A Century of Books

  I have set myself the 2012 challenge of reading a book published in every year of the twentieth century... here are the links to all the books I've read and reviewed so far!1900 - Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome1901 - The Spinster Book by Myrtle Reed1902 - The Westminster Alice by Saki1903 - Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw1904 - Canon in Residence by V.L. Whitechurch1905 - Lovers in London by A.A. Milne1906 - The Railway Children by E. Nesbit1907 - The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit1908 - The World I Live In by Helen Keller1909...

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Books Read 2011

(an 'x' indicates a re-read - thanks, David, for pointing out that I'd forgotten to mention this!)1. Howards End - E.M. Forster2. And Furthermore - Judi Dench and John Miller3. The English - Jeremy Paxman4. The Skin Chairs - Barbara Comyns5. Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan6. Personal Pleasures - Rose Macaulay7. A Kind Man - Susan Hill8. Gay Life - E.M. Delafield9. William - E.H. Young10. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson11. The Machine Stops/The Celestial Omnibus - E.M. Forster12. At Large and At Small - Anne Fadiman13. To Tell My Story - Irene Vanbrugh14. Saplings - Noel Streatfeild15. The Gingerbread...

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"When we lose ourselves in a book..."

I don't think I'm going to do a traditional review of the lovely bookish essay collection Stop What You're Doing And Read This! - I'm just going to continue quoting pieces from it now and then, because there are so many wonderful little snippets from it.  And I'll try to find nice paintings of readers to accompany them (and do my best not just to copy Harriet's!) The first post was here; today's comes from author Nicholas Carr (and the painting is anonymous, unsold at a 2010 auction):"It is only when we leave behind the incessant busyness of our lives...

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End of Year Meme

Tonight I shall be doing a little variation the meme I've done for the last few years - which has been developed and expanded by various other bloggers - and getting a bit more specific.  But quite a few of the same questions will reappear...  (In case you missed my Top 15 Books of 2011, click here.) First, here's the books and authors I read this year, in a pretty word cloud:Number of books read:Only 106, which is the fewest for quite a few years, and doesn't bode too well for my A Century of Books project... still, it's not a bad number. ...

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Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Doctor Who is on downstairs, and since I am both (a) not a fan of Doctor Who, and (b) a coward, I am sitting in my room and writing a blog post about Great Expectations.  There is something of a link, though, since people in Britain will be able to watch an adaptation of Great Expectations on 27th December - I'm looking forward to it, even with Dickens adaptations being, in general, not so great.  What makes Dickens so brilliant, to my mind, is the way he writes the narrative, and the pacing of the dialogue - which is usually lost on television,...

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Happy Christmas!

Just back from the midnight service, and wishing you all a blessed Christmas, wherever you are in the world.Also, because why not?, a picture of me at Christmas in 1991.with love - Si...

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Top 15 of 2011

I'm going to have a few days' rest from blogging and celebrate Christmas - let's face it, there have been plenty of reviews recently for you to get your teeth into!  But I shan't leave you abandoned, oh no.I love lists, I really love 'em.   Putting things in order has delighted me ever since Mum used to empty a big tin of buttons on the table for us to sort.  That's why I don't make a top-ten-in-no-order list - I rank my most loved books of 2011 in strict order, even when it is a far from exact science.  It's how much I liked them,...

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Safety Pins - Christopher Morley

I seem to write my reviews in protracted parts now - there are the bits I can't help typing out and posting as soon as I read them, and then, rolling along months later, comes the actual review proper.  The snippets are probably more enjoyable to read, and certainly speedier to write, but I'll leave that sort of blogging to people like Claire who does it so beautifully.  Me, I like the sound of my own voice.  So not only did I give you Christopher Morley's delightful, wonderful essay 'On Visiting Bookshops' back in July (go and read it now,...

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The Man Who Was Thursday - G.K. Chesterton

I've nearly come to the end of my pile of must-review-before-the-end-of-2011 books (and I really should have spaced them out a bit, perhaps... oh well, we'll have a bit of a rest after Christmas.  Or an avalanche of my Books of 2011 posts.  We'll see.) Now, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) is a curious little book, not least because the central importance of it doesn't reveal itself right until the end - at which point the rug is pulled from under your feet, and everything you've read takes on something of a new dimension.  Hmm... I don't think...

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Santas everywhere!

I've been a lucky boy today, since my Persephone Secret Santa arrived to coincide with opening day for the LibraryThing Virago Secret Santa - so I got this little lot of goodies, courtesy of lovely Emma and lovely Rob.  Thanks, guys! Emma chose Miss Buncle Married and this lovely Christmas tree biscuit (I'm glad I took a photo, since I've eaten most of it now) - Rob surprised me with two authors I've been intending to read this year: G.B. Stern's White Oleander and Margaret Kennedy's Together and Apart.Have any of you read any of the...

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Nella Last's Peace

Nella Last's War was my favourite read from 2010, and when I tell you that Nella Last's Peace is more of the same, then that should tell you how impressed I was by it.  (Thank you Profile Books for sending it to me.)  True, I didn't warm to it quite as much, and I'm not sure it's of quite such historical importance, but it is only repetition that will inevitably place this book lower on my reads of 2011 - last year I was expecting mediocrity and was bowled over; this year I expected Nella Last to be as good as she is.For those who have thus far...

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Cornflower's meme - and a Sunday Song

I do like a meme which plays with book titles, and Karen has started this one - I've also seen it done by Harriet, Claire, and Jane.  A few of these will be appearing in my Top 15 of 2011 (yes, it's gone up to fifteen - there were just too many good books.)  Have a go yourself, if you like...My Day in BooksI began the day with A View From Downshire HillOn my way to work I saw The Town in Bloomand walked by People on a Bridgeto avoid The Perfect Pestbut I made sure to stop at A House in the Country.In the office, my boss said, "How Can You Bear To Be Human?"and sent me to research Life...

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The Lottery and Other Stories - Shirley Jackson

Back in June, I posted Shirley Jackson's most famous short story 'The Lottery' and promised that, sooner or later, I'd write about her collection The Lottery and Other Stories.  Well, six months later I'm finally going to write a post about it, but I have a feeling that it won't quite qualify as a review.  But I'm not one of those bloggers who gets myself in a tizzy over whether or not to use the word 'review', so shall we move on?If you haven't read 'The Lottery', I suggest you click on the link above and acquaint yourself.  It won't take...

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Persephone Secret Santa

Well, today is the day we are supposed to reveal our Persephone Secret Santa gifts... but... I don't have mine yet. Turns out I was going to be given it at the Persephone Books Open House today, but in the end I couldn't go... because I had locked myself out!  I wasn't stuck outside for very long, but I was on quite a tight schedule, and it was long enough to make it impractical to get to London and pack for going home for Christmas (which I'm doing later today.)However, I did get a card from my Persephone Secret Santa this morning!  In lieu...

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So Long, See You Tomorrow - William Maxwell

I want to cry a little bit, because I just spent two hours writing a post on So Long, See You Tomorrow, which disappeared when I tried to add a picture.  Sometimes I hate Blogger... Well, I'm going to give it another go, but if my enthusiasm wanes a little, you'll know why...It has ended up being quite neat, though, that I'm blogging about a novella by William Maxwell - following on from other reviews in this vein this week.  I fell in love with Maxwell when I read They Came Like Swallows (thanks Karen!), bought up a few of his books, read half...

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Up At The Villa - W. Somerset Maugham

I'm trying to get through all the books I've read and not reviewed in 2011, so there will be a flurry of reviews over the next fortnight.  Prepare yourselves!A while ago I did one of my novella reading weekends, but I don't think I ever actually told you about it, before or afterwards.  One of the books I read was my first stab at W. Somerset Maugham, only eight or so years since I first bought one of his books.  Which wasn't the one I read.  Up at the Villa (1941) came recommended by Simon Savidge (see links at the bottom) and is only...

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