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Mar 20, 20191 min read
669. E. M. Forster - A Room With A View
So pissed off with my new kindle (see 667) that I will read anything in paper rather than spend money with Amazon. But I can’t get on...
Dec 22, 20181 min read
646. Elena Ferrante - The Story Of The Lost Child
The 4th and final novel of the sequence. I never normally read books out of sequence but P had this from the library and we have watched...
Sep 15, 20181 min read
623. John Steinbeck - The Grapes Of Wrath
I had never read this and really enjoyed it, although probably a holiday/beach read. Written with great power, anger and a lot of...
Aug 10, 20171 min read
511. Thomas Hardy - Tess Of The d'Urbervilles
Triggered by 509; these Victorian (or maybe post in Hardy’s case) novelists are so prolix; 450 pages. The plot wasn’t that similar to...
Jul 27, 20171 min read
509. George Eliot - Adam Bede
I have never read this, and enjoyed it, perhaps, more than I expected. Eliot is a heavy themed writer, swinging between good quality...
Jun 11, 20171 min read
496. Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
I had never read this and quite enjoyed it (P, who is more of an Austen fan than me, read it a few days later and didn’t, oddly). Read...
May 16, 20171 min read
487. Kate Atkinson - Behind The Scenes At The Museum
Possibly her first (famous or actual first?) book. Good, but difficult and hard work. The main narrative is a Tristram Shandy like...
May 4, 20171 min read
484. Peter Robinson - When The Music's Over
The new Banks novel, based (topically) on Jimmy Saville (the newly promoted Banks investigates and Winsome) and grooming white working...
Apr 29, 20171 min read
483. Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies
A strange book, based among the poor working and criminal class in Modern Cork city. Couldn’t really work out the genre; crimes, but no...
Dec 27, 20161 min read
456. Robert Ford & Matthew Goodwin - Revolt On The Right
This is by a university academic about the rise of UKIP. Full of (to me) uninteresting graphs, but the basic narrative was quite...
Oct 3, 20161 min read
435. John Braine - Room At The Top
A follow on from Lucky Jim. Interesting these post-war working class boys (if the authors really were) who are interested in different...
Sep 8, 20161 min read
428. Paul Scott - The Towers Of Silence
Barbie now comes into focus. The whole thing is quite brilliant and I am amazed that he is not better known as a writer, and how long it...
Jun 7, 20161 min read
408. Charles Dickens - David Copperfield
I always try to take one big, difficult book on holiday, and am not a fan of Dickens, but persevere. Fairly typical of what I dislike...
Mar 19, 20161 min read
385. Elizabeth Gaskell - North And South
Another one from Bristol. I had read this years ago. Found it quite hard going; she doesn’t write very fluently about people so the...
Feb 27, 20161 min read
380. John Le Carré - The Night Manager
Bought this, slightly conned by Waterstones’ promotion, as it is being serialised on the TV. Don’t think I have read a Le Carré since...
Feb 17, 20161 min read
378. Jessie Burton - The Miniaturist
This is very good; totally different, potentially difficult but beautifully written and so easy to read. Set in late 17th century...
Nov 27, 20151 min read
357. Émile Zola - Nana
Didn’t plan to read another Zola, but finished no.356 unexpectedly in bed and needed something else to read. Zola is a terribly prolix...
Nov 20, 20151 min read
356. Émile Zola - L'Assommoir
This is a very grim book, in the vein of 'La Terre', but set amongst the Parisian working class. The central figure is Gervaise, who has...
Aug 25, 20151 min read
332. Kate Atkinson - A God In Ruins
What a wonderful title! And a wonderful book, possibly highlight of the year so far. The story of a family, largely a man, spanning the...
Jun 9, 20151 min read
310. Jane Austen - Pride And Prejudice
And now for something completely different, Paddy’s aeroplane reading, rather classier than mine. I haven’t read this for years and my...