The Good Citizen

Thanks I will watch it eventually, if only for the man crush on Johnny Depp!

3. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: Murakami Very similar to 1Q84 in many ways (or vice versa as 1Q84 came later) the character of Ushikawa appears in both. Similar themes from crossing over into parallel worlds, lost loves and even a definite recurring ears fetish that Murakami always seems allure to. I was listening to Robert Johnson this morning on my way to work, the same song rewritten time and again, luckily its a good song. The same could be said of Murakami's back catalogue. 8/10 4. Voyage: Steven Baxter (As recommend by Karsa Orlong

I'll catch it on DVD I'm sure, it will be interesting to see if it captures the mood of the book where the humour was secondary to the geneal feeling of journalistic burn out and living day to day scratching a living. So I hope its not just an out and out comedy. it seems an odd choice for a film tbh, its a rambling drunken haze of a book with little plot as such, but I suppose it worked for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas! I also think Johnny Depp as ageless as he is, at the wrong side of 40 is probably a little old to be playing the central character who I think was in his early to mId 20's. But yeah I'll watch it at some point!

I lent a friend a copy of Birdsong as I thought he'd enjoy it, he never read it and I never got it back. Then he asked to borrow the replacement I ended up buying for his wife who was studying it on a course she was taking. After 10 minutes of "I already lent you a copy!" "no I gave you that back" "no you didn't" "yes I did"...I lent him the replacement (I'm such a mug!). I'm now holding a DVD box set of his to ransom until I get a copy back Its always a trade off between wanting someone to read a book that you love with knowing you will have to hassle to get it back and be perturbed by the space on your book shelf until you get it!

Ha "Matthew McConaughey....less so" ...sounds like an epitaph

I'm pretty sure it was made into a film starring Jodie Foster too.

I found a photgraph of a girl in the middle of a second hand book that I bought a few months back. It was from quite a few years ago. She was very pretty and It had a name on the back and was dated.. Yes, I'll admit, I had a brief romantic vision of tracking her down from clues in the picture to return the photo but in this day and age she'd probably just take me as a weirdo ha! Was strange to have a direct look at a strager who owned a book before me though!

I think I'll have to give Jack Vance a go too then given the high recommendation!

I have yet to read Burmese Days either, I read Homage to Catalonia directly after reading the battle for spain by Anthony Bevor which really helped me appreciate the background to Orwell's account. I went to Barcelona a few weeks later and headed strating to the Square named after him as a personal Homage to Geroge Orwell. Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out in particular are also brilliant books and like you it will be a shame once I've read all his back catalogue. Not only is he one of my favourite Authors he is just an inspirational character from history. He had a tremendous perspective on poverty in recognising his middle class background would not allow him to ever fully understand it. His work is often as open and questioning of himself and his reaction to situations as to the situations themselves. Just a fascinating inspirational individual and on my short list of people from history I would have loved to have met.

Just picked up a copy off Ebay £2.95 Thanks

only 50 I was doing quite well but as the books got older it tailed off. I shoudl probably read more classics ha! That is a great link though, I will definitely use this in future. I've nearly watched all of the IMDB top 250 films, this may take a lifetime however which I suppose is this point! Cloud Atlas The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel Kafka on the Shore Life of Pi Super-Cannes Sputnik Sweetheart The Hours Great Apes (Will Self) The Reader The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Birdsong Wild Swans : Three Daughters of China Love in the Time of Cholera The WASP FACTORY: A NOVEL A Pale View of Hills Midnight's Children A Confederacy of Dunces The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy The Cement Garden The Shining Interview with the Vampire Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Slaughterhouse-Five Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? One Hundred Years of Solitude The Master and Margarita Catch-22 To Kill a Mockingbird On the Road Lord of the Flies The Day of the Triffids Foundation The Catcher in the Rye Nineteen Eighty-Four The Plague Animal Farm The Grapes of Wrath Nausea Of Mice and Men Brave New World A Farewell To Arms All Quiet on the Western Front Mrs. Dalloway The Great Gatsby The Trial A Passage to India Bram Stoker's Dracula The Picture of Dorian Gray The Metamorphoses of Ovid

Great thanks, that should give me a decent list to wander into the 2nd hand bookstore with! I've read Day of the Triffids actually I really rated it. Voyage sounds interesting so I might give that a go next! Thanks again

I've only recently started to read some SciFi as I thought I should give it a go. I've read Asimov Foundations trilogy, some Ray Bradbury and Philip K Dick and enjoyed them all but its clear Sci-Fi is quite a broad term as they differ in style and content greatly. Does anyone have any must reads? I liked Philip K Dick as he had a certain level of character development and centres as much on the human impact of future technology and how it alienates people from themselves. I think I prefer that to the purer SciFi of Asimov which is more solely about imagining and creating future worlds. But I'm open to reading anything really?

I picked this up and almost bought it at the weekend from my local 2nd hand bookstore. I will probably buy it now! I have quite an interest in Astronomy on the side anyway and I know he's renowned in his field.

Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier is well worth a read but perhaps set a little late to be considered a true western.

The Cement Garden was a brilliant book (if a little dark), I flew through it in a night a few months ago. I fell into the trap of watching the film of atonement first which was really good but now I can't seem to get round to picking it up off the shelf and read it, as I know the plot. One day maybe

Your favourite read of the year? All Quiet on the Western Front or 100 Years of Solitude - both blew me away Your favourite author of the year? Murakami as I've been reading him all year Your most read author of the year? See above Your favourite book cover of the year? Err.. don't have a preference. The book you abandoned (if there was more than one, the one you read least of)? Blood Meridian - 50 pages from the end (and I rarely ditch a book) I thought it would be a great read but it bored me. The book that most disappointed you? See above. The funniest book of the year? Rum Diary by the guy in my avatar had some good moments. Your favourite literary character this year? Henry Chianksi - The post office and again in Ham on Rye but that was 2012.. Your favourite children's book this year? I must have read Green Eggs and Ham to my son a 100 times! Your favourite classic of the year? When does Classic end and Modern Classic begin? Your favourite non-fiction book this year? Why does E=MC2 and why should I care by the Lovely Brian Cox Your favourite biography this year? Hmmm don't think I read one, I have Margrave of the Marshes by John Peel on the horizon though. Your favourite illustrated book of the year? Didn't read one, I have Persepolis to read this year too.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place - more for the survival element. It was the book on which 127 hours was based and supposed to also be a very good read.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez, especially if there is a bit of a crush thing going on there! Also (and probably my choice) A 100 Years of Solitude by the same author is also a wonderful book - Tip, if you chose this, make sure the book has a family tree at the start, its set over 5 generations with the same recurring family names used. I'd have been lost without it!

Down and Out in Paris and London is my favourite Orwell book, followed by Homage to Catalonia. I'd highly recommend both. I'd suggest Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath, if only because I flip between him and Orwell as my favourite author.

Not sure how many I read last year, but its amazing when you look back at your bookshelf and see how many you actually get through. I have one challenge for 2012 to read all 7 volumes of Proust - In Search Of Lost Time "The complete story contains nearly 1.5 million words and is one of the longest novels in world literature." I am bit daunted by this so rather than chicken out I thought I'd put it in writing as a challenge! I bought the first volume last week so I hope I enjoy it! Anyway here is a proper list for 2012: January 1 1Q84 - Murakami 8.5/10 One of the few books I have reserved and purchased the day it came out as I love Murakami's fiction, everyone should have a pet author and he is mine at the moment. He is just consistently enjoyable, maybe only Norwegian Wood could make it in an all time top 10 but most of his books would make my top 50. Volume 1 and 2 finished off over Christmas and Volume 3 just crept into 2012 and so the first entry on my list.... 2 Ham on Rye - Bukowski 10/10 I assume this is a play on Catcher in the Rye as its similarly a coming of age tale. Where as I was underwhelmed by Salinger's more famous novel I absolutely loved this and couldn't put it down. I already read the post office by Bukowski last year which takes this character into working life so probably the wrong order to read it as this follows his childhood though a physically abusive father , debilitating acne though to the emergence of alcoholism. Chianski is a true American Anti Hero, constantly going against the grain, irrepressible, stubborn and all too often his own worst enemy. What could be a harrowing and oppressive read is genuinely uplifting due to Chianski's razor sharp humour in the face of whatever life throws at him and an eternal belief that just given half a chance he could take on the world.

Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier (Cold Mountain) is a good read, actually Cold Mountain is a better read but probably not as close to what you are after.

More than I thought although I can't see myself adding to it much now I think I've read most of what I really want to on that list! 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible - 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 19 The Time Traveller�s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitchhiker�s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 34 Emma - Jane Austen 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen- 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - 38 Captain Corelli�s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy- 48 The Handmaid�s Tale - Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel 52 Dune - Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens- 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez- 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov- 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac- 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones�s Diary - Helen Fielding 69 Midnight�s Children - Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker- 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses - James Joyce 76 The Inferno - Dante- 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal - Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - 80 Possession - AS Byatt -81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - 87 Charlotte�s Web - EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've just picked up my preordered copy of 1q84 by Haruki Murakami which I've been dying to read for ages. But I was between books on Sunday and couldn't resist starting a new one. So I'm reading Super-Cannes by J.G.Ballard but only half way through it so 1q84 will have to wait. I knew I wouldn't finish it in time but its too good to drop half way through!

Has anyone read Proust - 'In Search of Lost Time'? I was having a mooch through a few copies in Waterstones on my lunchbreak but at 7 volumes and 3500 pages in total, its not something I'd read on a whim!