[fionav3]

Okay, so looking through the 'ten books to read before the apocolypse' thread, I came across lots of great books that I always intended to read but never got around to and had thus forgotten about sooooo....

I googled the BBC's 100 greatest reads of all time and saved the list. I am going to read everything on that list that I haven't already read. What I have read (numbered according to the list) are;

1. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (loved it and one of my all time favourites)
2. His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman (another great book and another favourite)
4. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Addams (only okay, I don't really get the hype to this book)
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling (Loved it! JK Rowling is a fabulous writer)
6. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (another of my favourites, a great classic)
9. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (an enjoyable read)
10. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (another great book and high on the list of favourites)
12. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (beautiful, beautiful book. So sad, so moving and so enjoyable, can't tell you how many times I've reread this)
14. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (fantastic book. Great atmosphere, suspense and wonderful pacing. Read plenty of her stuff and I can never fault her work)
15. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (another of my all time favourites. Was quite horrified to discover the amount of people here who think it's overrated...but to each his own. )
18. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott (enjoyable read, always good for the nostalgia factor)
22. Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone - JK Rowling (see above comments on JK Rowling)
23. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - JK Rowling (not the strongest book in the series but see above comments on JK Rowling)
24. Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkabhan - JK Rowling (see above comments on JK Rowling)
25. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (not in the same league as LOTR but still a mighty enjoyable read)
26. Tess of the D'Ubervilles - Thomas Hardy (enjoyable read from the always impressive Mr. Hardy)
27. Middlemarch - George Elliott (not the greatest. I found it rather dull in places and very hard to have sympathy for some of the characters; they were rather two dimensional and not in a Dickens' charicature style either)
35. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (what can I say that hasn't already been said about the wonderful Mr. Dahl?)
47. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (I don't care how cheesy it is but I reread this every Christmas and enjoy it just as much every time)
51. The Secret Garden - Francis Hodgson Burnett (lovely book)
54. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (reasonably interesting but does drag a bit in places. Never saw the end coming)
56. The BFG - Roald Dahl (see above for comments)
62. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (enjoyable, highly engaging and wonderfully written book)
70. Lord of the Flies - William Golden (bleak, harsh but gripping tale. Poor Ralph and Piggy )
74. Mathilda - Roald Dahl (see above for comments)
77. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (fabulous, unputdownable gothic tale)
78. Ulysses - James Joyce (probably the biggest joke ever played on readers...woeful, dull, insipid tripe. Four weeks of my life I will never get back. And yes, I understood all the crap hidden between the lines...and I syill don't think it's that clever. I do think Mr. Joyce played a very clever joke on us. )
81. The Twits - Roald Dahl (see above for comments)
82. I Capture the Castle - Jodie Smith (great book to get lost in and a highly enjoyable read)
89. Magician - Raymond E. Feist (great fantasy, exciting, gripping and fabulously detailed)
94. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho (only okay. Thought it was a bit overrated personally, and ridiculously self-indulgent)

So that's what I've read from the list. But just to add, I won't be reading the Jacqueline Wilson or Meg Cabot books (there's five in there and I would be ill if I had to read one ). I am going to substitute the following instead;
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson
Last Exit to Brooklyn - Hubert Selby Jr
The Pearl - John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kasey

Also, I have started but never finished all the Jane Austin's on the list but I'm just not a fan. However, I'm going to make myself do it this time! Hope to accomplish this within the year and am off to town this evening to get the first!

[girvtheswerve]

Best of luck. Big challenge!

[fionav3]

Originally Posted by girvtheswerve

Best of luck. Big challenge!

Thank you.

[fionav3]

85. The God of Small Things – Arundhatti Roy

This was the first book I picked up from the mad reading challenge that I’ve set myself because it’s a book I’ve always intended to read. And I must confess that I’m more than a little disappointed.

It’s not a bad book as a whole and deals with some fairly interesting subject matter (love, class and caste in India, how politics and social values interfere with the personal and private and most significantly how a small event or seemingly meaningless chain of events can affect the lives of many). But dear god is it longwinded! There are some nice descriptive passages that add a wonderful sense of atmosphere to certain scenes but for the most part, the writing is tediously detailed, verbose and self indulgent. Do we really need to know what colour the passing slug is, or how aged a sodding pickle jar is? As I read this book, I was continuously irritated by the author’s wandering onto meaningless topics and observations and got the impression that she was trying to show how clever her prose was whereas (to me at least) it felt trite and ridiculously convoluted. Nothing irritates me more than an author who tries too hard to show how clever they are at the detriment of the story. And this is what I feel happened here. The story had the potential to be a fabulous rendition of human fallibility and weakness as well as a wonderful depiction of just how deeply we need love (its almost a premise by the time the story ends that a life lived without love is a life not lived at all) but instead fell into an irritating collection of words and descriptions. It’s a shame because I really felt the author had the potential to write a great piece of fiction as she had a really great eye for writing human nature and I loved how she wrote the children’s PoV (innocent, wandering, naïve, original) but it all just got lost under the weightiness of words. Disappointing read.

[fionav3]

32. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Now this one was more like it! Very, very strange read (magical realism at its best) but also very unputdownable. Telling the tale of the Buendia family from the founding of Macondo, it depicts the family's various trials and tribulations (often cyclical in nature as they all seem doomed to repeat the errors of previous generations). In the heart of it all is a strange manuscript to be decoded and the involvment of a mysterious gypsy named Melquiades (although I won't say more here as they involve the pinnacle reveal of the story). It was fairly riveting and the many unexplained supernatural and mysterious phenomena occuring throughout the novel only added to the wonder of this book. Thoroughly enjoyed it (even with the numerous disturbing allusions to incest!). One thing though, as opposed to my previous read The God of Small things (where most sentences were useless, meandering and ridiculously convoluted), One Hundred Years of Solitude packs an epic into every chapter. No sentence is wasted and you have to read carefully as there's always something to be considered. The constant use of the same family names throughout the generations makes this a slightly confusing read at times but overall it really is a wonderful read and a highly enjoyable book that seems timeless and will always translate. Great stuff.

[fionav3]

33. The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follet

Pretty epic in scope this one but an enjoyable read. Written during the middle ages in England, it follows a large collection of characters of different classes and how their lives interact. At the core is the building of Kingsbridge Cathedral.

I enjoyed this, it was interesting, well written and had some fascinating characters. My only quibble (and it's pretty small) is that some of the characters were a little two dimensional in that they were overly evil with no redeeming features (William and Alfred are just two that spring to mind) and while its possible to have a purely evil persona in humanity, those are few and far between. However, Pillars of the Earth hosts a terrible abundance of unscrupulous and wicked types who seem to rampage unpunished for most of the story (nearly sending the reader daft with the injustice of it!). I like how the bits if history are tied in to the tale too; the sinking of the white ship and the murder of Thomas Becket. Nicely written book and a good read. I'd reccomend this one.

[fionav3]

19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

I haven't made up my mind about this book. It started quite slow and lagged TERRIBLY in places but was overall an enjoyable enough yarn. Set during world war II on a small Greek island occupied by German and Italian forces, it tells the story of Pelagia and her love affair with an italian captain (the aforementioned Corelli). The book dips in and out of various characters lives and stories (the wonderful Carlo springs to mind, a gay enormous soldier who fell in love with one of his compatriots and after his death, captain Corelli) with differing degrees of success. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it just left me bored or feeling confused (as with Mandras, what he'd endured still didn't explain his complete reversal from the romatic fisherman to the brutal pig). Anyway, I found the first half of the book a little slow going (not enough of the colourful characters like Dr. Iannias and too much of the odd captain Corelli) but by the end of the novel it had achieved a flow that made reading much more enjoyable.

Found the ending a little unsatisfactory (won't give it away for anyone who hasn't read it) as I couldn't understand why Corelli didn't stop when Pellagia called him and he would have discovered the truth. Left me feeling a little unsatisfied even though it was a reasonably ha[[y and neat ending. Still haven't made up my mind whether or not I like this book.

[fionav3]

13. Birdsong-Sebastian Faulks

Okay, so I may have got a little waylaid while reading this book (someone lent me Aldous Huxley’s Brave new world and I couldn’t put it down!) but this book was pretty dull and a bit of a chore to finish. I’m not going to go into two much detail except to say that this book spanned a couple of years but took place mostly during the first world war and about the only interesting thing in it was the detail Faulks put into trench warfare which was fairly fascinating. Aside from that there was a ‘love story’ (which wasn’t really a great love story (in fact, I wouldn’t have termed it a love story at all, more like a flash in the pan) and didn’t really make a whole lot of sense to me), some less than likeable characters and a granddaughter digging through her grandfather’s past in the war. Truthfully found the whole book a complete snooze fest and couldn’t really be assed putting in much effort to a review. Brave New World on the other hand I would totally recommend!

[fionav3]

87. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

I read this months ago and only just realized the other night that it was on the list.

My favourite from the list so far. I could not put this book down and had it read in just one night. It was a fascinating read. Set in London in a future 'Utopia' (seen by the characters in the book as a Utopia but written by Huxley as more of a Dystopia where free thinking has all but disappeared), where children are no longer born but 'created' and decanted and raised in Hatcheries. Most of the world is unified under The World State creating a peaceful, stable and plentiful society where povery, illness and unemployment rarely exist. Members of society are divided into castes; Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsillion. Each child in each caste when created is given specific tastes, morals, beliefs, expectations and ambitions so that they are happy with their lot in life and do not aspire to more. This makes the lower castes easier to manipulate. In certain areas of the world, a few people continue with life as was and outside the realms of this new society and these people are known as savages.

I could go into immense detail about this book because I enjoyed it so much but I don't want to spoil it. I'd highly reccomend it though and can't believe it was written in 1931 because it's so unbelievably forward looking with the whole concept of test-tube babies. It's also an interesting notion of a world that does not hate it's oppressors but loves them. Fantstic stuff.

[fionav3]

8. 1984 - George Orwell

Can’t even begin to describe how much I loved this book. Absolutely wonderful and I can completely see why it’s on the list; I could not put it down! Thought it was an absolutely chilling vision of the future. Thought Orwell’s handling of the thought police as an entity to be feared even before they actually did was masterful, I could actually feel Winston’s fear of them. The characterisation was flawless; Winston’s silent repressed anger at the establishment and his eventual rebellion through his relationship with Julia, ending with his final terrified betrayal of her to save himself were so real and so vivid. The mindless fear and pretended mindlessness by other characters in the interest of self preservation were flawlessly depicted.

As Huxley’s Brave New World was the last novel I read on the list, I couldn’t help comparing it to 1984. And while Huxley’s novel was more about mankind loving his oppressors, Orwell’s mankind obeyed his oppressors out of fear. Personally, I would rather live in Huxley’s future than Orwell’s. However grim the mind control of Brave New World, people were content and the worst punishment the could receive was banishment to an outerland (which as revealed, wasn’t really punishment at all) as opposed to the Orwellian torture and room 101.

Having read 1984, I can easily say that it is a phenomenal novel that makes my alltime top ten list. Fantastic stuff.

[fionav3]

64. The Thorn Birds-Colleen MCCullough

I haven't forgotten about my reading challange and I read this in fits and starts throughout the summer, but life was just too hectic to get much reading in. Anyway, on with the review.

Epic, mildly entertaining, winding, confusing...The Thorn Birds is a rather enjoyably guilty read (I say this because of its similarities to modern day chick lit). Like One Hundred Years of Solitude, this book spans several generations of the Cleary family. From the dregs of poverty in Ireland, they move to a hoped for better future in the Australian outback. There follows the family's fortunes (or more often, misfortunes) through the eyes of Meggie from a child into old age. We can almost predict the rest; tragic love stories, unrequited love, death, tragedy, blah-blah. And the relationship between Meggie and Ralph gave me the wiggles from day one! Urrgh, I spent most of the novel hoping they wouldn't give into their feelings for one another. She was a child, he was a man when they met...can anyone say bleurgh?! More interesting to me was Paddy and Fee's relationship; he so idolised her in his own strange way and she was so indifferent to him. His death in the fire when he ran around screaming her name was so desperately sad. In the end though, there was no really happy relationship in the book...at least, none that got a forever after happy ending! So i guess in that regard, its not like modern day chick lit.

An enjoyable enough read, although not one that I would have placed in the top 100; it just didn't stand out enough for me.

[fionav3]

88. The Five People you Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom

I read this weeks ago but hadn't time to review so I'm afraid my comments may be a little abbreviated!

I'm going to begin by saying this is one of my favourites from the list so far (and the best I've read in a while), once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down (and what's more, I went out a few days later, bought -and read! - Tuesdays with Morrie and Just One More Day!). Really enjoyed Mitch Albom's writing; the Five People you Meet in Heaven was beautiful, scary, touching and poignant all at once. That bit at the end with the hands...oh my! Moreover, I found Albom's concept of heaven quite fascinating; there was a certain element of the small world theory to it (that idea that you're connected to every person on the planet by only six people) in the people that Eddie meets in heaven. I'd highly reccomend this book for a short, thought provoking read.

[fionav3]

17. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

This took me months to get through and what a chore! I was so disappointed as I do love Charles Dickens and had always intended reading Great Expectations. I would read a chapter, put it down, then take two weeks to come back to the book. It was slow, dull and the prose was winding and trite. The only high point to the book was Miss Haversham (who was every bit as creepy and intriguing as I had imagined!). Sadly, she was not in it enough for me. Found Pip a dull and sometimes less than likeable narrator, and with the exception of Joe and Miss Haversham, there wasn't a single character I found either likeable or interesting. This is a shame as Dickens is normally a master in creating interesting and memorable characters, even when they are just Caricatures (think the Artful dodger, Bill Sykes, Fagin, Gradgrind (random, but Hard Times is one of my favourite Dicken's novels), Scrooge, Marley, Tiny Tim).

I think maybe my own Great Expectations ruined my enjoyment of the book as I expected more from it than I got.