A Work in Progress

Sexing the Cherry

It was with a little trepidation that I approached this month's Slaves of Golconda read, Jeanette Winterson's  Sexing the Cherry.  I don't always work well in the abstract; it's generally a struggle for me.  Give me a nice straightforward story any day of the week and I'm happy.  I mean what do I do with a story where Winterson "fuses history, fairy tale, and metafiction into a fruit...of memorably startling flavor" (so says the NYT)?  I must say that in this case I was pleasantly surprised.  It was all so wonderfully over the top, completely outrageous (at least that's how it felt when reading it) that it was sort of thrilling to read something so different than what I'm normally used to.  What Winterson does with language is marvellous, but what I liked most were the visual images she created.  It was at times completely far fetched, but at the same time so totally vivid I found myself lost in the story (but in a good way).  Where does someone get the imagination to do that?

This is a very slim novel, but chock full of action and imagery.  In 1630 an infant boy is fished out of the Thames River by the Dog Woman.  It seems only fitting that he should have an appropriate name but neither Thames nor Nile will do.  So Jordan it is.  Now the Dog Woman once had a name, but she's forgotten it.  She's an interesting character, a giantess who breeds dogs (thus her name) and can outweigh and unseat Elephants (I imagined an elephant sitting on a seesaw type seat and when the Dog Woman sat down on the opposite end the elephant flew into the air) and has pox marks on her face so large that they provide a home for fleas.  She's a lusty character full of life and a die-hard Royalist (must say here I felt a bit bad for the Puritans).  As disturbing as her appearance may be, don't be fooled, she's a mother with a mother's caring heart. 

Jordan and the Dog Woman take turns narrating the story, which is like one of those Chinese boxes that folds in on itself and can be opened and righted once again.  The Dog Woman is firmly grounded in the reality of the 17th century set against a background of the tumultuous and bloody Civil War, while Jordan travels through time and space telling us of the fanciful and fantastic.  The story really is part historical fiction, and fairy tale, as well as a meditation on time and space with a fair amount of philosophy thrown in as well.  Winterson is obviously interested in accomplishing a variety of things, and no doubt this can be read from various viewpoints and on different levels-- including ecological and feminist (and maybe even a few others).  I imagine this must be a veritable feast for a literary critic or an English major, but since I'm neither I just enjoyed the colorful ride and will leave the peeling back of layers to the professionals.

Some of the scenes really stuck me and I think will stick with me for some time to come.  Jordan attends a dinner party where the family wouldn't allow their feet to touch the floor.  So looking through doors you see no floors but bottomless pits with furniture "suspended on racks from the ceiling." 

"To dine here is a great curiosity, for the visitor must sit in a gilded chair and allow himself to be winched up to join his place setting.  He comes last, the householders already seated and making merry, swinging their feet over the abyss where crocodiles live.  Everyone who dines has a multiplicity of glasses and cutlery lest some should be dropped accidentally.  Whatever food is left over at the end of the meal is scraped into the pit, from whence a fearful crunching can be heard."

There is also a city that floats above in the clouds.

"The city, being freed from the laws of gravity, began to drift upwards for some 200 miles, until it was out of the earth's atmosphere.  It lay for a while above Africa and then began to circle the earth at leisure, never in one place for long, but in other respects like some off-shore island.  The citizens had enormous poles made to push themselves off from stars or meteors, and in this way used their town as a raft to travel where they wanted.  They did not know it, but when every person pushed with their pole, they created a vacuum that sucked up anything in its wake.  The force was very powerful, and all over the world there are stories of entire picnics that have disappeared from checked tablecloths, and small children who have never been seen again."

As you can see this is a very playful story and in many instances laugh out loud funny.  It's not a book that's really very easy to write about as there is simply too much going on.  If you're still curious to know more, however check out the excellent posts here to get some other perspectives.  If you've read Sexing the Cherry please feel free to join our discussion.  I think I may have to check out Jeannette Winterson's other work.  

Is anybody out there?

A reader kindly sent me an email to let me know she is having problems accessing my blog.  I also have been noticing some bugs in the past few days.  Is anyone out there?  Or are you having problems here, too?  Or maybe it's just a quiet weekend and everyone's off doing other things?  Thanks for any feedback.

Borrowed, Mooched or Otherwise Free

 

I think my Bookmooch slump has passed.  It took a little searching around in their database, but I found some really good books to mooch.  I've received most of them, but I still have a few in the mail to look forward to receiving.  My finds:

Peter Lovesey's Waxwork - I've read and enjoyed him before.  This is an earlier book (also a Silver Dagger Award winner), which is a Victorian pastiche.  Ruth Rendell is quoted as saying "Quite the best novel of detection I have read for a long time."  

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud - I've heard of Malamud, but I had never considered reading his work until reading Dorothy's post. 

August Folly by Angela Thirkell - While this is not one of the nice Moyer Bell editions, it seems some of the Bersetshire novels are hard to come by, so I won't complain. I'm hoping to read a few Thirkell novels this year.

Fruitful Bodies by Morag Joss - This is a Sara Selkirk mystery, which is set inBath, England.  I've been accumulating her books (both the Sara Selkirk novels as well as some of her stand-alones) for a while, so I really do need to get around to reading her...

The Salt Letters by Christine Balint - I've had this one on my radar for a long time.  It is a slim little novel about a young woman's journey from "refined England to the wilds of Australia in 1854".  I love books about sea voyages.

C.J. Sansom's Winter in Madrid  is a book I received as a review copy.  I know one reader who really loved this book and another who didn't, so I will be curious to see how it pans out for me.  I love thrillers in general, but I don't read many stories involving espionage.  This is set in 1940 in Franco's Spain.  I've read that some readers call this one a slow starter, but so far I've found it an absorbing read and I'm nearly 60 pages in.  It's a long one, though, over 500 pages, so I'll let you know how it goes.  

I've mentioned how much I like Richmal Crompton and that I was hoping to borrow some of her out-of-print works.  So far I've managed to get one of the titles I requested from ILL.  I've got The Inheritor, which is "a simple tale of village life concerning in particular various branches of the Radlett family."  I believe this was her last published book, which was released in 1960.

I am not doing very well with my library's adult Winter reading program.  One more day left of January and I've only finished one book so far.  Can I read four in Februrary?  I seem to be determined to check out as many library books as I can to assure I have good choices in any case.  I forgot to add Sarah Rayne's The Death Chamber to my photo, but it is my current library read.  It's a nice psychological thriller (with a sub title that reads "There can be a fate worse than death") that looks to be a nice page-turner type read.        

I have a disgustingly large pile of library books already, and to them I've also added Bill Bryson's Shakespeare: The World as Stage and Agnes Humbert's Résistance: A Woman's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France.  I've heard excellent things about both books.  

Lots to keep me busy this weekend.

Astrid and Veronika

So after all is said and done, and despite dragging my feet I've finished reading Linda Olsson's Astrid & Veronika (and I returned it late to the library, too, oops).  There is a lot to like about this book, but to be honest I'm left feeling a little bit ambivalent about it.  I really liked the stories within the story, but for some reason I never could really warm up to either Astrid or Veronika.  Certainly it's okay to feel separate from the characters in a book, but the author tries to convey such a warm feeling of friendship between the two, my emotional distance sort of took away from the pleasure of reading it.  The story is also a very touchy-feely sort of story, and I'm not at all that sort of person, so maybe I simply had problems identifying with either of the characters.

Astrid & Veronika is the story of a life altering friendship between a young woman at the beginning of her life and an older woman at the end of hers.  When Veronika arrives in Sweden from New Zealand she's an emotional wreck.  One snowy night she takes up residence in a house in the countryside where she hopes to work on the book she's writing.  Across the way her only neighbor is a reclusive widow known in the little village as a 'witch' (a stereotype unearned in this situation it seemed to me).  At first the house seems empty.  No lights show, though the kitchen window is occasionally open a crack.  Veronika takes to waving, certain her neighbor is inside watching when she passes by on her daily walks.

The ice is broken when Veronika is taken ill and Astrid notices her absence.  When Astrid checks on her and cooks her a nourishing meal, a tentative friendship is formed.  As they spend more and more time together, their friendship deepens and they share their histories and secrets, which are at times painful and shocking, but neither woman is ever critical of the other.  The novel moves back and forth in time as each character shares her story. 

I felt a little bit that the contemporary Astrid and Veronika were not fleshed out enough perhaps to carry the heavy pasts they were burdened with.  An author will often leave it up to the reader to fill in gaps, but I wouldn't have minded knowing a little more about the motivations behind some of the actions that occurred in the past.  Part of my dissatisfaction was wanting to know more and feeling that there were too many unanswered questions.  That said, Olsson writes with a nice clear prose, and at times her descriptive passages are lush and elegant, which is just what I expect the Swedish countryside to be like.  The cover is very evocative and fits well with the story.  The changing seasons are captured gorgeously and yes, those strawberries pop up all throughout the book.

I think I'm in the minority when it comes to not being completely sold on this novel.  While it wasn't a perfect read for me, there were things that did work and were enjoyable.  It took me a while to catch on that Veronika was also Swedish and was returning home (for some reason I had it in my mind that she was from New Zealand).  Linda Olsson, the author, was born in Sweden but now lives in New Zealand.  She wrote the book in English, and I thought it interesting that when it was published in Sweden she tried to do the translation but found she was rewriting the book rather than translating it.  In the end someone else did the translation.  Olsson has a new book coming out in February called Sonata for Miriam.   

Elizabeth Jane Howard's Slipstream

I've written about Elizabeth Jane Howard's Slipstream multiple times, so I imagine you already know how much I enjoyed reading her memoir.  She writes with such brutal honesty that it was almost painful going at times, though she also tells her story in an easygoing and chatty manner that I found completely absorbing as well.  Since this is a memoir and not a biography, she talks more about her life experiences, particularly her relationships, which were many and varied, than about her writing, though she does touch on her books in a general sort of way. 

It's hard to sum up a life as full as Elizabeth Jane Howard's.  I'm not sure I even want to try as she tells her own story so much better than I ever could here in this little space.  I will mention a few interesting things about her, however.  Throughout the book EJH is extremely self-deprecating, and she talks often of her low self-esteem.  As she was taught at home she felt uneducated or at least undereducated.  She grew up in a household where boys were prized over girls, and it wasn't nice or proper to draw attention to oneself. For a long time she didn't believe she was attractive and in any case felt it was wrong to accept compliments.  All this, of course, set her up for a lifetime of difficulties, which only much later were worked out with the aid of psychotherapy.  I think what she wanted most was to find true love and happiness, which proved to be elusive.

She spent the war years trying her hand at acting in the theater and modelling with marginal success.  Her life seemed very bohemian as she moved from place to place living at times hand to mouth.  She was to marry three times.  Her first marriage at the age of only nineteen to Peter Scott (the son of the Arctic Explorer) produced one daughter but ended in divorce.  Peter Scott was much older and Jane (as she was called) was extremely immature and naive.  She went through a series of unsatisfying relationships (men seemed to fall at her feet) before a disastrous second marriage, which didn't last long (and EJH doesn't waste many pages on).  It was her marriage to author Kingsley Amis that was so notable and tempestuous.  She fell in love with him when both she and Amis were married to other people.  The feelings were deep and mutual and the marriage lasted eighteen years, though the relationship increasingly became filled with animosity towards the end.  I've never read anything by Kingsley Amis, but he sounds like he was not only surly but selfish and self-absorbed.  And mean!  It's no wonder that the marriage ended in divorce, too. 

No worries, I've not told you anything more than you would read on the jacket description or discover from looking at the photo inserts.  I think EJH has lived an amazing life, despite the rough times she went through.  Although every aspect of this memoir was to me fascinating, I especially loved the references to literary life in the second half of the 20th century.  She knew and interacted with so many famous authors--this book is a who's who of the literary world during that period.  She worked for several publishers, wrote for magazines, organized literary events, did radio and TV.  She also wrote book reviews and I do want to share one quote as I agree with what she has to say:

"I reviewed books for Queen in tandem with finishing my novel.  I was working under Francis Wyndham who was the literary editor.  He was a very easy boss and gave me complete freedom to choose what I reviewed.  It was overwhelming. The limited space I had meant that I couldn't review more than three or four books per issue, yet I was supposed to cover everything readers might want to read.  I'd go to the office every week or so to look through and choose books to take home.  I read far more than I reviewed, but it was impossible to keep up with the steady stream of new publications.  I never reviewed a book without having read all of it.  I worked on the principle that there was little point in writing about a book I thought bad--it would be like telling people how not to get to the post office.  Reviewing is not literary criticism: a reviewer is there to tell people what they might like to read and why."

Perhaps her novel writing has been the one area in her life that she has approached with unerring determination that has brought her success.  Love All is her most recently published work, which was released just last year.  I've been rereading her Cazalet Chronicles and have just started Marking Time, which is the second of four books.  Elizabeth Jane Howard is a really remarkable woman, and I can't recommend her memoir (and her novels!) highly enough.

In case you're curious, I also wrote about Slipstream  here, here, here and here (I told you I liked it).              

Frost at Morning

 

Richmal Crompton was one of my great finds last year and Family Roundabout was one of my favorite reads of the entire year.  Unfortunately the Persephone Books edition is the only title (I should say only adult title as I'm sure her Just William books are easy to come by even now) that's still in print.  She actually wrote quite a few novels and short story collections, though I understand it was her Just William books that made her really successful (it seems I read somewhere that she considered William to be her her 'Frankenstein's monster'--a creation that took over her life).  Although I do have one of the William novels on hand (and will get to it eventually), it's her adult fiction that I find so appealing and that she considered her serious work.  She wrote about middle class family life with verve and sensitivity.  I recently finished reading Frost at Morning and enjoyed it immensely.  Her novels are lovely gentle sorts of reads, and I'm sorry they're so hard to come by.

After reading Family Roundabout I had to look for some of her other books.  I managed to find one used from AbeBooks in the UK and another was kindly passed along to me by another reader, so I still have a copy of Linden Rise yet to read.  Used copies of her novels seem to be difficult (and expensive) to find, but I am trying to locate a few more through my library's interlibrary loan service (if I can't own them, I can at least borrow and read them).  As you might expect not many libraries in the US have her books on their shelves, but I might luck out and find a few.  I've submitted requests for three titles, and either I'll get none or all three will come at once!

Frost at Morning was published in 1950, and my copy is a crusty old book with yellowing pages and a cover that's threatening to fall off (it's certainly seen better days), but I'm happy to have it.  It was published by Hutchinson's Universal Book Club, which must have been the UK's version of our Book of the Month Club.  It has a plain red cover and contains not a single descriptive word about the contents, so it was an adventure starting it.  I had no idea what to expect, but I wasn't disappointed. 

Richmal Crompton had a real talent for depicting children in fiction (perhaps why her William books sold so well?).  They're the real stars of the story, at least they are in Frost at Morning.  Philip, Geraldine and Monica join Angela in a small country Vicarage.  The three children are meant to act as companions to Angela, the Vicar's daughter, while their parents are unable to care for them.  Philip's father is off on his honeymoon following his second marriage, Geraldine's mother is having a baby (Geraldine is adopted), and Monica's mother is getting a divorce.  Each situation is unique and each child has a distinct voice, and it's through their eyes you see the failings of the adults in their lives.  The novel follows them as they grow up and cross paths again and again.  It's an entertaining read and I found myself getting involved in each family situation in turn.  The stories are all intermingled and tied together nicely.       

I would love to share one passage with you, but it's a bit long, so I'll describe it instead.  The vicar's wife is an author, who's a wonderful scatterbrained character.  She always in the middle of writing several novels at once, potboilers really, with titles like Tangled Webs and Stony Paths, and Fallen Sheaves.  It's only with the help of her secretary (who also doubles as a governess) that she can even keep the characters and plots straight.  Crompton does a marvellous job of poking gentle fun at her, this 'Bohemian' woman.  Anyway, on impulse she buys this embroidered Chinese shawl that she spots in a shop window that she thinks will "give her poise and serenity", but the fringe is constantly catching on anything and everything and she has to stop to disentangle it.  In the end she grabs a pair of scissors and cuts off the fringe.  Okay, so when I tell it it doesn't sound at all funny, but trust me, there are parts of the book that are very amusing.  Crompton turns a wry eye on the faults and foibles of her characters.

I wonder how much Richmal modelled any of the characters on herself (I hear authors turn up often in her books).  There is a biography of Richmal available that I'm contemplating ordering (though it is out of print and not very cheap for a used paperback).  I'm curious to read more about her, but it's advertised as a biography of the 'author of the Just William' books.  I'd like to know more about her and less about William, but that might just be a selling point.  Has anyone read it and can recommend it?  Although I'm still fairly new to Richmal Crompton's work, you can check out Simon's post on Richmal, who's also a fan (and notice the nice pile of books by her he owns!), and also  Elaine's post, in case you needed any more urging to pick up one of Richmal's books!  And hopefully you'll be hearing more about her from me, too, if I can get my hands on more of her work.  

New Books

 

That whole free shipping thing that Amazon offers is really sort of dangerous.  They're smart to make it free only after spending $25 (from a marketing standpoint).  If you're buying a paperback you need to buy two or three to take advantage of the offer.  And then if you're like me you can't resist throwing another book into the cart for good measure.  So, yes, the top four books are recent Amazon purchases and the bottom book is a review copy I recently mentioned.  The impetus to order anything was a combination of being seduced by those lovely Europa Editions, and a recommendation (via) for a book I'd never heard of that I was pleased to find (am working on borrowing the other great suggestions and so far have one). 

I own some of Penguin's Rough Guides (from the Women Travel series--excellent books!), but I didn't realize they did other kinds of (non travel) Rough Guides.  On first glance The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction (with  a forword by Ian Rankin) looks to be an excellent resource.  It's a compact little reference guide to the best of the best in mysteries and crime fiction.  There are fifteen different categories ranging from "The Golden Age" to "Organized Crime" to "Foreign Bloodshed".  I expect to find some new authors between these pages and only wish it was an even bigger book (though I shouldn't be so greedy).

It was hard deciding on just a couple of Europa Editions titles, but I finally narrowed it down to Amélie Northomb's Tokyo Fiancée, a novel of modern relationships, and Christa Wolf's One Day a Year, 1960-2000, which is a book of essays.  I'm especially curious about the Wolf book.  According to the blurb she is the "best-known author to emerge from East Germany and one of contemporary literature's most important living authors."  Wolf was asked by a Russian newspaper to describe one day (the 27th of September) "as precisely as possible".  This should be an interesting look behind the Iron Curtain over the course of forty years.     

The Sleeping and the Dead by Ann Cleeves was bought purely on a whim.  It's about a body discovered in a lake thirty years after it was dumped there.   I'm always interested in mysteries where the crime occurred in the past, as there is usually a nice historical slant to them.  It's published by Bloody Brits Press, which is an entirely new to me publisher.  I wonder what other good titles they publish and will be checking out their website to find out.

The last book, The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littell I've already mentioned.  I had to share a photo--it's quite a hefty book.  It includes a glossary and list of German military ranks and their American equivalents in the back.  I'd be curious to read some reviews of it before diving in--it's one I think may take a while to get through.  It's been called controversial and provocative, so I'll have to wait for the right moment to pick this one up.    

1000 More Books

Of course by now you've seen the Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read series?   I'm alternately intrigued and depressed by these lists.  Intrigued to see what books they consider the ones 'you should read', and depressed as I seem to be reading all the rest of the books that never made the list!  Out of curiosity I'm lining off those I've read.  Does it count if I own a good numbr of these and plan on reading them?  Um, probably not, but maybe this will inspire me to pick them up finally and read them.

Comedy

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
Money by Martin Amis
The Information by Martin Amis
The Bottle Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge
According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes
Augustus Carp, Esq. by Himself: Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man by Henry Howarth Bashford
Molloy by Samuel Beckett
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
Queen Lucia by EF Benson
The Ascent of Rum Doodle by WE Bowman
A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd
The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury
No Bed for Bacon by Caryl Brahms and SJ Simon
Illywhacker by Peter Carey
A Season in Sinji by JL Carr
The Harpole Report by JL Carr
The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
Mister Johnson by Joyce Cary
The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
Just William by Richmal Crompton
The Provincial Lady by EM Delafield
Slouching Towards Kalamazoo by Peter De Vries
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
Jacques the Fatalist and his Master by Denis Diderot
A Fairy Tale of New York by JP Donleavy
The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
Ennui by Maria Edgeworth
Cheese by Willem Elsschot
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Caprice by Ronald Firbank
Bouvard et Pécuchet by Gustave Flaubert
Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn
The Polygots by William Gerhardie
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Brewster's Millions by Richard Greaves (George Barr McCutcheon)
Squire Haggard's Journal by Michael Green
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene
Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith
The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgkins
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal
The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes
Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
The Mighty Walzer Howard by Jacobson
Pictures from an Institution by Randall Jarrell
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
The Castle by Franz Kafka
Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester
L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane (Gil Blas) Alain-René Lesage
Changing Places by David Lodge
Nice Work by David Lodge
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
England, Their England by AG Macdonell
Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie
Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf by David Madsen
Cakes and Ale - Or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard by W Somerset Maugham
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
Puckoon by Spike Milligan
The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills
Charade by John Mortimer
Titmuss Regained by John Mortimer
Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Fireflies by Shiva Naipaul
The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin
La Disparition by Georges Perec
Les Revenentes by Georges Perec
La Vie Mode d'Emploi by Georges Perec
My Search for Warren Harding by Robert Plunkett
A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym
Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau
Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler
Alms for Oblivion by Simon Raven
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
The Westminster Alice by Saki
The Unbearable Bassington by Saki
Hurrah for St Trinian's by Ronald Searle
Great Apes by Will Self
Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe
Blott on the Landscape by Tom Sharpe
Office Politics by Wilfrid Sheed
Belles Lettres Papers: A Novel by Charles Simmons
Moo by Jane Smiley
Topper Takes a Trip by Thorne Smith
The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom by Tobias Smollett
The Adventures of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark
Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark
A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
White Man Falling by Mike Stocks
Handley Cross by RS Surtees
A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
Penrod by Booth Tarkington
The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell
Tropic of Ruislip by Leslie Thomas
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
Venus on the Half-Shell by Kilgore Trout
The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain
The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon
Tono Bungay by HG Wells
Molesworth by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
The Wimbledon Poisoner by Nigel Williams
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson
Something Fresh by PG Wodehouse
Piccadilly Jim by PG Wodehouse
Thank You Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
Heavy Weather by PG Wodehouse
The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse
Joy in the Morning by PG Wodehouse

Crime

The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren
Fantomas by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler
Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
Trent's Last Case by EC Bentley
The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley
The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake
Lady Audley's Secret by Mary E Braddon
The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke
The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
Greenmantle by John Buchan
The Asphalt Jungle by WR Burnett
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain
Double Indemnity by James M Cain
True History of the Ned Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase
The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad
Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Poetic Justice by Amanda Cross
The Ipcress File by Len Deighton
Last Seen Wearing by Colin Dexter
The Remorseful Day by Colin Dexter
Ratking by Michael Dibdin
Dead Lagoon by Michael Dibdin
Dirty Tricks by Michael Dibdin
A Rich Full Death by Michael Dibdin
Vendetta by Michael Dibdin
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Pledge by Friedrich Durrenmatt
The Crime of Father Amado by José Maria de Eça de Queiroz
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
LA Confidential by James Ellroy
The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy
A Quiet Belief in Angels by RJ Ellory
Sanctuary by William Faulkner
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
Goldfinger by Ian Fleming
You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene
The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
The Third Man by Graham Greene
A Time to Kill by John Grisham
The King of Torts by John Grisham
Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton
The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Fatherland by Robert Harris
Black Sunday by Thomas Harris
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V Higgins
Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Bones and Silence by Reginald Hill
A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles
Silence of the Grave by Arnadur Indridason
Death at the President's Lodging by Michael Innes
Cover Her Face by PD James
A Taste for Death by PD James
Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman
Misery by Stephen King
Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The Constant Gardener by John le Carre
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
52 Pick-up by Elmore Leonard
Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
Cop Hater by Ed McBain
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
Sidetracked by Henning Mankell
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
The Great Impersonation by E Phillips Oppenheim
The Strange Borders of Palace Crescent by E Phillips Oppenheim
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Toxic Shock by Sara Paretsky
Blacklist by Sara Paretsky
Nineteen Seventy Four by David Peace
Nineteen Seventy Seven by David Peace
The Big Blowdown by George Pelecanos
Hard Revolution by George Pelecanos
Lush Life by Richard Price
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
V by Thomas Pynchon
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Black and Blue by Ian Rankin
The Hanging Gardens by Ian Rankin
Exit Music by Ian Rankin
Judgment in Stone by Ruth Rendell
Live Flesh by Ruth Rendell
Dissolution by CJ Sansom
Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers
Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Le Sayers
The Madman of Bergerac by Georges Simenon
The Blue Room by Georges Simenon
The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
The Getaway by Jim Thompson
Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine
A Fatal inversion by Barbara Vine
King Solomon's Carpet by Barbara Vine
The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Native Son by Richard Wright
Therese Raquin by Emile Zola

Family and Self

The Face of Another by Kobo Abe
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
Epileptic by David B
Room Temperature by Nicholson Baker
Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac
Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac
The Crow Road by Iain Banks
The L Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett
A Legacy by Sybille Bedford
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett
G by John Berger
Extinction by Thomas Bernhard
Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch
Evelina by Fanny Burney
The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
The Sound of my Voice by Ron Butlin
The Outsider by Albert Camus
Wise Children by Angela Carter
The Professor's House by Willa Cather
The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Les Enfants Terrible by Jean Cocteau
The Vagabond by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
Manservant and Maidservant by Ivy Compton-Burnett
Being Dead by Jim Crace
Quarantine by Jim Crace
The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
Roxana by Daniel Defoe
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
My New York Diary by Julie Doucet
The Millstone by Margaret Drabble
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
Silence by Shusaku Endo
The Gathering by Anne Enright
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
Howards End by EM Forster
Spies by Michael Frayn
Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud
The Man of Property by John Galsworthy
Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Immoralist by Andre Gide
The Vatican Cellars by Andre Gide
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
The Shrimp and the Anemone by LP Hartley
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
Narziss and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
The Three Paradoxes by Paul Hornschemeier
Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The Ambassadors by Henry James
Washington Square by Henry James
The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins
The Unfortunates by BS Johnson
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Ulysses by James Joyce
Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
Memet my Hawk by Yasar Kemal
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
How Green was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
Martin Eden by Jack London
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
The Assistant by Bernard Malamud
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
The Chateau by William Maxwell
The Rector's Daughter by FM Mayor
The Ordeal of Richard Feverek by George Meredith
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
Sour Sweet by Timothy Mo
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Who Do You Think You Are? by Alice Munro
The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul
At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness by Kezaburo Oe
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
The Good Companions by JB Priestley
The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx
Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
A Married Man by Piers Paul Read
Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson
The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney by Henry Handel Richardson
Call it Sleep by Henry Roth
Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Unless by Carol Shields
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
The Three Sisters by May Sinclair
The Family Moskat or The Manor or The Estate by Isaac Bashevis Singer
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield
Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
Angel by Elizabeth Taylor
Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson
The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
Death in Summer by William Trevor
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Peace in War by Miguel de Unamuno
The Rabbit Omnibus by John Updike
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Jimmy Corrigan, The Smarest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
Morvern Callar by Alan Warner
The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells
The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
Frost in May by Antonia White
The Tree of Man by Patrick White
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
I'll Go to Bed at Noon by Gerard Woodward
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

Love

Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier
Dom Casmurro Joaquim by Maria Machado de Assis
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Emma by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
The Garden of the Finzi-Cortinis by Giorgio Bassani
Love for Lydia by HE Bates
More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow
Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Vilette by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Look At Me by Anita Brookner
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
Possession by AS Byatt
Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
A Month in the Country by JL Carr
My Antonia by Willa Cather
A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
Claudine a l'ecole by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
Cheri by Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette
Victory: An Island Tale by Joseph Conrad
The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette
The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
Adam Bede by George Eliot
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald
The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
A Room with a View by EM Forster
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico
Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell
Strait is the Gate by Andre Gide
Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Living by Henry Green
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
The Go-Between by LP Hartley
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer
Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer
The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst
Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest by WH Hudson
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
Beauty and Saddness by Yasunari Kawabata
The Far Pavillions by Mary Margaret Kaye
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
Moon over Africa by Pamela Kent
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre-Ambroise-Francois Choderlos de Laclos
Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence
The Rainbow by DH Lawrence
Women in Love by DH Lawrence
The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann
The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
Zami by Audre Lorde
Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
Samarkand by Amin Maalouf
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini
A Heart So White by Javier Marias
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
So Long, See you Tomorrow by William Maxwell
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Child in Time by Ian McEwan
The Egoist by George Meredith
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Lolita, or the Confessions of a White Widowed Male by Vladimir Nabokov
The Painter of Signs by RK Narayan
Delta of Venus by Anais Nin
All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Maurice Guest by Henry Handel Richardson
Pamela by Samuel Richardson
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
Ali and Nino by Kurban Said
Light Years by James Salter
A Sport and a Passtime by James Salter
The Reader by Benhardq Schlink
The Reluctant Orphan by Aara Seale
Love Story by Eric Segal
Enemies, a Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer
At Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
Waterland by Graham Swift
Diary of a Mad Old Man by Junichiro Tanizaki
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
First Love by Ivan Turgenev
Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
The Graduate by Charles Webb
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
East Lynne by Ellen Wood
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Non-Stop by Brian W Aldiss
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster
The Drowned World by JG Ballard
Crash by JG Ballard
Millennium People by JG Ballard
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
Weaveworld by Clive Barker
Darkmans by Nicola Barker
The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter
Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
Vathek by William Beckford
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite
Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown
Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Coming Race by EGEL Bulwer-Lytton
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The End of the World News by Anthony Burgess
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Erewhon by Samuel Butler
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
The Influence by Ramsey Campbell
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Man who was Thursday by GK Chesterton
Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Hello Summer, Goodbye by Michael G Coney
Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland
House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski
Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq
The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R Delaney
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
Camp Concentration by Thomas M Disch
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Under the Skin by Michel Faber
The Magus by John Fowles
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Red Shift by Alan Garner
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Light by M John Harrison
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein
Dune by Frank L Herbert
The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
Atomised by Michel Houellebecq
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Children of Men by PD James
After London; or, Wild England by Richard Jefferies
Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Shining by Stephen King
The Victorian Chaise-longue by Marghanita Laski
Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
The Earthsea Series by Ursula Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing
The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
The Monk by Matthew Lewis
A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
The Night Sessions by Ken Macleod
Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin
The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Ascent by Jed Mercurio
The Scar by China Mieville
Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller Jr
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Mother London by Michael Moorcock
News from Nowhere by William Morris
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Ada or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Ringworld by Larry Niven
Vurt by Jeff Noon
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
The Famished Road by Ben Okri
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth
A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys
The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett
The Prestige by Christopher Priest
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling
Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
The Female Man by Joanna Russ
Air by Geoff Ryman
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Blindness by Jose Saramago
How the Dead Live by Will Self
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Insult by Rupert Thomson
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
Institute Benjamenta by Robert Walser
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Affinity by Sarah Waters
The Time Machine by HG Wells
The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
The Sword in the Stone by TH White
The Old Men at the Zoo by Angus Wilson
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

State of the Nation

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe
London Fields by Martin Amis
Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
La Comedie Humaine by Honore de Balzac
They Were Counted by Miklos Banffy
A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave by Aphra Behn
Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett
The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
Room at the Top by John Braine
A Dry White Season by Andre Brink
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
The Virgin in the Garden by AS Byatt
Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell
The Plague by Albert Camus
The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier
What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe
Disgrace by JM Coetzee
Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coeztee
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Underworld by Don DeLillo
White Noise by Don DeLillo
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Bleak House by Charles Dickens - Am reading this one now.
Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Little Dorritt by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Sybil or The Two Nations by Benjamin Disraeli
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
The Book of Daniel by EL Doctorow
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
USA by John Dos Passos
Sister Carrie by Theodor Dreiser
Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Silas Marner by George Eliot
The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
Effi Briest by Theodore Fontane
Independence Day by Richard Ford
A Passage to India by EM Forster
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Recognitions by William Gaddis
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide
The Odd Women by George Gissing
New Grub Street by George Gissing
July's People by Nadine Gordimer
Mother by Maxim Gorky
Lanark by Alastair Gray
Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
South Riding by Winifred Holtby
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
Chronicle in Stone by Ismael Kadare
How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman
The Leopard by Giuseppi di Lampedusa
A Girl in Winter by Philip Larkin
Passing by Nella Larsen
The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Amongst Women by John McGahern
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
Of Love & Hunger by Julian Maclaren-Ross
Remembering Babylon by David Malouf
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Time of Indifference by Alberto Moravia
A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul
McTeague by Frank Norris
Personality by Andrew O'Hagan
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Ragazzi Pier by Paolo Pasolini
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
The Moon and the Bonfire by Cesare Pavese
GB84 by David Peace
Headlong Hall by Thomas Love Peacock
Afternoon Men by Anthony Powell
Vineland by Thomas Pynchon
The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Shame by Salman Rushdie
To Each his Own by Leonardo Sciascia
Staying On by Paul Scott
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon
God's Bit of Wood by Ousmane Sembene
The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge
Richshaw Boy by Lao She
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovtich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
This Sporting Life by David Storey
The Red Room by August Stringberg
The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Couples by John Updike
Z by Vassilis Vassilikos
Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Germinal by Emile Zola
La Bete Humaine by Emile Zola

War and Travel

Silver Stallion by Junghyo Ahn
Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington
Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge
Darkness Falls from the Air by Nigel Balchin
Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard
Regeneration by Pat Barker
A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
Fair Stood the Wind for France by HE Bates
Carrie's War by Nina Bawden
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
An Ice-Cream War by William Boyd
When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Auto-da-Fe by Elias Canetti
One of Ours by Willa Cather
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Monkey by Wu Ch'eng-en
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
Sharpe's Eagle by Bernard Cornwell
The History of Pompey the Little by Francis Coventry
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Bomber by Len Deighton
Deliverance by James Dickey
Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos
South Wind by Norman Douglas
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Justine by Lawrence Durrell
The Bamboo Bed by William Eastlake
The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford
The African Queen by CS Forester
The Ship by CS Forester
Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The Beach by Alex Garland
To The Ends of the Earth trilogy by William Golding
Asterix the Gaul by Rene Goscinny
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
Count Belisarius by Robert Graves
Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman
De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage
King Solomon's Mines by H Rider Haggard
She: A History of Adventure by H Rider Haggard
The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
Covenant with Death by John Harris
Enigma by Robert Harris
The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
Rasselas by Samuel Johnson
From Here to Eternity by James Jones
Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
Confederates by Thomas Keneally
Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally
Day by AL Kennedy
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
La Condition Humaine by Andre Malraux
Fortunes of War by Olivia Manning
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Children of the New Forest by Frederick Marryat
Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville
Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener
The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat
History by Elsa Morante
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Burmese Days by George Orwell
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell
The Soldier's Art by Anthony Powell
The Military Philosophers by Anthony Powell
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolp Erich Raspe
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
The Crab with the Golden Claws by Georges Remi Herge
Tintin in Tibet by Georges Remi Herge
The Castafiore Emerald by Georges Remi Herge
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by Joao Guimaraes Rosa
Sacaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathon Safran Foer
The Hunters by James Salter
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald
Austerlitz by WG Sebald
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
Maus by Art Spiegelman
The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal
Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson
A Sentimental Journey by Lawrence Sterne
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone
Sophie's Choice by William Styron
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
Williwaw by Gore Vidal
Candide by Voltaire
Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Put Out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh
Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh
The Island of Dr Moreau by HG Wells
The Machine-Gunners by Robert Westall
Voss by Patrick White
The Virginian by Owen Wister
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
The Debacle by Emile Zola

I feel guilty lining a few off as it has been so long ago that I read the books, and in other cases I may have read a few that I didn't line off as I don't properly remember them.  In more than a few instances I've read an author, just not the book they happened to select.  My guilt over having read so few won't be long lasting, even if most of the books I read over the course of the year don't ever make one of these lists, I still think that in most cases they are worthy reads nonetheless.  

Reading Notes

As I've finished a few books I decided to start reading Allgra Goodman's Kaaterskill Falls, which is one of those books I've been 'meaning to read' for ages and have decided to try and get to this year.  I've only managed the first chapter so far, but it's easily caught my interest, so I'm looking forward to getting farther into it.  It's set in the mid-1970s in upstate New York in the town of Kaaterskill Falls, where many families come to spend their summer holidays.  It should be an interesting peek into a closed Orthodox Jewish community.  The book was a finalist for the National Book Award and was listed as a New York Times Notable Book.  It should also be a nice change of pace from my usual book choices.

This weekend I'll also be starting the next Slaves of Golconda read, Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry.  It's a slim novel, though I hope I haven't left it too late as we'll be discussing it next weekend.  You're welcome to join us, and we even have a new forum to hold our discussions.  

I wasn't able to participate in Cornflower's last group book read of Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons, but I was interested to read Cornflower's post and the accompanying comments.  I've never read Anne Tyler and had bought the book in expectation of reading it, but it just didn't work out.  I often feel there are all sorts of gaps in my reading, and not having read a single Anne Tyler is sort of a gaping hole (I still really hope to read more American Lit this year).  Eventually I will rectify that, however, I am going to try and make a concerted effort to read Cornflower's next book choice, Alain Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes.  This is another book I've had for years, but never found the time to pick it up.  I've been neglectful of reading any classics so far this year (sorry Mr. Dickens--I do promise to get back to Bleak House soon--you somehow got bumped as my bus book...), so perhaps this will be just the thing to get back to the classics.

One more book.  Since I've been so caught up for the last week in Elizabeth Jane Howard's Slipstream, I think it's time to continue on with volume two of the Cazalet Chronicles, Marking Time.  For some reason I am also in the mood for something set in WWII, and this one opens in 1939.  It will be interesting to compare her fiction to her biography once again now that I've pretty much finished her memoir.

Happy weekend reading everyone.                

Elizabeth Jane Howard and Elizabeth Taylor

You know the book you're reading is really good when you nearly miss your bus, as your nose is so firmly planted in its pages.  That's what happened to me tonight.  I was waiting in the little shelter in front of the university, and despite the cold, complete with gloves I was reading and turning pages.  I was sure I had plenty of time before I next needed to look up and check the street for my bus, when all of a sudden she came whizzing by and stopped at the last moment--no doubt she spotted me standing there shivering.  I'm lucky I have a regular driver who's nice enough to stop, as there are plenty of other drivers who wouldn't have bothered to slow down and look (and I wasn't standing out in clear sight).

I'm nearly finished with Elizabeth Jane Howard's memoir, Slipstream, and hope to finally finish it this weekend.  I've really been enjoying it.  I especially like her many references to other authors of the period, with whom she interacted.  Today I read this wonderful passage about another favorite author, Elizabeth Taylor.

"Every week, I had to review three or four novels straight to camera--no autocue--with the floor manager holding up his fingers to show me how many minutes, or seconds, I had left.  I also interviewed one author for each programme, and it was there that I met Elizabeth Taylor whose new novel, In a Summer Season, was just out.  Naturally, I'd read it before the interview, and had prepared about twenty questions to ask its author.  The novel was of a kind that at the time you enjoy very much, and afterwards still find yourself impressed by.  It had such ease, such simplicity, and was so deliciously funny and sharp in its perception.  Her economy of expression reminded me of Austen with whom far too many novelists are carlessly compared, but here it seemed really apposite.  I looked forward to the interview with confidence and interest." 

"Elizabeth sat quietly opposite me, her large, extremely beautiful hazel eyes fixed attentively on me each time I asked her a question, to which she answered either yes or no.  In less than a minute I had none left.  I hadn't the sense to realize that my questions had to be framed in such a way that they couldn't be dealt with by monosyllables, and there were five more minutes to fill.  Later we sat under fluorescent lighting at a Formica table with cardboard cups of rotten grey instant coffee and her shyness remained impenetrable.  After that I read everything she'd written and, much later, got to know and love her, but then it was all courtesy and embarrassment."

Isn't that a great story?  Of course you know which Elizabeth Taylor novel I plan on reading next now, don't you?  In case you're wondering what In a Summer Season is about, I have an older Virago copy, and the blurb reads:

"Kate Heron is a wealthy, attractive widow who lives with her son, her daughter, and her aunt Ethel in their early Victorian house outside London.  She meets and marries Dermot.  Ten years her junior, he is charming and feckless.  Their relationship is special--strong enough to withstand their neighbors's disapproval, but an enemy grows within which threatens to tear the marriage apart.  In a moving and powerful climax Elizabeth Taylor reveals both the tragic and the piercingly funny components of human loving.  This is one of Taylor's most subtle and satisfying novels, bright with the author's acute sensibilities." 

Hmm.  It's been ages since I've picked up a Virago to read.