Sunday Salon: 2013 Reading Resolutions

Time to set my reading and blogging goals for this year. I have been thinking about them a lot over the last few weeks and have some ideas but to be honest, most of the goals that I will be setting this year will be very similar to the ones that I have had in the last couple of years, mainly because these seem to be working for me.

Read 200 books - Last year I read more than 290 books which is the most I have read in a single year, and the year before it was 220. For the last few years, I have set my goal as being 150 books but it seems clear that amount is way below my natural reading level so I have changed it to 200 for this year.

Read 10 books that I owned as at 31 December 2012 - Every year I read less books that I own than come into my house. This is my attempt to try to make sure that I read at least a few that have been on my shelves for a while.

Read more Australian authors - This is one of the goals that I set every year and in the preceding years I would be pleased that I read 10-15. Last year, thanks predominantly to the Australian Women Writer's Challenge, I read more than 40. I am hoping to have another great year focused on Aussie authors this year. In addition to the challenge I just mentioned I am also participating in the Aussie Author challenge, which I will use to focus on male Australian authors and I have chosen to adapt the Historical Fiction challenge so that only Australian historical fiction counts! I am also contemplating trying to read the inaugural Stella Prize shortlist when it is announced in March.

Read some classics - A few years ago I aimed to read Dorothy Dunnett, and didn't manage to even crack open a book, and still haven't in fact. Last year, I said I would read more Dickens and then promptly forgot. This year I am planning to finish Les Miserables, join in the War and Peace readalong that Amy and Iris are running and maybe read Pride and Prejudice seeing as it is coming up to the 200th anniversary of it being published.

Perpetual Challenges - I am aiming to read at least one book for each of the perpetual challenges that I am signed up for like The Pulitzer Project, the Orange Prize Project, and the Complete Booker.  (This is one that I say every year too!

Review more consistently - This is what I have written for the last couple of years "Over the last couple of years I have allowed myself to get very lazy about writing reviews of the books I read. I still start a blog post for every book, but not enough of them see light of day! This year, I am going to try to write at least one review a week, preferably more. Need to get back into the habit. I know that that really isn't many, but I do also want to be a no guilt blogger as well, because at the end of the day blogging is supposed to enrich our lives and be fun and not something that we are slave to." I was better at it last year I think, but there is still room for more consistent reviewing. All of that is still relevant for this year!

Deadline Reading - I want to back off a little from deadline reading whether it be for library due dates, tours, egalley expiry dates and try to be a little organic in my reading in terms of being able to look at my shelf, or the library shelf and have a little more room to just read what I feel like reading! I am not quite sure how to quantify this one, except in terms of how I am feeling, but I will try to! I did halve the number of library books I had out towards the end of last year so I am going to try and be careful not to let the number of books out creep up again. The irony is that often I find having a deadline helps me get to those books that I knew I wanted to read anyway!

So, there you have it! My reading and blogging resolutions for 2013. Have you made blogging resolutions for this year?

Currently Reading

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Unforgettable by Elise K Ackers.

Up Next

Night Music by Jojo Moyes will be my next audiobook and The Wedding Shroud by Elisabeth Storrs (it's the only book I am taking away with me so it will be my takeoff and landing book!)

TSS: Top 10 reads of 2010... and some stats!

One of the hard things at the end of the year is to narrow down your list of reads into those books that you absolutely loved. I have to say though that 2010 was a really good reading year. Normally I might grade three or four books as 5/5 reads but this year I actually had 11! If I have another reading year like that in 2011 then I will be one happy reader/blogger this year. Before I do my list of favourites, here are a few stats about my reading year in 2010 including comments about how I did in terms of my reading resolutions for 2010.

Books Read - 166 (14 more than last year). My goal was 125 so I reached that easily.

Library Books -  (70% of all books read). This is less percentage wise than last year, which I would probably attribute to the ereader I bought late in the year.

Books I Own Read - 49 (of which 11 were books I owned at the start of the year). This means that I read more of my own books than last year, but more of those were new. My goal was 10, so I just managed that!

Books Acquired during 2010 - 125 (TBR pile continues to grow rapidly, and this really, really is getting to be an issue. I really need to read more books that I acquire!)

Books by Australian Authors - 10 which was my goal for the year(this is one stat that I have gone back on this year)

New to me authors - 47 (slightly less than the 50 that I tried for the first time last year)

Best reading months - January and December, when I read 18 books in each month

Worst reading month - April and May when I read only 9 books.

No. of rereads - 4 (very surprised at that one. It's quite unusual for me to reread)

Average Grade - 4.06 which is very slightly down on last year

No. of pages read - 61436

Challenges participated in - 23

My other reading resolutions included reading some Jane Austen, read for my perpetual challenges and reviewing more. I still haven't done any of those, so they might make it onto my list of reading resolutions for this year when I finally get around to writing them!

In terms of genre read, I found it a bit more difficult than usual to collate how many of each type I read because cross genre reads are so much more prevalent in my reading. The one result that did surprise me a little is the amount of romance that I read, because I could have sworn that my romance reading was dropping off at the moment, but apparently not!

Crime - 18 (5 of which could have counted as historical fiction)
Fantasy - 27
Historical Fiction - 37
Romance - 51 (18 contemporary (thank you Robyn Carr again), 3 erotic, 24 historical, 8 paranormal)
Young Adult - 21
Graphic - 5
Non Fiction - 1


Here are the books that I loved so much I gave them 5/5 in the order I read them in. I highly recommend them all:

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss - Patrick Rothfuss takes some familiar tropes of the fantasy genre, but manages to make them fresh and exciting, and I can't wait to read the next book, The Wise Man's Fear which is due out in March 2011.

Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer - I have been reading Heyer in the last couple of years and I have liked them, but this is the first one that I have loved!

The Endless Forest by Sara Donati - This year saw the end of one of my favourite series, and what a conclusion! I loved it! I also read the first book in this series again, Into the Wilderness, as well and absolutely loved it again!)

To Defy a King by Elizabeth Chadwick - This was my most anticipated historical fiction read for this year, and it didn't disappoint! Click here to read a conversation about this book from three of the contributors at Historical Tapestry.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett - This appeared on many must read lists for 2009. I can totally see why!

Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos - Some times you read a book at exactly the right time, and this was one of those books for me. I laughed, I cried, and I closed the book at the end with a huge sigh, a good sigh. This is the second book from this author. I liked the first one a lot, but loved this one. I know the author is working on the third book, but I don't know any more than that. I will be looking out for it.

The Shadowy Horses by Susanna Kearsley - After reading The Winter Sea last year (and still gushing about that book to anyone that will listen) it was going to be a requirement to read more from this author. In the end, I read three more books from her this year. I liked the others a lot, but loved this one!

Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden - This book was apparently part of the curriculum for people who are a bit younger than me. I only had the pleasure of discovering the book in 2010. I am glad that I read the book before I saw the movie.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis - This book was recommended to me years ago. I bought it, and it looked so pretty on the shelf, but it took a readalong with Aarti from Booklust for me to actually read it! I wish I had of read it earlier. This year I intend to read The Doomsday Book.

Mr Rosenblum's List by Natasha Solomons - What a wonderful charming book this was!

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly - For the last two years I have been waiting for the third book in the Rose trilogy to come out. When I heard that Jennifer Donnelly was working on a YA novel before working on that book I was a little disappointed. I mean how much longer did we have to wait! And then the buzz started just before BEA, and then the reviews started. I picked this book up to to read during take off on a flight home with the intention of just reading for the 15 minutes and then swapping to my e-reader. I didn't swap back! What a wonderful book!

There are a few books that I want to give an honorary mention to as being books that I really, really liked, and if I was to regrade right now, I might have given them a slightly higher grade than I did at the time.

Virgin River by Robyn Carr (if only because it started a reading glom like I haven't done in ages on this author)
Roses by Leila Meacham (love a big juicy saga, and this was definitely one of those)
The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen (I do love this author's books. Perfect escapism)
The Passage by Justin Cronin (a bit outside my comfort zone but a very good read)
The Countess and the King by Susan Holloway Scott
Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett (my first witches book but not my last and my favourite read for the Terry Pratchett Challenge that I hosted this year)
Song of Seduction by Carrie Lofty (my first e read!)
The Confessions of Catherine de Medici by CW Gortner

Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn (it's not often that the fourth book in a series becomes your favourite!)


For some other highlights of this year:

January - apparently not a lot that was exciting or interesting happened in January! Or at least nothing that I blogged about!

February - Went to see Rob Thomas in concert, and had the added bonus of seeing INXS perform a couple of songs away. The atmosphere as INXS performed was amazing!

March - Alex did an amazing job of making over my blog and also Historical Tapestry! I still like to just sit and look at it some days! I also went on vacation to Phillip Island with my friend and her son.

April - I was all set for a big readathon weekend, when I had to make an emergency dash to the other side of the country because my grandmother was ill. It was also Read Our Own Books month - it was so nice to read some of the books that I wanted enough to actually buy!

May - I started participating in Weekend Cooking, which is now one of my favourite blogging events each week. May was also the month of Armchair BEA. I thoroughly enjoyed pretending to be in New York for the week!

June - It was Anya Seton season at Historical Tapestry and I started the Australian Book Blogger Directory. I am hoping to do a lot more with the directory this year.

July - My blog went French for July thanks to the Paris in July event, and I had a total blast!

August - Out of a conversation on Twitter #spbkchat was born!

September - Powderfinger in concert - Awesome! Another awesome thing - I bought my e-reader, and I still love it!

October - Went to see Australian/Irish author Monica McInerney speak.

November - It was my fifth blogiversary, and I had a really great giveaway, even if I do say so myself! Another trip to Perth, this time for my grandmother's 90th birthday.

December - U2 in concert! I hit the blogging wall a little bit in December, but I am sure that I will recover in due course!

So that was the year that was! Over the next few days I will talk about some of the things I want to achieve during 2011.

2009 Stats and memorable events (both good and bad)

Before we get too much further into 2010 I really should do my reading wrap up post for 2009.

Here are the stats:

Books Read -  153  (29 less than last year)

Library Books - 127 (83% of all books read)

Books I Own Read - 26 (of which 16 were books I owned at the start of the year)

Books Aquired during 2009 - 74 (TBR pile continues to grow rapidly)

Books by Australia Authors - 13 (Better than I thought but not as good as last year)

New to me authors - 50

Best reading months - March and August, when I read 17 books in each month

Worst reading month - January, when I read only 8 books.

No. of rereads - 3 (very surprised at that one. Normally I don't ever reread)

No. of DNFs - 1

Average Grade - 4.111

No. of pages read - 58522

Challenges participated in - 20


Genres 


Historical Fiction - 34 (no surprises there)
Mystery - 23 (some of those had a historical setting but were counted as mysteries)
Young Adult - 22 (that one surprised me a little)
Literary Fiction - 8
Fantasy/Sci-fi -8
Urban Fantasy - 6
Chick-Lit - 5
Non-Fiction - 1
Graphic Novel - 1
Classic - 1 (need to do better)
Romance - 44 in total (of which 23 were historical romance, 10 were contemporary romance (thanks mainly to Nora Roberts because I don't often read that many other contemporary romance authors), 9 paranormal romances, 1 romantic suspense and 1 erotica).



Best books of the year - The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, The Swan Maiden by Jules Watson, and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Worst book of the year - The Fool's Tale by Nicole Galland

Overall 2009 was a pretty good year personally, with some big highlights, but also a series of unfortunate events that is still ongoing (I think). Looks like I am going to have to change my locks on my house again.

I thought it might be fun to have a look at each month to see what happened (that I blogged about at least)

January - The most overwhelming thing about January was that it was HOT! Very hot. So far we have had a pretty cool start to 2010...thank goodness. I did find my new favourite recipe featuring prawns and the barbecue - quintessentially Aussie apparently. Oh, and I had to buy a new DVD player because Richard broke the last one.

February - This was a month of huge contrasts emotionally. On the low side, we watched in horror as the Victorian bushfires claimed more than 170 lives, with thousands of homes lost. I have been up to the bushfire area a few times since, most recently in November, and it still is very emotional driving through those areas. On the plus side, I got to go to the inaugural Australian Romance Readers Convention (ARRC)! I had a fantastic time, and got to hear many authors speak, and meet people who I had only known from online before! Can't wait for the next one.

March - The highlight for March was definitely going to the Sound Relief concert, which was held to raise funds for the Bushfire victims, and flood victims in other parts of Australia. You can read about my day here, and see some videos of the musical performances at The Written World.

April - My son played his first game of Aussie Rules Football, which was an exciting moment in our house. That event coincided with the first of Dewey's Read-a-thon's for the year, which was notable mainly because I started it 24 hours early, which was a little embarrassing. Not quite bad as doing the same thing again in October though!

May - This month was when my security issues started, and I ended up having to change all the locks in my house. I think that I am still having issues with this. On New Year's Eve my son's account on the computer was on, and I noticed something flashing. Turns out that it was my main suspects MSN account. I have no idea when he was in my house, but he hasn't been on my computer for months while I have been here so now I am wondering if he now has a copy of my housekeys. The other issue I had in May was that I had internet woes, so there wasn't much posting. The one good thing was a weekend away with the girls, which I don't think I ever got around to blogging about.

June - My internet issues were resolved, I went to see Pink, who was awesome in concert, and I started cohosting Library Loot.

July - I got out of bed on a Monday morning in July and decided to go to Perth to visit my family. Two days later I was there! I never do that kind of impulsive thing, and it was good! I am glad that I went.

August - I was offered a new job in August!

September - After nearly of ten years of working for the same employer, I left my job in September. It was emotional, but it was a relief because I had not been happy there for a while, and the one and a half hour commute each was just too much! I also fitted in a quick trip to Adelaide to see friends I haven't seen for years. Good times. I also joined Twitter this month, after resisting for so long because it was going to be too big a time suck. It is, but I am so glad I did it as it has definitely improved the way we can communicate with other book bloggers. I was also incredibly honoured to be nominated for Best Romance Blog as part of BBAW.

October - Started the new job. Got new glasses. Had car trouble, again. Had an awesome day out at the races.

November - Went away for a crafting weekend (another post that is basically written but never got posted!) and came home to find that I had had more security issues. More locks replaced, and a window replaced. Announced the Terry Pratchett challenge (you can still sign up here). Over at Historical Tapestry we announced the ABCs of Historical Fiction which is an ongoing event.

December - We kicked off the 2009 Virtual Advent Tour over on a separate blog. I was in Perth again, this time for a major family event - my grandfather's 100th birthday.

One thing that I was hoping to be able to say that I did better at this year was weight loss. I started a new regime back in April and did a really good job at sticking at it for quite a while and ended up losing over 15kgs. Over the last couple of months though I have not been very good, so I have started to put some of it back on. I am still 10kgs lighter than I was at the beginning of the year, but I really need to get back on the diet bandwagon and try and lose some more this year.

Complete this sentence

You know you are reading a good book when....



Whilst there are any number of other answers to this question normally, tonight the answer is...

All I can think about is getting back to my book and finding out what happens next!

How about you? What would you answer to this question?

January and February reads

I am no longer as good as I used to be at writing reviews of everything I read. I have loads and loads of half written reviews sitting in draft. Some of them may see the light of day at some point, but others will languish there in draft form forever! So, it seems like a good idea to do some kind of monthly round up of the books that I have read. This month I will post both January and Februarys reads but going forward it will be just one month. I will link where I have actually posted a review. If there are any books that you would really like to hear my thoughts on, leave a comment and I will do my best to complete the reviews and post them.


The books I read in January were:

The Bleeding Dusk by Colleen Gleason 4/5
The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry 4/5
Naughty Neighbour by Janet Evanovich 4/5
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 4.5/5
The Leopard Unleashed by Elizabeth Chadwick 4/5
The Last Queen by C W Gortner 4.5/5
To Seduce a Bride by Nicole Jordan 3.5/5
Secrets of Surrender by Madeline Hunter 4.5/5

February reads were:

His Wicked Kiss by Gaelen Foley 4.5/5
The Water Horse by Julia Gregson 4.5/5
Signora da Vinci by Robin Maxwell 4/5
It by Stephen King 4/5
The Founding by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles 4.5/
Foul Play by Janet Evanovich 3.5/5
Grimspace by Ann Aguirre 4/5
Snowy Night with a Stranger anthology 4/5
Portrait in Death by J D Robb 4.5/5
Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik 4/5
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen 4.5/5
Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach 4/5
Life as we knew it by Susan Pfeffer 4.5/5
Moon Called by Patricia Briggs 4.5/5
A Fool's Tale by Nicole Galland - DNF


As part of the I Suck at Challenges challenge, it is time for the February update.

February was actually a pretty good month for challenges. I finished the Bang Bang book challenge and the 2009 Sci-fi Experience and the Medieval Challenge.

I also read one book for the Chunkster Challenge (The Founding at 527 pages), two books for the Art History challenge (Tulip Fever and Signora da Vinci), one book for the War Through the Generations challenge (Briar Rose by Jane Yolen), one for the Pub 2009 challenge (Signora da Vinci by Robin Maxwell). So far for the 100+ Reading challenge I am up to book number 19 for the year, and in the Library Challenge I have already read 14 out of the 50 books that I set as a target for the year.

I am currently reading Silent in the Sanctuary by Deanna Raybourn and that one fits for two challenges so I already have a bit of a head start for March. .

Strange coincidence

I don't think I have ever read a book where people eat tulip bulbs. Yesterday, I read about it in two separate books! Admittedly one was an episode where it was eaten by accident, but I was most surprised when I read it again in the next book!

Tulips are my favourite flowers, but I don't think I will be eating them anytime soon.

On my way to a DNF!

After two bad reading months in a row, the start of February has been much better. In the first week I have managed to finish three books, and I have another one that is not far off of finished.

I am also debating about whether or not I have my first DNF for this year, after not having any at all last year. I have mentioned previously that I don't like to put a book down with no intention of ever picking it up again. I know that lots of people will DNF a book if they aren't enjoying it after the first fifty pages or so, but I find it really difficult to get to the point of no return. There are some really great books I have read over the years that were a bit slow at the beginning but then really picked up after that. There are also a few that were really slow at the beginning and never picked up.

With this book it isn't so much that it is slow. It is that the plot is improbabe and the characters unlikeable. The author admits in the Author's note that most of the plot is not based on history at all, with made up military events, and characters. I don't mind that in historical fiction normally, but I do like there to be some kind of historical framework around the made up characters, so that it fits in the time and place specified by the setting.

The other thing is that I know where the book is going because as always I sneaked a peak at the ending and that was completely imporabable as well.

I am more than half way through, and as of yesterday morning I was ready to put the book down and never pick it up again. Then last night I read another chapter and it was okay...ish. so now I am not sure whether I keep reading to the bitter end. The book has a 4 star average on Amazon, so maybe its me.

I don't know why I find it so hard to put a book down.

Decisions, decisions.

Another type of list

It's always interesting to see the lists that someone (who knows who) thinks are the insert relevent number here books that everyone should read. This time it is The Guardian newspaper who bring us the 1000 Books Everyone Should Read.

I have highlighted the books I have read by striking through them, and the books I own but haven't read yet in bold. What did surprise me is how many authors I have read but I haven't yet read their best works apparently. How do I manage to read around so many best books? I have italicised those authors.

I did find it interesting that there were some series included. For example, they have included the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. Now I have to say that I love the Discworld series, but there are definitely some better books than others.

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
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've been through this list about 5 times now, and every time I have found something I have missed, but for now I am going to leave it as it is. If I can concentrate on it, then I might go through it one more time later.

2008 Reading in review: The Stats

This year I managed to read 182 books. This is down by 25 on 2007 and 50 from 2006. There's no particular reason why I am reading less, although I do seem to gradually be spending more and more time on the computer. Maybe that's got something to do with it.

I bought or received 67 new books this year and read 19 of those, which means that I have 48 more books in the house unread! Whoops.

I read 16 books by Aussie authors.


By Type

A breakdown by type shows that I read:

9 kids/YA books
33 Crime novels
17 Fantasy novels
36 Historical Fiction
23 Literature (or books that don't easily fall into any of the other categories)
3 Non Fiction
50 Romance novels
10 Women's Fiction/Chick lit

Of the books that I read that were not labelled as Historical Fiction, I had classified 50 of them of being historical in terms of sub-genre, so books with a historical setting were by far my biggest group of reads.

Only one of the books that I read was a reread (Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie)

Grades

I gave the following grades:

5 out of 5 - 3 books
4.5 out of 5 - 40 books
4 out of 5 - 103 books.
3.5 out of 5 - 31 books
3 out of 5 - 3 books
2.5 out of 5 - 1 book

The three books that achieved top grade were The Host by Stephenie Meyer, Master of Verona by David Blixt (review will be posted tomorrow) and The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society by Maryann Shaffer

I posted my favourite Crime Fiction novels for the year here, and over at Historical Tapestry have posted about my favourite HF reads for the year.

Publishers

Here's a breakdown by Publisher where I have read 5 books or more from a single publisher:

Harlequin - 5
Harper Collins - 25
Macmillan - 17
Penguin-Putnam - 25
Random House - 39
Simon & Schuster - 6
Warner - 13
Sourcebooks - 5
Allen & Unwin - 5


New to me authors: 83

Rated S for too sexy?

At the moment I am listening to Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie. I have read this before, but it was a long time ago and I had forgotten how steamy this book was, as well as how strong some of the language is. In fact, quite often I used to see people nominate the scene on the dock as one of the sexiest in romance and I used to be somewhat surprised and think I don't remember any really, really hot scenes in any of Jennifer Crusie's books. Let's just say my memory has been refreshed!

Not too long ago I convinced one of my workmates that listening to audio books whilst walking was a good idea. At first she was extremely sceptical, but it only took a few days for her to get to like it. We have been sharing some audio books, and so when I got Welcome to Temptation I asked her if she wanted to borrow it and she was like sure!

The only problem now is that I have been listening to it over the weekend and have realised exactly how sexy that dock scene is, along with some of the other scenes in the book (discovery fantasies anyone?) and all of a sudden I am thinking that she really isn't going to be comfortable with this book at all. So my dilemma is, do I go back into work tomorrow and hope she hasn't started listening to it yet and give her a ratings warning or do I wait for her to give it back and listen to her totally shocked reaction? Another workmate is trying this one out as her first audio book, but I think she will be fine with it but I am not sure about the other one!

Strange connections!

It is really interesting how books that appear to have no link whatsoever really are connected.

Yesterday I finished reading Master of Verona (which I loved). The story is inspired partially by Dante (the main character is his son Pietro) and partially by Romeo and Juliet so there are lots and lots of references to different parts of Dante's most famous poem, including a lot about the doomed lovers Francesca and Paolo. Now, it is fair to say I had heard of the poet before but couldn't have told you much about it (still can't)!

Last night I started reading The Drowning Tree - and the main character in this book has two dog named Francesca and Paolo....after the characters in Dante's poems!

Bearing in mind that Master of Verona is set in 14th century Italy, and The Drowning Tree is a contemporary novel set in upstate New York, I actually would not have expected to find any connection at all between these two books and yet there is!