupin

Tales of the Unexpected - Roald Dahl

Talk of the Town - Ardal O'Hanlon

Tamar - Mal Peet

Taylor Five: The Story of a Clone Girl - Ann Halam

Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Terra Incognita - Sara Wheeler

Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

There's A Boy in the Girls' Bathroom - Louis Sacher

Therese Raquin - Emile Zola

These Old Shades - Georgette Heyer

Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

The Thirty- Nine Steps - John Buchan

This Boy's Life - Tobias Wolff

Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome

Thursday's Child - Sonya Hartnett

Time Bomb - Nigel Hinton

Tin Grin - Catherine Robinson

To Be a Ninja - Benedict Jacka

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

To Toll Bridge - Aiden Chambers

Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven - Jane Bailey

Touching the Void - Joe Simpson

Tourist Season - Carl Hiaasen

The Tower Room - Adele Geras

A Town like Alice - Nevil Shute

Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh

Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith

The Tricksters - Margaret Mahy

Troll Fell - Katherine Langrish

The Trouble with Donovan Croft - Bernard Ashley

The Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndham

Troy - Adele Geras

True Grit - Charles Portis

Trustee From the Toolroom - Nevil Shute

Truth or Dare - Celia Rees

The Tulip Touch - Anne Rice

Tulku - Peter Dickinson

Turbulence - Jan Mark

The Turn of the Screw - Henry James

Turtle Diary - Russell Hoban

The Twelfth Day of July - Joan Lingard

Ultraviolet- Lesley Howarth

(Un)Arranged Marriage - Bali Rai

Under Pressure/Bad Boys - Tony Bradman

Underworld - Catherine MacPhail

Unique - Alison Allen-Gray

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman - P.D. James

Up on Cloud Nine - Anne Fine

Useful Idiots - Jan Mark

V for Vendetta - Alan Moore

The Vacillations of Poppy Carew - Mary Wesley

Vanity Fair - William M. Thackeray

Vernon God Little - D.B.C. Pierre

Walking Two Moons - Sharon Creech

Walkabout - James Vance Marshall

Walking Naked - Alyssa Brugman

The Wanderer - Sharon Creech

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells

Warehouse - Keith Gray

Warrior Girl- Pauline Chandler

The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

The Watch House - Robert Westall

Watchmen - Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Watership Down - Richard Adams

Waving, Not Drowning - Rosie Rushton

Waylander - David Gemmell

Waywalkers - Catherine Webb

We can Remember it for you Wholesale - Phillip K. Dick

Weaveworld - Clive Barker

Weetzie Bat - Francesca Lia Block

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen - Alan Garner

Wendy - Karen Wallace

The Wereling - Stephen Cole

What the Birds See - Soonya Hartnett

Wheels - Catherine MacPhail

When Isla Meets Luke Meets Isla - Rhian Tracey

When the Guns Fall Silent - James Riordan

When the Wind Blows - Raymond Briggs

Whip Hand - Dick Francis

The Whispering Road - Livi Michael

White Teeth - Zadie Smith

Who is Jesse Flood? - Malachy Doyle

Why Weeps the Brogan - Hugh Scott

Wicca:Book of Shadows - Cate Tiernan

The Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

A WIld Sheep Chase - Hanruki Murakami

Wild Swans - Jung Chang

The Wind on Fire Trilogy - William Nicholson

The Wish House - Celia Rees

Witch Child - Celia Rees

A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula Le Guin

Wolf Brother - Michelle Paver

The Wolves in the Walls - Neil Gaimen

The Woman in Black - Susan Hill

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar - Roald Dahl

The World According to Garp - John Irving

Worm in the Blood - Thomas Bloor

The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard

A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle

The Wrong Boy - Willy Russell

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

You Don't Know Me - David Klass

Z For Zachariah - Robert C. O'Brian

The Zigzag Kid - David Grossman

Zoo - Graham Marks

Zorba the Greek - Nikos Kazantzakis

Edited by willoyd
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Books rated as 6-stars

 

A record of the 80 books I've given my top rating to:

 

Fiction (55)

Ackroyd, Peter: Dan Lemo and the Limehouse Golem

Ackroyd, Peter: Hawksmoor

Atkinson, Kate: Case Histories

Austen, Jane: Sense and Sensibility

Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice

Austen, Jane: Emma

Bronte, Charlotte: Jane Eyre

Bronte, Emily: Wuthering Heights

Carr JL: A Month in the Country

Carr JL: The Harpole Report

Carre, John Le: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Chaucer, Geoffrey: The Canterbury Tales

Chevalier, Tracey: Fallen Angels

Childers, Erskine: The Riddle of the Sands

Collins, Norman: London Belongs To Me

Cunningham, Michael: The Hours

Davies, Martin: The Conjuror's Bird

Dickens, Charles: Bleak House

Elphinstone, Margaret: The Sea Road

Elphinstone, Margaret: Voyageurs

Ewing, Barbara: Rosetta

Greig, Andrew: The Return of John MacNab

Haddon, Mark: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Herbert, Frank: Dune

Horwood, William: Skallagrig

Hulme, Keri: Bone People

Japrisot, Sebastian: A Very Long Engagement

Kipling, Rudyard: Puck of Pook's Hill

Kipling, Rudyard: Rewards and Fairies

Lee, Harper: To Kill A Mockingbird

Mantel, Hilary: Wolf Hall

Melville, Herman: Moby Dick

Miller, Andrew: Pure

Monsarrat, Nicholas: The Cruel Sea

Moorcroft, Michael: Mother London

O'Brian, Patrick: The Mauritius Command

Pears, Ian: An Instance of the Fingerpost

Penney, Stef: The Tenderness of Wolves

Pullman, Philip: Northern Lights

Rushdie, Salman: Midnight's Children

Seth, Vikram: A Suitable Boy

Smiley, Jane: A Thousand Acres

Smith, Dodie: I Capture the Castle

Stephenson, Neal: Cryptonomicon

Stevenson, Robert Louis: Kidnapped

Thackeray, William: Vanity Fair

Thompson, Harry: This Thing of Darkness

Tolkien JRR: The Lord of the Rings

Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace

White, TH: Mistress Masham's Repose

Willis, Connie: To Say Nothing of the Dog

Woolf, Virginia: Mrs Dalloway

Woolf, Virginia: The Years

Woolf, Virginia: To The Lighthouse

Woolfenden, Ben: The Ruins of Time

 

Non-fiction (25)

Cocker, Mark: Crow Country

Dawkins, Richard: The Blind Watchmaker

Fadiman, Anne: Ex Libris

Frater, Alexander: Chasing the Monsoon

Hanff, Helen: 84 Charing Cross Road

Hastings, Max: All Hell Let Loose

Holland, James: Dam Busters

Hoskins, WG: The Making of the English Landscape

Huntford, Roland: Shackleton

Junger, Sebastian: The Perfect Storm

Longford, Elizabeth: Wellington, The Years of the Sword

Lee, Hermione: Virginia Woolf

Moore, Richard: In Search of Robert Millar

Nichols, Peter: A Voyage for Madmen

Pennac, Daniel: The Rights of the Reader

Rackham, Oliver: The History of the Countryside

Pinker, Stephen: The Language Instinct

de Saint-Exupery, Antoine; Wind, Sea and Stars

Salisbury, Laney and Gay: The Cruellest Miles

Simpson, Joe: Touching the Void

Taylor, Stephen: Storm and Conquest

Tomalin, Claire: Pepys, The Unequalled Self

Unsworth, Walt: Everest

Wheeler, Sara: Terra Incognita

Young, Gavin: Slow Boats to China

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Review of 2011, Looking forward to 2012

2011 was a really mixed bag of a year in terms of reading. I found it really difficult to get going in the first half, bogged down a bit in an OU course that I was really enjoying but which eventually started getting too much in the way of other things - too many immovable deadlines (the OU isn't quite as flexible as the image created). Even so, there were some real highlights, not least discovering Margaret Elphinstone. I only read two of her books, but both were 6-star reads, and others look equally promising. The other highlight was a growing enjoyment of writing by or about Virginia Woolf, with To The Lighthouse proving the standout fiction read of the year, and Hermione Lee's doorstopper of a biography consuming several weeks of spring reading, taking over as my favourite biog to date. I also enjoyed Ben Aaronavitch's quirky crime thrillers with a magic twist - not quite as off the wall as Jasper Fforde, but a really enjoyable slant on the crime story with a strong sense of setting. I also, at a distance, now have very fond memories of Sally Vickers's Miss Garnet's Angel, even if I 'only' rated it 4 stars at the time, whilst Robert Massie's Dreadnought kept me enthralled on a couple of thoroughly tedious and long coach journeys..

 

Things started picking up in the autumn, whilst December proved frenetic - my biggest reading month ever (19 books!). However, aside from a 're-read' (in fact a listening) of Sense and Sensibility, the standout books were all non-fiction, led by Max Hastings's superb single volume history of WW2. The biggest surprise was probably Ned Boulting's book on his coverage of the Tour de France, a much stronger read than I expected (even if his style was determinedly light, there was some interesting reading between the lines for a cycling aficionado). I don't usually go much of a bundle on self-deprecating humorous books, especially on sport, but this worked for me.

 

On the downside? Aside from the slow start, not a lot. In particular, there wasn't much that disappointed. Perhaps the only mild blot was that, having read two of the Booker shortlist, I was not overly impressed with either. Julian Barnes's winner was solidly enjoyable and interesting, but I can't say that it stood out for me as a major award winner. However, I do seem to be in a small minority, so I'm obviously missing something. Snowdrops stood out only for its very ordinariness, its short listing a complete puzzle. Otherwise, not much featured in the lower echelons of ratings.

 

So, all in all, a good, if not spectacular, year. In terms of pure numbers, I can't believe I finished up on 50 books, but it was a pretty mad December!

 

Looking forward to 2012, my biggest aim is to increase the amount of reading I do, whilst buying a lot less! In particular, the shelves are overflowing, so what buying is done will need to be predominanly for the Kindle, which I am increasingly enjoying using, especially as more and more reading is being done whilst travelling - I've taken to using the train far more for commuting even though it's 4 times as long as by car (the bike has come into play too!). I'm also finding that too many paperbacks (especially non-fiction) have unpleasantly small type, and the Kindle helps counter that very effectively. And, to allow the real world to intrude for a moment, being both in our mid-50s, we are seriously having to look at finances if we are both to be able to retire at an age where we can actually enjoy it.

 

Another aim is to make some significant inroads into some of the big doorstopper reads that I've had lined up for some time, but with one thing and another (mostly work related, but also some pretty skilled procrastination!) have never got around to getting stuck into. I hesitate to put numbers on these things - too much hostage to fortune - but I'd like to see if I can hit the 60 book mark this year for the first time ever, and include at least 2 megadoorstoppers (1000+pagers), and another 3-4 standard doorstoppers (600+pagers) - and I don't mean some of the fairly standard fiction fare with not a lot on each page. Maybe this is, at last, the year of Les Miserables and/or one of the big histories??! Whatever, am really looking forward to 2012, reading up on everybody else's reading and ideas, and seeing how it all pans out.

Edited by willoyd
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Ratking by Michael Dibdin ****

 

The first of the Aurelio Zen series, about a Venetian detective based in Rome. However, in this, he is posted to Perugia, having spent the previous couple of years working in administration, shunted to one side for getting too close to the powers that be in a previous kidnapping investigation. I've seen one of the TV episodes (enjoying it a lot), but this is my first experience of the books. Basically, I think I'll finish off reading before going back to the TV, as this was an excellent read: a suitably twisting thread as Zen negotiates not just the intricacies of the case but also the politics of the Italian state and society. Not a book where it's all suddenly revealed at the end - the villain becomes fairly obvious almost a hundred pages from the end - but one where you get immersed in the ins and outs of how Zen gets there, and gets the result he's after (or does he?!). A good start to the year - I suspect that Dibdin will feature more than once on the reading list over the next 12 months!

 

Have also started Norman Davies's Vanished Kingdoms. It's a big chunky hardback (Christmas present from OH), so won't be travelling with me much, but it's already (p60) looking to be as promising as all the rave reviews suggested.

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A complimentary copy of Ratking was waiting invitingly on the bed of a hotel I stayed in about 10 years ago - a very clever move on the part of the publishers, as I then had to buy the rest of the series over the years! I enjoyed the TV adaptations too, but I still prefer the books.

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Maybe this is, at last, the year of Les Miserables and/or one of the big histories??! Whatever, am really looking forward to 2012, reading up on everybody else's reading and ideas, and seeing how it all pans out.

Hey willoyd, best of luck with your reading in 2012. I'd also like to think 2012 was my year for Les Miserables but we'll have to see about that. :lol:

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Another aim is to make some significant inroads into some of the big doorstopper reads that I've had lined up for some time, but with one thing and another (mostly work related, but also some pretty skilled procrastination!) have never got around to getting stuck into. I hesitate to put numbers on these things - too much hostage to fortune - but I'd like to see if I can hit the 60 book mark this year for the first time ever, and include at least 2 megadoorstoppers (1000+pagers), and another 3-4 standard doorstoppers (600+pagers) - and I don't mean some of the fairly standard fiction fare with not a lot on each page. Maybe this is, at last, the year of Les Miserables and/or one of the big histories??! Whatever, am really looking forward to 2012, reading up on everybody else's reading and ideas, and seeing how it all pans out.

 

Will, I bought Les Miserables on Christmas Eve, and hope to read it this year. Also hoping to read The Three Musketeers or The Count of Monte Cristo, both of which have been languishing on my tbr for far too long!

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Will, I bought Les Miserables on Christmas Eve, and hope to read it this year. Also hoping to read The Three Musketeers or The Count of Monte Cristo, both of which have been languishing on my tbr for far too long!

I read The Count of Monte Cristo a couple of years ago - very enjoyable read, thoroughly recommended. I read The Three Musketeers many years ago, so long ago that I'm more than ready for a reread, especially as I've got Twenty Years After and The Man in the Iron Mask staring at me from the shelves.

 

Hey willoyd, best of luck with your reading in 2012. I'd also like to think 2012 was my year for Les Miserables but we'll have to see about that. :lol:

Looks like there's almost enough for a book group ;)

 

A complimentary copy of Ratking was waiting invitingly on the bed of a hotel I stayed in about 10 years ago - a very clever move on the part of the publishers, as I then had to buy the rest of the series over the years! I enjoyed the TV adaptations too, but I still prefer the books.

Clever idea. I'm definitely going to have to get stuck into Vendetta before very long - Zen/Dibdin is/are very addictive.

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Reading notes week ending Jan 7

 

Over the past couple of years I've tended only to post when I've finished a book, to write the review (that's aside from doing the 30-day challenge last August). Trouble is, that can mean not really keeping a track for quite long periods of time, especially when tackling the bigger stuff (which I've promised myself to do more of this year). So, I'm going to try and do a periodic (roughly weekly?) summary this year to give myself a better idea when looking back at how the reading goes.

 

This week has been marked by the return to school. First and last weeks are always desperately busy, so inevitably reading drops off a bit. Still - managed to finish off the first Aurelio Zen books, and started reading Ian Pears's Stone Fall - looks promising. I started the first doorstopper of the year last weekend, Vanished Kingdom (Norman Davies), finishing off the second chapter this morning. It's too big to read whilst travelling and requires too much concentration to read at bedtime, which is why I've got two on the go at the same time, but is already proving very rewarding. Each chapter focuses on the history of a now vanished country. So far, it's been about Tolosa (5th century Visigothic kingdom) and Alt Clud, the ancient Brythonic kingdom based on Dumbarton Rock, which staggered through almost to the English Norman period. Both chapters have helped me sort out a lot of my own understanding of the histories of their times, and indeed the latter has a lot to say about modern day politics. Fascinating, and beautifully written. It could take a few weeks to finish though!

 

Bought a couple of books from the Amazon 12 Days of Kindle sale, but overall a bit underwhelmed by what was on offer. Read a really enthusiastic review of Sally Gardner's The Double Shadow in this morning's Guardian. The downloaded sample looked promising, so went and bought the full book. Must read it soon though - trying to get into the habit of reading books soon after buying rather than leaving them to fester on shelves for weeks/months, sometimes years!

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.. trying to get into the habit of reading books soon after buying rather than leaving them to fester on shelves for weeks/months, sometimes years!

You and me both :D .. I'm not doing too badly so far but it's whether I can sustain it.

Sally Gardner wrote 'I Coriander' didn't she? if so I liked that. Is it for adults?, I'm more used to her children's fiction.

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You and me both :D .. I'm not doing too badly so far but it's whether I can sustain it.

Sally Gardner wrote 'I Coriander' didn't she? if so I liked that. Is it for adults?, I'm more used to her children's fiction.

I picked this up on the electronic Guardian that I subscribe to on the Kindle, where it doesn't indicate anything about target audience. When I got onto Amazon, one of the reviews mentions that it is aimed at young adults. I've just been and taken a look on the Guardian website, and the review is listed under teen books. It does sort of read like that too. I get the impression from the review that it's the first she's aimed at an older market.

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That is one huge TBR list you have my friend!

You've got me a bit puzzled there, as I deliberately don't keep one as I hate having my reading planned ahead. Do you mean the 1001/501/BBC200 lists at the start of the thread? If so, I've got those really for ideas. I'm sort of ticking them off, but realistically I'm never going to finish any of them, not least because there's too many books on them that I have no intention of reading - I reckon life's too short to waste on Jacqueline Wilson and obscure 18th century tomes (along with a few othes I could mention)!

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Reading notes week ending Jan 14

 

Not a good week from a reading point of view. I've not had time to get any further with Vanished Kingdoms, and have found it difficult to settle down with Stone's Fall. To be honest, the latter hasn't really caught my imagination. It's now almost 150 pages in, and very little has happened. What has happened is decidedly ungrabbing - all being a bit obvious. Nicely written, but getting to be rather tedious, not helped by the fact that I'm struggling to read more than 10 to 20 pages at a time.

 

My commuting involves some days when I take the train and then walk 20 mins from the station to work. Last term, I started listening to an audiobook on this walk (rather boring through housing estates), eventually taking out an Audiobooks.com subscription. This month my book choice was Don Quixote, long on my list to read. Started listening to it on Friday, and am already well into it; it's read by Roy Macmillan (great reading voice) from the translation by John Ormsby - which is a lot more followable than I anticipated, and more appealing than the Iain Pears book at present. So, unusually, I have three books on the go simultaneously - don't know whether I'm going to be able to cope with this as normally I like to read sequentially and devote myself to just one. We'll see. Just hope next week sees more progress.

 

Just one book acquired this week: a copy of the Folio Society edition of The Gentleman's Daughter by Amanda Vickery. Couldn't resist the near mint copy going for just over a tenner. The book looks at the lives of the eighteenth century's 'genteel' (I.e. middle class) women of Whalley parish in Lancashire, primarily using their letters and diaries. I know the area well, and it's a period of history that I find fascinating too, all about a group of people who rarely come to the surface. It's a lovely edition, and I'm really looking forward to being able to get stuck in. Will need to finish something else off first though!

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Review of 2011, Looking forward to 2012

 

I enjoyed reading this post very much, thank you for writing it :)

 

2011 was a really mixed bag of a year in terms of reading. I found it really difficult to get going in the first half, bogged down a bit in an OU course that I was really enjoying but which eventually started getting too much in the way of other things - too many immovable deadlines (the OU isn't quite as flexible as the image created).

 

Sorry for going off-topic for a moment, and do excuse my ignorance, but what is OU?

 

The other highlight was a growing enjoyment of writing by or about Virginia Woolf, with To The Lighthouse proving the standout fiction read of the year, and Hermione Lee's doorstopper of a biography consuming several weeks of spring reading, taking over as my favourite biog to date.

 

Eventhough I didn't read any Virginia Woolf last year myself, I will definitely remember your, poppyshake's and my conversations on Woolf as one of the most inspiring talking-about-literature conversations in 2011 :D I'll have to wait and see if you come up with more Woolf related reads this year :)

 

 

I also enjoyed Ben Aaronavitch's quirky crime thrillers with a magic twist - not quite as off the wall as Jasper Fforde, but a really enjoyable slant on the crime story with a strong sense of setting.

 

Hm, this sounds interesting, I might have to add it to my wishlist!

 

I also, at a distance, now have very fond memories of Sally Vickers's Miss Garnet's Angel, even if I 'only' rated it 4 stars at the time, whilst Robert Massie's Dreadnought kept me enthralled on a couple of thoroughly tedious and long coach journeys..

 

It's funny how we sometimes rate a book fairly low, but then after some time passes, think of the book more fondly than right after reading it. This has happened to me many times.

 

Looking forward to 2012, my biggest aim is to increase the amount of reading I do, whilst buying a lot less!

 

Good luck with this, I think we all know how difficult this can be...

 

Anyways, have a happy year of reading, I'll be keeping a close eye on your reading log :)

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I enjoyed reading this post very much, thank you for writing it :)

Thank you - it's lovely to hear when others enjoy what you write! I must admit, I'm enjoying putting these 'blogs' together more and more, not least because it has helped me think about my reading a lot more, which in turn has made the reading much more enjoyable. It's only when I started going back over previous entries that I've realised how valuable they are to me as a record, to the extent that I've started downloading and backing them up as a personal reading diary, just in case something untoward happens here.

 

Sorry for going off-topic for a moment, and do excuse my ignorance, but what is OU?

Sorry - I forget we are international (although that assumes that all those in Britain would know, and now you ask, I'm not sure they would!) The OU is the Open University: The OU offers a whole host of subjects that can be studied to degree level. To earn a degree you have to earn so many credits (normally 360) at different levels (years 1, 2 and 3, with usually 120 credits at each level) by combining different modules together (normally earning between 30 and 60 credits) in specific combinations. You study using a variety of supplied media (books, video, computer based material), and tutorials which can be on-line, over the phone or face to face. I was studying on the arts side: I'd successfully completed a first year German module, but having studied, but not completed the assessments for, a French module and the main Arts first year unit, I've decided that whilst the materials and courses are superb, I just don't have the time to do the work in the timescales set: the OU are proud of their flexibility, but they are not sufficiently flexible for me!

 

Even though I didn't read any Virginia Woolf last year myself, I will definitely remember your, poppyshake's and my conversations on Woolf as one of the most inspiring talking-about-literature conversations in 2011 :D

Same here - but you must read some yourself - I'd love to hear (read!) your thoughts too.

 

I'll have to wait and see if you come up with more Woolf related reads this year :)

I fully intend to - probably more of her non-fiction material though, atlhough I've got my eye on The Waves and The Voyage Out. I'm especially looking forward to reading some of her essays - especially The Common Reader.

 

Anyways, have a happy year of reading, I'll be keeping a close eye on your reading log :)

And you too - yours is one of the logs I read and enjoy regularly: this forum is definitely my favourite area on the site. Edited by willoyd
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Thank you - it's lovely to hear when others enjoy what you write! I must admit, I'm enjoying putting these 'blogs' together more and more, not least because it has helped me think about my reading a lot more, which in turn has made the reading much more enjoyable. It's only when I started going back over previous entries that I've realised how valuable they are to me as a record, to the extent that I've started downloading and backing them up as a personal reading diary, just in case something untoward happens here.

 

It is a 'vicious' circle :P Reading books, writing about them, enjoying reading them more, enjoying writing about them.. and voila, brain is happy of all the extra pleasure and the different connections and references! I like it that you've started saving your reading blog, I'm not quite that organisational but I'd love to be. What's more, for example, I've sometimes looked for a particular post with a particular info on my reading blog for some purpose or another, and sometimes I get carried away with it, reading other people's posts and the dialogue that ensues and it's just so much fun to read old posts and go back in time and compare what one has read many moons ago and how one's reading tastes have possibly differed then. Not a bad way to pass the time, I say.

 

 

Sorry - I forget we are international (although that assumes that all those in Britain would know, and now you ask, I'm not sure they would!) The OU is the Open University: The OU offers a whole host of subjects that can be studied to degree level. To earn a degree you have to earn so many credits (normally 360) at different levels (years 1, 2 and 3, with usually 120 credits at each level) by combining different modules together (normally earning between 30 and 60 credits) in specific combinations. You study using a variety of supplied media (books, video, computer based material), and tutorials which can be on-line, over the phone or face to face. I was studying on the arts side: I'd successfully completed a first year German module, but having studied, but not completed the assessments for, a French module and the main Arts first year unit, I've decided that whilst the materials and courses are superb, I just don't have the time to do the work in the timescales set: the OU are proud of their flexibility, but they are not sufficiently flexible for me!

 

Don't worry, it's easy to forget! I sometimes forget, too, and I'm one of the non-natives :D I guess it's to do with us all speaking English.

 

I guess it should've been obvious from the context that you were talking about open uni, but I was very off! We also have an open uni system but I'm not familiar with it so wouldn't know how it compares to yours. Too bad the English OU can't accommodate to your particular needs and wishes.

 

Same here - but you must read some yourself - I'd love to hear (read!) your thoughts too.

 

I'll try! I bought Woolf's Moments of Being just a week ago, as it happens. And in English, too. I also have Mrs Dalloway on TBR. I've only read To the Lighthouse but that was in Finnish and poppyshake and I discussed that it's really of no use to read Woolf in Finnish, it's difficult enough to read it in English and who knows what the poor Finnish translator must've gone through, and what kinds of altercations there have been.

 

Woolf just intimidates me so much. I'll have to be in the perfect mindset for her. But you surely know how it is.

 

And you too - yours is one of the logs I read and enjoy regularly: this forum is definitely my favourite area on the site.

 

Aww, thank you for your kind words :) I agree, I enjoy reading other people's reading logs the most! Unfortunately I'm usually the sort of person who leaves the best til last, and I usually reply in other kinds of threads first, and then posts keep piling up and soon enough I have tons of reading logs to go through. It's very enjoyable, but it takes time to fully read everything and make one's comments.

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Stone's Fall by Iain Pears **

 

I said in my week's review on Saturday that I was beginning to find this tedious, and I've finally ground to a compete halt. Almost 200 pages in, I really can't bring myself to continue this any longer: it's just one non-event after another. I think the final straw was the introduction of yet another in an increasingly long line of minor characters called, believe it or not, "Jan the Builder", although the romantic (or should I say obsessive?) element contributed much, muddying the plot of what might otherwise have been an involving premise. Dull, dull, dull! Not quite a one star - I didn't dislike it as such - but certainly nothing more than two.

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You've abandoned a book and all I can say is I hope it's catching :D I'm fed up of plodding on with unenjoyable reads.

This Reading Blog forum is my favourite place to be too .. it's so full of interesting chat and info on books and we can witter on about Woolf to our hearts content, they'd probably chuck you out of General Chat for that :D I save bits from my bookblog too .. as a means to seeing what I've read and when etc. Up until I joined here I didn't keep a record of books read and it's all a bit hazy pre 2009. I know I read Malory Towers/St Clares when I was about eight but I couldn't guarantee anything else. A lot of the books I read in 2011 came directly from recommendations here, and I am in great hopes that Hermione Lee's biog of Virginia will be amongst my birthday presents in Feb. I have dropped the heaviest of hints and even gone so far as to print out my wishlists with preferences highlighted so here's hoping :D Also on the cards is a visit to Monks House sometime this year. I would so love to see Virginia's writing room and Alan is quite interested because after it was Virginia's room it was Trekkie's studio so there should be something to interest us both. Will wait for warmer weather though.

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We've got a few days in the south in August, at the Olympics. Hoping to get out of the city as there are three places (amongst others!) I am dying to visit: Altham (Jane Austen), Selborne (Gilbert White) and Rodmell, the first of which will be a revisit after several decades, but the other two new in spite of the fact that I grew up in Surrey.

 

I agree with you about keeping records. I started in mid-2006, and it's fascinating (and eye-opening sometimes) looking back. It's been very motivating too.

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