Kidsmum

I finished Room, what a great read I couldn't put it down. Next I'm going to read Raffles E.W. Hornung I read it years ago & I remember really enjoying it though I've forgotten most of the details of the story

Hi Dori welcome to the forum looking forward to chatting with you

Hi Patrick &

Finished Sharpe's Trafalgar & have just started Room by Emma Donoghue

Will be interested to read what you think of Quicksilver Willoyd it's on my TBR pile as well, it was a bit of an impulse buy as it's not usually something I would normally go for

Congrats on your baby news Tunn

Football on the telly last night meant I managed to finish The Black House Peter May. I've decided to go back to the Sharpe Series for my next read Sharpe's Trafalgar.

Hi April, welcome to the forum I see your reading Voyager at the moment I've read the first two books in the Outlander series am I right in thinking that Voyager is the third

I agree with Julie you need to toss in some Wilkie Collins , at this rate Ben your going to be snowed under with classic books

I finished The Loved & Envied this morning. I'm going to go for something completely different for my next read The Black House by Peter May

You've got a great list there Ben To Kill A Mockingbird is definitely a must read & I just know you'll love it. Wuthering Heights is my favourite book & I also loved Vanity Fair but not sure if these are books that would appeal more to women than men though I remember that VF didn't like Vanity Fair at all. Far From The Madding Crowd & The Woodlanders are both fantastic reads & imo no classics challenge is complete without a bit of Trollope so I would unreservedly recommend The Barchester Chronicles. Great idea for a challenge

I shall keep the two of them in mind Frankie & whichever I come across first will determine which one I read so it's in the lap of the gods

Oh yes I know what you mean it's hard to stick with a book your not enjoying when you've got so many waiting in the wings

I love Roald Dahl I've read most of his books to my youngest DD & we're both big fans imo he's the best children's author as he gets just the right balance between silliness & scariness (not sure if that's a proper word) I know what you mean about seeing the movie first, when I was reading Matilda I couldn't help but see Danny De Vito as the father. I think my favourite character was Miss Honey I would have loved to have a person like that in my life when I was a child not that my parents were like Matilda's but they weren't big readers either

I got quite a bit of reading done yesterday so only have 60 pages left to go in The Loved & Envied

And I do enjoy reading them Claire even though I don't always leave a comment I so admire your will of steel I can't imagine ever getting to the end of my TBR mountain it would be wonderful but I'd probably go out & buy another load of books in celebration. Good luck reaching your target

Great review of Cakes & Ale Willoyd One of my favourites of his is The Moon & Sixpence inspired by the life of Paul Gaugin. Coincidentally I picked up a copy of his short stories in a charity shop the other day & I see Eliza is reading Of Human Bondage. I read quite a lot of his books but years ago so they're a bit hazy in my memory but I don't remember disliking any of them but of course it's all a matter of taste I suppose Re: The Book Of Human Skin I found it difficult to get into at first but once I got into the characters I did enjoy it though I did find the ending a little disappointing.

Big thumbs up for The Crimson Petal & The White, hope you enjoy it Devi

Good to see it got so many recommendations that must be why it stuck in my head. Thanks for the info, I've never read The Blue Castle so it wouldn't effect my enjoyment of the book but I can see why other people would be put off by that. Out of the two which would you say was the better book ?

Hi Parenthesis I have Cloudstreet, Never Let Me Go & The Potato Peel Society on my TBR pile as well so I'll look out for your reviews on them. I listened to The Uncommon Reader on audio last year & really enjoyed it, I have a soft spot for Alan Bennett as we are both from Leeds

42 books is an impressive amount Ben I think I've read about half that so far this year. I have the same problem though my TBR pile never goes down because I buy books faster than I can read them, charity shops are my downfall I know that if I had to buy all my books new I wouldn't own half as many as I do.

Yes it is a bit of a doorstopper but it's an easy read as there's no boring bits where it drags which you can get with some big books. How did you like The Ladies of Missalonghi I seem to remember you were reading att the same time as I was reading the Thorn Birds ?

I've got The Last Talk With Lola Faye to read, going to have to get round to it soon as it was a present so I don't want to look ungrateful

I'm nearly halfway through The Loved and Envied it seems to be going quite slowly but I'm enjoying it.

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 May Allcott 12 Tess of the D�Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 16 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 Irving 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy- 48 The Handmaids Tale - Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 50 Atonement - Ian Mckewan 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 & 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 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 Ishiguro 85 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 read 44 but I have quite a few of the others on my TBR pile it would be so cool to have read all 100