The List

1. Lucky Jim Amis 18/7/10
2. A Handmaid’s Tale Attwood 19/8/10
3. Pride and Prejudice Austen* 28/12/10
4. Fahrenheit 451 Bradbury 5/4/11
5. Jane Eyre Bronte* 17/4/11
6. When I Was Five I Killed Myself Buden 7/5/11
7. Murder on the Orient Express Christie 12/7/10
8. Alchemist Coelho 24/11/10
9. Disgrace Coetzee 27/7/10
10. The Hound of The Baskervilles Conan-Doyle* 19/7/10
11. Heart of Darkness Conrad* 25/10/10
12. A Tale of Two Cities Dickens* 4/4/11
13. Rebecca Du Maurier 22/5/11
14. Count of Monte Cristo Dumas* **/10/11
15. The Little Girl and the Cigarette Duteurtre 24/4/11
16. Birdsong Faulks 2/1/11
17. Mr Midshipman Hornblower Forester 29/7/10
18. Sophie’s World Gaarder **/9/11
19. Tess of the d’Urbervilles Hardy* 15/2/11
20. Confessions of a Justified Sinner Hogg 18/10/10
21. A Thousand Splendid Suns Hosseini 20/6/10
22. A Brave New World Huxley 13/3/11
23. A Prayer for Owen Meaney Irving 17/12/11
24. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Joyce 23/12/10
25. All my friends are superheroes Kaufman 25/6/10
26. On the Road Kerouac 23/1/11
27. The Poisonwood Bible Kingsolver 12/3/11
28. The Unbearable Lightness of Being Kundera 6/2/11
29. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Larrson **/9/10
30. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Le Carre 4/9/10
31. Love in the time of Cholera Marquez 6/6/11
32. Saturday McEwan 5/7/10
33. One Day Nicholls 16/8/10
34. Time Travellers Wife Niffenegger 13/6/10
35. Animal Farm Orwell 4/12/10
36. Gods Behaving Badly Phillips 25/7/10
37. Midnight’s Children Rushdie
38. Catcher in the Rye Salinger 21/7/10
39. The Great Gatsby Scott-Fitzgerald 25/7/10
40. The Lovely Bones Sebold 14/11/10
41. An Equal Music Seth 21/4/11
42. Frankenstein Shelley* 7/11/10
43. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Solzhenitsyn 6/8/10
44. Of Mice and Men Steinbeck 26/12/10
45. Treasure Island Stevenson* 15/8/10
46. A Secret History Tartt 18/3/11
47. War and Peace Tolstoy*
48. Music and Silence Tremain 2/5/11
49. Age of Innocence Wharton 10/4/11
50. Thank you Jeeves Wodehouse 27/4/11

35. Animal Farm Orwell

Again drifting back into the depths of my mind to write this one up... the challenge has been fun, the blogging part I'm pretty rubbish at!

I remember reading 1984 when I was younger, and loving the idea of future society and how it might change. It made me question stupid things in todays world like why there are 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour. I spend hours pondering the idea of a state controlled media, and how a government really could control everything we know in life if they wanted to, and whether or not that is something that we should be scared about - I don't ever remember coming to a satisfactory answer though!

So it was with a lot of hope that I would have a similar experience when I picked up Animal Farm.

The problem was that I knew quite a lot about it already. It's very difficult to pick this book up completely ignorant and to not know all the messages, allegories and morals that are contained.

The story itself is quite a nice allegory of the Soviet system, and is the sort of message that is very easy to put across - particularly to kids in class. When you first explain communism to them, it also amazes me how many of them extol the system as a really good idea, and it is only after you talk them through the problems of ensuring equality that they start to understand. Animal Farm manages that in a very simple and concise way.

I am also a big fan (as I have probably mentioned previously, several times) of stories that show just how easy it is for society to be swept into and along with something that in the cold light of day they would never ever support. Society generally follows a mob mentality, and in Animal Farm Orwell depicts that beautifully as deviancy is frowned upon it is much easier to just follow and conform.

My only slight issue was in how the book ended. Not so much the pigs becoming more human like, but the idea of squinting through the window and being unsure of what they were seeing, but then perhaps that is just my desire for a happy ending!!

8. The Alchemist Coelho

Again I am back to making the mistake of not writing up the blog post until months afterwards,  nearly five months in fact... but at least this time I made some notes, so I won't just be copying and pasting from Wikipedia like my students seem to do when they haven't done their homework! 


I am slightly wary of books that hold such high acclaim and are presented with lists of which famous people are reading it, did you know for instance that Will Smith, Madonna and Obama have all read it (okay so maybe a little wikipedia won't hurt...). In particular what I find difficult is that no-one yet has been able to tell me why they liked it! Is this a book famous for being famous (or perhaps for being read by famous people)? 


And it was with this trepidation that I approached the book... I need not have worried so much! The story itself is a simple journey of a young shepherd who decides to try and follow his prophetic dream. What emerges from the story is the following maxim:

"When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

And yes I know that I could have got that from wikipedia without needing to read the book! But I do like the idea of that simply put you should never give up hope in your dreams, or as my mother would say (and has said many, many times to me) what is for you won't go by you.

I have tried very hard to adopt that idea for myself, and usually fail miserably at the task - particularly when something you want (in my case usually a job) has sailed blithely past without the slightest care for you. Yes I can accept that there is usually something better just around the corner - but how long is it going to take to get here!?!

The story's narrative is fun and I enjoyed both the journey and the little twist at the end. You should read the book, but not because rich and famous people say so, but because I say so!!

28. The Unbearable Lightness of Being Kundera

I am falling behind in the challenge and I think it is going to be very unlikely that I complete it in time. I want to say it is possible to rectify things and turn it all around but every now and then I read a book like this one and suddenly my reading grinds to an almost standstill...

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is just a little too strange for my liking, and I am not sure I really understand what Kundera is trying to do with the story, and that is even with Letts notes alongside it.

I wouldn't recommend this book as something you have to read, in fact I would probably advise you not to read it unless you want to read a bizarre philosophy based quasi-love story...

26. On the Road Kerouac

I think that this book would have been one to read in the 1950s when first published. The excitement and the suggested explicitness is just not as shocking as it once would have been. When in this challenge you have read a book that involves a parakeet in a bizarre sexual death, hearing the two main characters have a couple of women on the go at the same time is not quite what it once would have been!

Kerouac does have a very energetic way of writing that does add suspense to the whole book, but as has happened a lot in many of the books I have read this year it ultimately fails to deliver.

One particular problem for me was the sheer number of characters, that drifted in and out of the travels. For someone like me who wanted to read the book a section at a time, trying to remember who everyone is was just too difficult and too confusing.

By all means it is worth a read, but not one that I would say is really worthy of its continual placing in the top 100 lists.

Half Way Through

So after just over six months I am now halfway through my challenge. It has been tough going, and with Christmas coming up I am struggling to not go into Waterstone's and pick up the latest Matthew Reilly or John Grisham. I am also a little nervous knowing that at least two of the books I have to read are absolutely massive! 


It has however been pretty rewarding and I do feel a sense of achievement now having read a few others that I otherwise would never have bothered with. I have also discovered a couple of writers that I will come back to when this year is over (as well as a couple of writers I will never, ever look at again!!). 


Hopefully over Christmas I will get myself back ahead of the challenge, and also perhaps to finish writing up the two reports still waiting!

The books read:

1 Lucky Jim Amis

2 A Handmaid’s Tale Attwood

7 Murder on the Orient Express Christie

8 Alchemist Coelho

9 Disgrace Coetzee

10 The Hound of The Baskervilles Conan-Doyle*

11 Heart of Darkness Conrad*

17 Mr Midshipman Hornblower Forester

20 Confessions of a Justified Sinner Hogg

21 A Thousand Splendid Suns Hosseini

24 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Joyce

25 All my friends are superheroes Kaufman

29 Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Larrson

30 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Le Carre

32 Saturday McEwan

33 One Day Nicholls

34 Time Travellers Wife Niffenegger

35 Animal Farm Orwell

36 Gods Behaving Badly Phillips

38 Catcher in the Rye Salinger

39 The Great Gatsby Scott-Fitzgerald

40 The Lovely Bones Sebold

42 Frankenstein Shelley*

43 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Solzhenitsyn

45 Treasure Island Stevenson*

24. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Joyce

I remember at school listening to a panel discussion of Lord of the Flies where they pondered and discussed what Golding must have meant when he wrote certain things. In one instance they spent at least twenty minutes discussing what was meant by Golding choosing a black child as second in command to Jack amongst the boys. They settled on the idea that this was to highlight the darkness of man's character and that what came after Jack would be much much worse... what I saw however was that it was more likely that Golding made a decision that he would quite like to have a child who happened to be black!

I have never understood the need in a literary setting to spend so long discussing what may have been meant by an author choosing one word over another, or interpreting the what they must have been inferring by a certain character trait. That is until I read Confessions of a Justified Sinner earlier on this year and again after reading this book.

Quite simply I have absolutely no idea what is going on.

I have spent the last three weeks struggling through hoping that the next chapter will provide some illumination as to why this is regarded as a classic (although I should be grateful that unlike Confessions this at least had chapters). In the end I gave up about half way through and sat with an online version of Spark Notes detailing what the hell was happening and what it meant.

What makes all of this worse is despite all of this I am still not sure what Joyce is trying to tell us in this book. So the story is unclear without a literary guide, and even with it, it makes little sense... One to avoid I feel!

40. The Lovely Bones Sebold

Over the last few years I have read a lot of books that look at the ideas of what happens when you die. I loved the ideas of Albom, in Five People you meet in Heaven or even Brockmeier's the Brief History of the Dead. What Sebold produces here is a very accomplished addition to this genre.

I have always had a bit of problem with the traditional/Christian sense of heaven and what happens when you die as it seems very unwieldy. Sebold however produces a unique way of looking at this - if you want something you can wish for it and it will materialise; if your wishes are similar to other people's then you will see them and if not then not. Simply put everyone's heaven is slightly different.

Coming to terms with death is always something that, for me at least, makes a very interesting story. Sebold produces a very distraught family that all deal with the issue differently, from affairs to guilt to ignorance and belated acceptance. The role of the community and friends is also a very touching detail, and one that adds to a loss for the whole community. 

Rather frustratingly for me though was the section at the end of the book that sees Susie exchange bodies with her school-friend for a moment of passion. I am really not sure what this adds to the story and very nearly ruined a beautifully simplistic story of death and how families deal with a loss - was there any need?!?!

Overall I loved the way in which this was written, and the helplessness of the situation as my father put it was particularly disturbing to someone who has a 14 year old daughter.

29. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Larrson

I made a couple of big mistakes with this book:

1) I have absolutely no notes on what I thought of it, or things that I would like to say in reviewing it
2) I stupidly only put one of the series on my list, despite being warned by the person who bought me the book that I should really put the whole series on there!!

Simply this book is how crime fiction novels should be written - and if you have even a passing interest in picking up crime books from time to time this book is an absolute must! I can tell you the first book I will be reading on the 9th June 2011 is the second in this series!!

Great characterisation, great plot, well developed underlying issues and a beautiful twist towards the end of the book.

PLEASE, PLEASE READ THIS BOOK IF YOU HAVEN"T DONE SO ALREADY!!

42. Frankenstein Shelley

I am not a huge fan of horror or ghost stories and so I suppose it was a bit strange for me to select one of the classic horror novels as one of my 50. In school I read Dracula and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde so I figured I really should read perhaps the most famous of the genre.

I suppose I should start this review with an admission... I always thought Frankenstein was the name of the "monster"! And truthfully I don't really have much more to add to the review.

Shelley has a beautiful style of writing, that really does bring you very close to the anguish that Victor faces after creating his monster. The subsequent dilemma and argument that rages inside Victor's head over the creation of a companion or to perhaps suffer the anger of his creation is beautifully outlined.

I would never regard this as a particularly scary tale, although I suppose in its time it may well have been. What is perhaps more intriguing for me is the warning that Shelley gives out to the reader through Victor's confession to Walton:

"Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the requirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow."

To me this is the true moral of the tale, while striving for greatness remember that you may end up reaping what you sow. A fine warning to all