Hayley

I was going to post this on my own book log because I got this list as a Christmas present (it's actually a 'scratch off' poster by Gift Republic) but I thought I'd post it here instead, just in case anybody else feels like joining in the challenge! (Sorry that the picture is terrible, it's very springy so I had to weight it down with books so it didn't roll back up) I've actually read about a quarter of the books before but I still haven't decided whether to scratch off the ones I've already read now, or to re-read them before scratching them off. I do think it's cheating a little that they've included entire series/trilogies as one entry! (Listed in the order they appear on the poster, by rows running right to left, although I can't see any actual purpose to the order they're in...) 1. American Gods - Neil Gaiman 2. Lord of the Flies - William Golding 3. Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse 4. Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder 5. A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking 6. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott FItzgerald 7. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 8. Matilda - Roald Dahl 9. The Complete Art of War - Sun Tzu 10. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick 11. Long Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandela 12. Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie 13. The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks 14. Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman 15. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote 16. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 17. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carrol 18. The Secret History - Donna Tartt 19. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 20. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell 21. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 22. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami 23. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest - Ken Kesey 24. The Man in the Iron Mask - Alexandre Dumas 25. The Colour Purple - Alice Walker 26. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson 27. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 28. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 29. Harry Potter (series) - J.K. Rowling 30. His Dark Materials (trilogy) - Philip Pullman 31. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway 32. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde 33. The Road - Cormac McCarthy 34. Ulysses - James Joyce 35. Bad Science - Ben Goldacre 36. I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith 37. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson 38. Les Misérables - Victor Hugo 39. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger 40. Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 41. Wild Swans - Jung Chang 42. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 43. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré 44. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 45. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver 46. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain 47. Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift 48. The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells 49. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 50. Freakonomics - S. Dubner S. Levitt 51. A Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin 52. The Help - Katheryn Stockett 53. Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes 54. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou 55. American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis 56. Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson 57. Macbeth - William Shakespeare 58. The Lord of the Rings (trilogy) - J.R.R Tolkien 59. A History of Venice - John Julius Norwich 60. The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins 61. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood 62. A Wild Sheep Chase - Haruki Murakami 63. Schindler's Ark - Thomas Keneally 64. London Fields - Martin Amis 65. The Hound of the Baskervilles - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 66. My Man Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse 67. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje 68. The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot 69. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 70. The Commitments - Roddy Doyle 71. Gladys Aylward: The Little Woman - Gladys Aylward 72. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie 73. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 74. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne 75. Hamlet - William Shakespeare 76. Goodnight Mister Tom - Michelle Magorian 77. Dissolution - C.J. Sansom 78. The Time Machine - H.G. Wells 79. Winnie the Pooh (complete collection) - A.A. Milne 80. Animal Farm - George Orwell 81. The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank 82. The Enchanted Wood - Enid Blyton 83. Dracula - Bram Stoker 84. All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque 85. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding 86. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 87. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 88. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf 89. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 90. Misery - Stephen King 91. The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis 92. Watership Down - Richard Adams 93. The Odyssey - Homer 94. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 95. Bird Song - Sebastian Faulks 96. Tell No One - Harlan Coben 97. Moby Dick - Herman Melville 98. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 99. Middlemarch - George Eliot 100. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

I was telling my sister about this series (because I knew she’d love the sound of it too) and she just surprised me with the full set of books! The condition being that she gets to read them afterwards . I’m so excited to get stuck into them based on your reviews!

I love that community library box! The fact that someone took time to paint it with all the vines really makes it seem like something that’s appreciated. I saw that too, it was an absolutely ridiculous argument. I’m not even sure that many people can genuinely have been angry about it. I think some people just really enjoy taking part in ganging up on someone online. Similar mindset to a playground bully but with added self-righteousness and anonymity. I have a library very close to me, no more than half a mile. It’s hours were reduced a few years ago, when we had all the library cuts, but I don’t think it’s in serious danger of closing. The computers are used all the time and it’s also the neighbourhood office. If it did close the nearest one is only a couple of miles further away. I suppose that’s one upside of living in a busy city!

No, I’ve been talking to Marc and Lindy but they have been great. I didn’t realise that happened at BGO, and I’m so sorry to hear it. If there are memorial posts or anything you’d like to keep please do feel free to move them over here before BGO closes.

Yay! Safari has been misbehaving for me too today actually but I use it on my phone and just thought it was that being stupid. The link issue isn't to do with your browser though, we do have a problem with them at the moment, it's one of the things I need Invision to look into but they can't do it until we're properly moved over to them. You can post the links but they won't be embedded, so they don't look as nice. We did have some slow loading issues around the same time the link problem appeared (which still happen on occasion now) which is what I was thinking of when I asked about how the forum was loading generally for you. On the positive side, we've finally made some good progress towards moving to Invision over the weekend, so hopefully it won't be much longer before we can iron out all these annoying issues! There's really no need to apologise, I'd much rather people let me know as soon as they notice a problem, just in case it indicates a more serious issue. If it turns out to be something simple that's even better

Well that is very weird. Are you getting slow loading when you try to post? Or does everything else seem fine apart from your profile page?

Sorry about that. What happened when you tried to edit it? I've just checked it with my own profile and it did work for me.

That's good to hear because it's the book I particularly wanted to read! I have to admit I don't think I've heard of "S is for Space" or "R is for Rocket" before but I looked them up after seeing them on your list and they sound amazing! I don't mind a book that's hard going initially, as long as it has features that make it worth the extra effort!

I've never thought about it like that before but I think you're absolutely right, it is like meditation!

I found A Tale of Two Cities the most difficult Dickens book to get into as well. Like you though, I loved it once the threads of the story started to come together. I think that’s my favourite thing about Dickens actually. I love the way he weaves the different threads of of stories and peoples lives together. David Copperfield is great for that, one of my favourites .

Hi Paul, welcome to the forum . That looks like a really varied list! I really want to read some more Ray Bradbury and ‘In a Glass Darkly’ has been on my list for ages!

I only managed 4 chapters in the end. I was hoping I might finish the whole thing! I had a bit of a busier weekend than I expected, plus the book just didn’t grip me like I hoped. I’m not loving it so far. Still, I read more of it than I think I would have on a non read-a-thon weekend. (Also got no snow but it is snowing today!)

It says 90% chance of rain tomorrow and then just cloudy on Sunday for me! Maybe they’ll be wrong and we will get some snow. Fingers crossed! This sounds like an excellent idea I decided to go for another detective novel / mystery, because I’ve been enjoying those recently. I do have a few on my shelf so I just went with the first one to catch my eye, which was The Frightened Man by Kenneth Cameron.

Oh wow! He has such a sweet face, how could anybody not want him!? I bet part of you wanted to keep him anyway though

I really wanted to read this already but even more so now!

I’m actually really excited that other people are going to be reading them, I want to ask you all what you think about the McGray family mystery! Hopefully they’re just slow updating it. They really are huge fun! Your profile picture is extremely cute by the way

I’m very pleased to announce that Brian. has joined the moderator team!

I’m so sorry to hear that please take extra good care of yourself I was thinking the same thing, although I was hoping we’d get some snow and it doesn’t look like we are now, just rain! I thought I was going to be finishing The Cuckoo Wood for the start of the read-a-thon but I finished it last night, so now I need to decide what to read next!

Oooh that's good! Definitely worth it. I hope you'll love it too!

I think a lot of people do define Space Opera the same way you did though. It just doesn't sound right to say 'Asimov wrote space opera', does it? If you want an example of someone getting it totally wrong though I spent quite a long time believing that Space Opera was based on the term Soap Opera and was therefore going to be like science fiction mixed with family drama and unlikely dramatic deaths . This is a brilliant discovery and I look forward to telling people that I'm going to watch some Horse Opera

Thank you! Based on your review I agree. Although Space Opera as a genre seems to have pretty vague boundaries it doesn’t sound like these books should be categorised that way to me.

This is absolutely how this works . Reading logs are just your corner of the forum to keep track of your reading however you like! Done and no need to apologise, it wasn’t your fault. It’s happened a couple of times recently, I think it’s related to some loading issues we were having, which is part of the reason we’re switching hosts! I loved Katherine Arden’s Winternight trilogy, have you read them? What did you think of Small Spaces and Dark Voices?

I agree, a book doesn’t need to be action packed to be good. I think it makes a big difference if you’re aware that it’s that kind of book though, otherwise it makes me feel like I’ve spent a lot of reading time waiting for something to happen instead of enjoying what’s there.

I very nearly bought The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet a few years ago because one of the things that really appeals to me about science fiction is the exploration element and I thought it would be that kind of book. Like I loved watching Star Wars as kid mainly to see the different planets (wanted to live on the moon of Endor with the ewoks). But then I saw a couple of reviews of the book that said nothing really happens in it and it’s really just about the handful of characters living on a ship together. So that kind of put me off buying it! I don’t remember seeing your review though Gaia, I’ll have to have a look for it.

Oooh I saw this recently (in the Waterstones sale maybe?) and thought it sounded good. Interested to see what you’ll think! Wow! I finished Hollow City and if I had the next book I think I’d have gone straight on to it. You know when you get really invested in a story and then the book ends and you’re like ‘oh, now what?’ I think I’m going to read The Cuckoo Wood by M. Sean Coleman next. It sounds like a really intriguing mystery so hopefully it should be easy to get in to.