The Fool's Tale by Nicole Galland

The year 1198. All of Wales is in turmoil.

King Maelgwyn ap Cadwallon, known to his people as Noble, is struggling to protect his small kingdom from treacherous Welsh princes and Roger Mortimer, an ambitious English baron who murdered Noble's father years earlier. Desperate to secure a peace treaty, the king grimly agrees to a political marriage with Isabel Mortimer, Roger's niece.

Isabel, not yet twenty, is confounded by the intimacy and informality of the Welsh court which to her foreign eyes looks barbaric and backward. As determined and wilful as she is naive, she eventually earns the respect and affection of her husband and his subjects - with the notable exception of Gwirion, the king's oldest and oddesst friend, who has a particular, private reason to hate Mortimers.

Gwirion's rascally tricks and diversion are expected - and relished - by all at Cymaron Castle. But a disastrous prank played during the royal wedding ignites a volatile competition between queen and confidant for the king's affection, with unexpected consequences.

As Mortimer makes it apparent that he has no intention of honouring the peace treaty, the bond between Noble and Isabel grows strained. And when Gwirion and Isabel's mutual animosity is abruptly transformed, Noble finds himself as threatened by those he loves best as by the enemies who menace his crown.

A masterful debut novel by a gifted storyteller, The Fool's Tale combines vivid historical fiction, compelling political intrigue, and passionate romance to create an intimate drama of three individuals bound - and undone - by love and loyalty.

A brief look at my archives will tell you a few things. One is that I love Historical Fiction. Doesn't really matter what the setting is, although British history is one of my favourites. Ever since reading Sharon Kay Penman's excellent Welsh trilogy, the idea of reading more about Welsh history has been very attractive to me. I also am partial to a good Historical romance, so this book should have worked for me on a number of levels.

Did you notice I said should? Unfortunately it didn't work for me at all. At over half way through I have given up, and have my first DNF for the year. Given that I have only had one book that I couldn't finish reading since I began blogging over 3 years ago, you would be right in thinking that this is something that I don't normally do, but I just couldn't go on!

The first thing that didn't work for me was the fact that this is supposedly Welsh history, but then a quick look at the author's note reveals that King Maelgwyn ap Cadwallon really died the year before this book was set, Isabel Mortimer and her brother never existed, which means that all the dramatic points that I read (war councils and battles) cannot have happened. Oh, and that "Gwirion is not only fictional, but historically improbably, as the Welsh court had no known position corresponding to the concept of a European fool or jester." Yes, the laws and rituals described were based on historical fact, so it's not completely without basis but there's not much there.

The second thing that didn't work for me is the characters. Noble, who very much does not live up to his name, Gwirion and Isabel are all unlikeable.In the first half of the book, what we had is a King who had wed in a strategic alliance, but who continued to bed anyone that he wanted to, whenever he wanted to, with little consideration for his wife. Gwirion's pranks were not only not funny, they were downright dangerous, and when Noble pranks back it is almost to the point of killing the man who is supposed to be his best friend. Isabel is cool and distant, and when she does lose the heir that is so needed, it is in such a way that is just not likely to occur.

At the point where I have given up, Gwirion, who has hated Isabel vehemently since she has arrived, has just seen her with her hair down, and suddenly there is a strong attraction between them. Because I always take a peak at the end of the book, I have a fair idea of what happenes next and I know how it ends, and again, just don't see how it is likely that that could possibly happen when you have a king and queen involved. By the way, there are only a couple of times over the years where reading the ending of a book did really, really spoil for the reader, and this is one of those times.

The author is a screenwriter, and I don't know if part of the idea was to try and sex up historical fiction, and to make the plot as dramatic as possible, but it didn't work for me. I have in the past borrowed other books by this author and never managed to read them. I am still interested in reading The Fourth Crusade for example, but it will be a while before I will be ready to give her another go.

This is my last book in the Medieval Challenge.


Rating: DNF

Library woes

A few weeks ago I was quite ruthless and returned more than 20 books to the library because I just had so many books out, and I was feeling very much under pressure in terms of due dates, and not reading the books that I own.

What I was hoping was that would mean that I would not need to be returning books to the library unread, but it doesn't seem that that plan has quite worked out as I anticipated.

Today I will be returning The Vizard Mask by Diana Norman without having even opened the book, and also The Mystery of Glass that I have read the first 20 pages of, but it is just not possible for me to finish before it needs to be returned, mainly because I can't renew it as someone else has requested it. The sad thing is that I really want to read both of them, particularly the Norman book as I do enjoy reading her books.

I feel like crying

We woke up this morning to the news that at least 25 people have died in bushfires in Victoria yesterday. The fires are still burning, and officials are expecting to find more bodies today. Six people died in one car which you would have to think is a whole family.

There are also fires burning near Sydney.

There are no fires near me, but I do know a lot of people who provide support to firefighters, and I pay a lot of people who live in the affected areas.

It appears as though there is a town called Marysville near Melbourne where 90% of the town have been destroyed, including shops, homes and the local police station.

Edited to add: I just got a phone call to say that the mother of one of the victims works with one of my family members. He died in his car along with his best friend and fiancee. His dad had a property in the worst affected area, but is working overseas, so the man who died went to try and save the property, and instead lost his life.

I know that I don't know them, but it does feel even closer to home than it did before.

Remember when I said it was hot a couple of weeks ago?

In all the time I have lived in Melbourne, I don't remember it ever being this hot. In fact, I don't recall it ever being this hot when I lived in Adelaide either.

Updated to say: How right am I! Apparently this has been the hottest temperature ever recorded in an Australian capital centre. No wonder I don't remember it being this hot in Adelaide.

Our weather conditions as of 40 minutes ago from theweatherchannel.com.au:

Conditions at Laverton 16:00 Saturday February 7th
Temperature: 46.9°C
Dewpoint: 2.7°C
Wind: NW at 53.6 km/h
Rain since 9am: 0.0 mm

Mean Sea Level Pressure : 997.6hPa
Relative Humidity :7%


I have know idea if that is the hottest it has been all day. I haven't been checking.

For those of you who don't work in celcius, that is 116.4F.


Edited to Add: According to the news, this is the hottest day in Melbourne since records began and ended up being 47.9 degrees near me.

Edited again: There are a number of fires burning out of control, and a number of houses burnt out across the state. Please keep the firefighters and people affected in your thoughts and prayers.

Weekly Geeks- Other interests

Nearly missed this weeks Weekly Geeks! I had started the post and then forgot about it!

#1. What are you passionate about besides reading and blogging? For example, are you crafty (knitting, woodworking, scrapbooking, model building)? Do you cook? Into gaming (computer or board)? Sports (player or spectator)? Photography? Maybe you like geocaching, rock climbing? Or love attending events like renaissance fairs, concerts? Music? Dancing? You get the idea.

Tell us why you're passionate about it. Post photos of what you've made or of yourself doing whatever it is you love doing.

I am passionate about a couple of other things I guess! No matter how much I can't stand my boss, I am passionate about my job, but that would be a pretty boring post wouldn't it!

I am not too sure that passionate isn't too strong a word, but another thing I am enjoy a lot is watching sport! I am a total couch potato when it comes to watching sport. I am happy to watch nearly anything, particularly when it comes to the finals of any event. This year I managed to be off work for all of the Australian Open tennis. Whilst I have been in previous year to watch matches live that didn't happen this year, but I did watch an awful lot of games, until the very late hours of the night. WE have also been watching the cricket, despite the fact that the the national team hasn't been playing that well. I do like to watch the English Premier League and A League (Australian soccer) but I have had a tendency to fall asleep before the EPL games started lately.

If I would have to pick a team to say I was passionate about, it is the Adelaide Crows, who play Australian Rules Football. The pre season tournament starts today. Fortunately the match is not here in Melbourne because we have another really hot day here (44C/111F) with a northerly wind. As an aside, these conditions are really bad if there is a bushfire. We have already had a number of bushfires, and lots over 30 homes in the city in the last couple of weeks, so fingers crossed there are no fires today.

I was planning however to post about card making. The thing is though that so far this year, I have only made one thing (several times) which is pretty poor really! It's probably fair to say that I am passionate about buying things to do card making - not the actual making itself! One of the good things about doing the card making is that it is something that my sister, her mother in law and I all do, so it is something that we share together, and on the nights when we are getting together for workshops or just to make stuff, my son gets to spend time with his uncle so it is a win-win situation for all of us - well, maybe not the uncle but I think he has fun being babysitter!

S0 what did I make? Bookmarks! And I am pretty happy with how they turned out, although I am struggling to get a good image of them to put on here.

#2. Get us involved. Link to tutorials, recipes, Youtube videos, websites, fan sites, etc, anything that will help us learn more about your interest or how to do your hobby. Maybe you'd like to link to another hobbyist whose work you admire or tell us about a book or magazine related to your interest.

To many outsiders the Aussie Rules game appears to have precisely no rules but they are there I promise! What we do have is spectacular leaps and great marks (catches), full body contact and lots of excitement!




To look at some of the other cards that I have made, click here!

#3. Visit other Weekly Geeks. Link in your post to other Geeks who've peaked your interest in their passion. Or maybe you might find a fellow afincionado among us, link to them.

For #3, you'll probably have to come back after other Weekly Geeks have posted.

Well, because I am so late in doing in my post, the weekly wrap up post is already up here, so click on the link to see how many very interesting Weekly Geeks there are around blogland!

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.

A good way to start Saturday!

I got up this morning and was flicking through the channels, which I came across the Showtime Greats channel, and they were showing The Pirate King. At first, I was a little surprised, but youknow I have fun memories of that movie so I watched it again! My goodness, it's so bad it is great!

The strange thing was I was looking at the actors thinking my goodness there are a lot of Aussies in this movie. Then I was looking at the mansion that Mabel's family lived in, and I was thinking I KNOW that house! Turns out that the movie was filmed entirely on location in Australia, and the mansion used for filming was Werribee Mansion, which is five minutes away from where I live!

Of course then I ended up at Youtube seeing what I could find there! Turns out you can watch most of the movie there, but I thought I was post just one example of how this movie is so bad that it is good!



This was a good way to start Saturday!

Anti-Valentines Day?

I am not a huge Valentines Day fan. I've been by myself for far too long for it to be anything other than depressing, but even when I was with the ex it wasn't a big deal. Then again, this is the same man who forgot my 30th birthday and never understood why I was supremely pissed off! Yet another reason why he is ex!

So when you learn that there is an Anti-Valentine's Day Contest, and that there is a chance to win 3 new release books, it is a no-brainer that I am going to want to join in the fun!

For all the details on how to join in, click here!

Just when you think you are getting ahead..

As of about 2 hours ago, the clutch in my car is completely screwed. There is not a lot I can do about it, but it is pretty easy to get into a woe is me frame is mine.

The car has been towed to the front of my brother in laws mechanic. In the morning, I will have to try and get back down there and get a quote from him to fix the car.

One of my friends rang his mechanic and he has suggested it is going to cost at least $600 to get repaired!

DAMN!

His Wicked Kiss by Gaelen Foley

From emerald jungles to the high seas to the glittering ballrooms of Regency London, beloved author Gaelen Foley tells a sweeping, sensual tale of the ruggedly handsome Lord Jack Knight and the passionate beauty who lays claim to his heart.

An English rose blooming in the untamed jungles of South America, Eden Farraday lives a life of independence–unheard of for a lady–with her doctor-turned-scientist father. But Eden misses England desperately. When the dangerous and darkly charming Lord Jack Knight sails into her life, she seizes her chance to return to civilization, stowing away aboard his London-bound ship.

Roguish and charismatic, a self-made shipping tycoon with a shadowy past and a well-guarded heart, Jack is sailing on a vital secret mission. When the redheaded temptress is discovered aboard his vessel, he reacts with fury–and undeniable lust. Forced to protect her from his rough crew, the devilish Lord Jack demands a scandalous price in exchange for Eden’s safe passage across the sea. As his wicked kiss ignites an unforgettable blaze of passion between them, Jack and Eden confront a soul-searing love that cannot be denied.

And so, I come to the end of the seven book Knight Miscellany series, and it has been a fun ride! The writing has been consistently good (I have rated them all at between 4 and 4.5 out of 5), the story lines different in each one, and yet, still felt connected. There is only one book in the series that I can't clearly remember, despite the fact that I read the first in the series about 18 months ago. In terms of His Wicked Kiss being the final book in the series, it was great to see all the previous characters featured, but the author got the balance just right, while also managing to introduce the basic background for the next trilogy that features relatives of the family in this series. There have been other series where there were too many special guest appearances in the final book and the storyline gets a bit lost, but this didn't happen in this book.

This books starts out in the jungles of South America - a very unusual setting for a Regency romance that's for sure, and dealing with historical events that I never knew about that were taking place elsewhere in the world at the same time as my own country was only just being founded!

Eden Farraday is desperate to leave the jungles behind her. She has been working there with her father, a renowned doctor who has been exploring looking for new medicines. Eden really wants the chance to try to see how she survives in a very different environment - the ton in London!

When Jack Knight meets her in the jungle as he is finishing up some dodgy political dealing and other lucrative trading, Eden sees her chance to escape to England, and she is not about to let Jack's refusal to allow her to accompany him stop her, so she stows away on his ship. Trapped in close quarters with each other, Eden and Jack come to find what they were both looking for, but in a completely different place than they were expecting.

There were times, particularly later in the book when I just wanted to slap the two of them and say talk to each other, but for the most part this was just an engrossing and fun story, with a hero who is part pirate, part gentleman, very dangerous and totally charming. Eden actually held her own in this book pretty well as well. She is able to survive in the jungle, and in the ton - in fact the only place she seems to struggle is really in learning to deal with her husband!

I did have one problem with this book, and it was one that jarred me out of the book every time I saw it mentioned. A lot of historical romance novels rely on a suspense subplot, which generally involves some kind of crazy father/cousin/jilted lover etc who endangers the heroine and then the climactic ending is the reunion and declaration of love between our hero and heroine, and this book is no different.

**SPOILER WARNING**

In this case the bad guy who was obsessed with the heroine was her father's research assistant, Connor, who was identified throughout the book as being Australian. Now, I am not about to say that there can't be any psycho Aussies, because we have our fair share, but the problem I had related to the identification of Connor as an Australian.

This book was set in 1818. The first colony had been set up in New South Wales in 1788, only 30 years previously. I don't recall Connor's age being mentioned, but I assumed that he was in his mid twenties to early thirties. That would have meant that Connor would have had to have been one of the earliest babies born in the new colony, or he had travelled there either as a settler as a young kid, or perhaps even transported although there was no mention of a previous conviction.

The thing that threw me a little, was that I can't imagine that after only 30 years of settlement that anyone would have been referring to themselves as an Australian. With the only colonies that had been established being either in New South Wales or Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), would there have been much of a feeling of national identity yet? The other thing that was mentioned was about the time that Connor had spent in Australian rain forests, but I am not sure that they would have had those areas explored at the time that this book was set. Maybe some in Tasmania, but they would certainly be completely different if you were to do a comparison between those and the jungles in South America.

It could well be that Gaelen Foley was right in terms of this characterisation and time frames, but it just FELT wrong. Every single time that Connor's nationality was mentioned it was jarring and it took me a couple of minutes to get back into the book.

I am not a reader that is worried too much about my historical romances being 100% historically accurate, and this is something that probably wouldn't have bothered most people at all, but it definitely was a distraction to me!

I have requested the first book in the Spice trilogy which is not part of this series, but features some relatives of the Knight family. If the books in that trilogy are as good as this series has been, then I will be one happy reader.

Rated: 4.5/5

Don't mention the white elephant!

I know it isn't really funny, but this story amused/amazed me today when I found out about it!

Back on December 19 last year, after months and months of construction and a few costly delays, a new tourist attraction opened in Melbourne. Dubbed 'The Southern Star' it was our very own version of the London Eye ferris wheel, giving visitors a changing view of Melbourne and it's environs.

At around $29 for an adult and $17 for a child, I hadn't yet managed to go to the wheel, but I certainly intended to do so, probably next time we had visitors from interstate or overseas. I should however have made the effort to go earlier because, umm, it has had to close already.

You know how I have mentioned that it has been a bit hot here over the last week? Apparently the $100m project didn't factor in the summer heat and the extreme weather conditions caused the wheel to buckle and crack and it is closed for the foreseeable future while they try to figure out how to fix it.

So, it cost $100 million to build, and it was open for a total of 6 weeks!

I know there are lots of other examples of this kind of thing. The Millenium Dome that sat unused in London for seven years before it was reopened, and the pedestrian bridges across rivers that then can't be used.

Anyone else got any good examples of this kind of thing?

Where did January go?

Last week I picked up a few books from the library. I am still doing okay at keeping the number of books that I have out down to around 30, but given how little I am actually reading it won't take long to creep up again. The books I borrowed were:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Fish Out of Water by Mary Janice Davidson
Foul Play by Janet Evanovich
Portrait in Death by J D Robb
Snowy Night with a Stranger anthology


I am pretty sure that I have had the last two out previously but I had to return them unread. I want to read them both so I can continue on with the series that I am reading, so I am hoping that I will get to them this time!

Pride and Prejudice is on audiobook, and will be my next classic read. I am trying to use audiobooks to improve on my pretty poor record of reading many of the classics during this year.

Changing the topic a bit, can you believe that January has gone by already?? It's hard to work out where the month has gone. Way back at the beginning of the month I posted about NaJuReMoNoMo - National Just Read More Novels Month.

For the second consecutive month I have read less than ten books, which is almost unheard of for me, so I think it is fair to say that I didn't exactly read More as such, but I did end up starting and finishing five books. All up I finished eight books during January but three of those were books that I had started prior to 1 January and they therefore do not count for the purposes of this challenge.


**Library Loot is a weekly meme hosted by Alessandra and Eva. Details here**

Back to school...and work!

So that's about it really for my holidays. Back to school (yay) and to work tomorrow! I don't think I am really ready, but I think it is always a bit of a struggle. For me, it also means back on the trains so I am hoping that the temperature stays down so that I am not left stranded on the platform like so many of my fellow commuters have been in the last week.

As you may know, I had a list of things that I wanted to get down during my two weeks off. I managed to get most of them done, although I left a few of the bigger ones for the second week, which didn't work out too well given the heat.

So here's the list as it stands now:


Kitchen

Clean out fridge and freezer, including behind and on top.
Clean out all the kitchen cupboards
Clean out food cupboard

Spare room

Empty at least one of those boxes that has been there since I moved house. It will be a pleasant surprise to see what I find I am sure.
Fold all clothes
Reorganise craft table with an eye to getting reinspired into making some things.


My room

Empty at least one of those boxes that has been there since I moved house. It will be a pleasant surprise to see what I find I am sure.

Laundry

Reorganise linen cupboard

Son's Room

Tidy up. This took four days last year. Hopefully won't take as long this year.
Check for too small clothes

Garden

Mow the lawns/weeds
Weed the front gardens (did some of this, but not all)
Take the dead heads off of the roses

Garage

Sweep it out

Car

Get it cleaned.


In addition I played more table tennis than I can possibly think about, watched loads and loads of Australian Open tennis, went to the movies, watched a few movies at home, had a manicure, went out for dinner, had friends and family over for dinner, went bowling, listened to some music, so while it the same as going away somewhere, we still had a fairly pleasant time.

The only thing is that as I return to work after thinking that I have been at home for two weeks you would think that I would be all caught up with everything. Unfortunately that isn't the case. At the moment I have over 2000 posts to read in Bloglines, I didn't manage to post a single review, I haven't done the awards post that I really need to do, and I only read a couple of books. I didn't even manage to visit one of the forums that I am a regular at in the whole two weeks. Never mind!

I did however do a couple of other things that I have been meaning to do for ages, including doing a backup of my documents etc on the computer, prompted by the fact that I couldn't turn my computer on this morning. I am hoping that it isn't the beginning of a downhill slide, although the computer I have is almost 5 years old, so it's possible.

Another big thing to get done is that I did my resume this week. I have been talking about getting my resume sorted out for about 18 months, if not longer, because the fact is that I love my job, as long as my boss isn't in. It is also not a practical job given the fact that I have 3 to 3 and a half hour of train time every day - that equates to at least two full days of travel time every week. I would love to get a job closer to home but the likelihood is remote, so I might just have to go into the city, but at least it would be only one train then. Who knows. I might still be in the job in 3 years time, but at least the resume is done so if there is something interesting that comes up, I am ready.

My next door neighbour asked me the other day if he minded if he took out a plant that is on my side of the fence, but grows onto his side. It looks nice but it has huge spikes on it that are pretty darned sharp, so he is going to take that out for me (well for him) but I don't have to do it, but I thought that I should clear out the path at the side of the house so he can get to it, so even though I didn't do all the gardening that I had on my list, I did do some!

I have to say, I don't know how people find gardening therapeutic. Feels much too much like hard work to me!

Going retro!

Confession Time!

After sharing my party tricks with you a couple of days ago, now it is time to confess my secret irrational fear.

But first, have I mentioned that it is hot here? Given that it is 43.7C at 1pm, it is the first time since records began that there have been 3 days over 43 in Melbourne. I was sent the image above through a group that I am in, and I so appreciate the sentiment!

In the effort of trying to stay cool most people have been staying indoors if they can, and for that reason I am glad I am still on holidays. There have been mass train cancellations and I would have been one unhappy commuter if I had of been stranded at the train station in this heat I can tell you!

I decided to go to the beach this morning, just for a chance to get out of the house. I've talked before about the difference between the beaches here and in other places that I have lived, but what I didn't mention is the thing I like least about going to the beach - the seaweed.

I don't remember seaweed being an issue when it comes to the beaches in Perth, but there was definitely seaweed in the beaches in Adelaide. The thing with it was though that it was either dry on the beach (even then I don't like walking on it) or sufficiently deep enough in the water that you could swim over it without having to touch it, but here the seaweed starts when you are still at less than knee depth. Even the parts that look like they are sand are actually seaweed with sand covering it so it is slimy and springy when you step on it.

I have two theories as to why I have an irrational fear of walking through seaweed. Basically I think it is because I don't like walking through water where you can't see the bottom. The first experience which might have contributed to this was when I was about 6 or 7 and we went on a camp where we went swimming in a dam. We all came out of that dam with numerous leeches on our legs - ugh!

The second time is from when I was probably 12 or 13. We went on a caravanning holiday to one of the beautiful beaches in South Australia. You could get up to about shoulder height before you got to the seaweed. We were swimming around when my ex stepfather (horrible, horrible, horrible man) started chasing us with a crab that he had found in the seaweed.

In my head, I know that it will most likely be perfectly safe to walk through the seaweed, whatever it looks like, but it is just something that I hate doing! So we went to the beach and the only reason why anything more than my ankles got wet was because we were splashing around! It was pleasant though, until we stopped and started walking back to the car.

And now expressed in song!

Twenty minutes down the road it was 45.7C (114F) today so we weren't far off that I woudn't think!

Brain is too fried to think of much else to say at this point in time!

Feeling hot, hot, hot!

more animals

The scary thing is it is going to be even hotter tomorrow and Friday.

43.2C (109.8F) is far too hot to do anything!

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Should be Reading:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
• Please avoid spoilers!

Change of pace for this week's Teaser Tuesday. It feels like ages since I read a historical romance, so it feels quite refreshing to come back to a genre I love after a while away. This week's teaser comes from page 312 of To Seduce a Bride by Nicole Jordan. This is the third book in The Courtship Wars series.

"When Heath shut the door behind her, Lily lifted her veil and turned to face him, one eyebrow raised. "Do you mean to keep me on tenterhooks forever, or will you tell me why you have brought me here?"

Quick straw poll!

How many of my readers can do the raising one eyebrow thing? I can, but my son can't. Of course, I can curl my tongue and also touch my nose with my tongue (although not when it is curled) - now I have let you into the my party trick secrets!

Australia Day 2009

Today is Australia Day. It is celebrated on 26 January as it was on this day in 1788 that the first European settlers arrived in Sydney Cove. There are a number of ways you can choose to celebrate, but we went pretty low key, but I have to say it was very good day.

Because I had some family members coming for dinner the first thing was to do the cleaning (the not so pleasant part of the day but it needed to be done!) and then the shopping, but once all that was out of the way, it all came together nicely.

We did something that seems to be quintessentially Australian! We threw some prawns on the barbie. Now, I am not normally a huge fan of prawns on the barbie, because they can be overcooked really easily, but I found a new recipe that sounded nice so I thought I would give it a go. I am really glad that I did. It comes from my favourite recipe website where they collect lots of recipes from all different food magazines in one place.

Low-fat barbecued prawns with lime, chilli & coriander

Preparation Time

20 minutes
Cooking Time

25 minutes

Ingredients (serves 4)

* 2 tbs fresh lemon juice
* 1 tbs fish sauce
* 2 tsp olive oil
* 4 kaffir lime leaves, deveined, finely shredded crossways
* 2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
* 3 small fresh red chillies, deseeded, chopped
* Salt & freshly ground black pepper
* 1kg (about 12) large green king prawns, peeled leaving head and tail intact, deveined
* 2 tbs roughly chopped fresh coriander
* Lemon wedges, to serve (optional)

Method

1. Combine the lemon juice, fish sauce, oil, lime leaves, garlic and chillies in a large ceramic or glass bowl. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Add the prawns and toss gently until the prawns are coated in the marinade. Cover and place in the fridge for 30 minutes to marinate.
3. Heat a barbecue grill or chargrill on high. Cook the prawns in batches of 3-4 on preheated grill (depending on available space), brushing with the marinade, for 2-3 minutes each side or until they change colour, curl and shells are browned. Place the cooked prawns on a plate and cover loosely with foil to keep warm while cooking the remaining prawns.
4. Place the prawns on serving plates, sprinkle with the coriander and serve immediately with the lemon wedges if desired.



Mine didn't quite look like that because I used some frozen prawn cutlets, but they still tasted darned good! We followed that up with steak, marinated chicken, sausages, green salad and warm potato salad. Yum!

Fortunately I didn't have to make dessert as that was being made by the best cook in the family! Whenever you go to her house for dinner you roll back out, and to be honest I feel a little pressure to come up to standard when they come here! Beautiful individual meringues with cream and a combination of fruits was on the menu!

After that a table tennis tournament and Abba Singstar! Yes, I finally got to play my Christmas present after all this time. My son has played it loads but because my throat was so bad for so long after Christmas I hadn't had a chance.

Of course, if you were to ask my son what the highlight of today was, he would say it was getting to watch the WWE Royal Rumble live on pay TV, and so because I am a good mum, I got to watch some with him earlier today, and the rest on repeat tonight! I keep on telling him that it is rubbish, but I have to say that I find myself drawn into the story lines and characters. He is so obsessed with it at the moment it isn't funny! The bonus is that I get to perv at some very nice bodies. I did make a comment about liking one of the wrestler's hair tonight, and then every time a new one entered my son would ask me do you like their hair? What about the next one? I need to remember to keep those kinds of thoughts to myself a bit more!

I meant to mention that the weather has been amended for the next week. Instead of it being 39C Tuesday, 40C Wednesday, 35C Thursday and 34C on Friday, It is now going to be 38C on Tuesday, 41C on Wednesday, and then 40C on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I am not going to bother translating to fahernheit temperatures. Sufficed to say it is going to be damn hot!

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.