Oh I did love for you and what did you do for me

OK, so my final count was 84. Not exactly a huge total. Less than ten per cent of the total books. So, are there any conclusions for me to draw?

Well, of course, the whole thing is pretty arbitrary and you could probably ask another group of people to make up a list of 1000 Novels You Should Read and you would get 1000 totally different books (well, maybe not 1000, but there would still be a big difference). But I've realised a few things.

I haven't read a lot of the books that English graduates are supposed to have. I've read no Austen at all, for example. And only one Dickens.

I have no problem at all starting a book but not finishing it. This I think is a good thing or at least not necessarily a bad thing.

I really ought to read some William Faulkner.

I don't read a book straightaway. Some of the books that are still on my shelves have been there for years. I have to be in the mood to read a book.

I am stagnating to a certain extent in my reading habits.

So, an interesting exercise. And it has energised me to read some of the books that have been on my shelves. Plus, I am going to work on my list of books that I think people ought to read. Not 1000. Perhaps I'll be a little less ambitious and work on 50.

And I came a long way before I came across the sea

OK, it's time for the last category in the Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Should Must Read, as I chase the 100 books (quite why I am not sure. It would only be a tenth of the books on the actual list, which is pretty shoddy anyway).

So, State of the Nation it is...

Read
Albert Camus - The Plague
Thomas Hardy - The Mayor of Casterbridge
Alan Paton - Cry, The Beloved Country
Zadie Smith - White Teeth
Theodore Fontane - Effi Briest
Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting

Books I Am Supposed To Have Read
George Eliot - Middlemarch
Johnathan Frantzen - The Corrections
Barry Hines - A Kestrel For A Knave


Still on Shelves
Alasdair Gray - Lanark

Of these books, I'm picking The Plague and Trainspotting for my list. And I now have a grand total of 84. It doesn't really seem so grand does it, for someone with a degree in Language and Literature.

Conclusions to follow in due course

Oh I said that’s a clichéd phrase and anyway I like it when the rain goes

Right, Sci Fi and Fantasy next, probably my least favourite genre of all time. Here goes nothing.


Read
Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory
Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
William Golding - Lord of the Flies
James Hogg - Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
JK Rowling - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty Four

Still on Shelves
Michel Houellebecq - Atomised
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
Bram Stoker - Dracula
Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Book I Started But Put Down Pretty Quickly
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Special Mentions
Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
Francois Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
CS Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia


Well, it could have been worse. It is obvious from the list I think that I veer towards the non-spaceships/non-hobbits/non-magical quest side of the genre (Harry Potter aside, but to me the series is classic boarding school romp, with a bit of magic thrown in, and I mean that as a compliment). The fact that I picked up the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, and got bored with it as soon as the world ended probably sums up my feelings about this genre quite succinctly. As far as the special mentions go, I read the short story version of Flowers For Algernon; I have read Gargantua, but not Pantagruel, and the only one of the Chronicles of Narnia that I managed to finish was The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, which I read about 8 times while on holiday in Portugal (the only other book I had taken with me was, rather inexplicably, The Blue Peter Book of Limericks). However, I think putting a whole series of books on the list is cheating. Which leads me to His Dark Materials, which is on the Guardian's list. I only got three-quarters of the way through Northern Lights, which meant I didn't even think it really warranted a special mention, except to say that I am the only person I know who doesn't like it.

Any of these books make my own list? Well, possibly Private Memoirs and Confessions of A Justified Sinner, as it really is a wonderful book, and this list reminded me of its very existence.

So the running total is 78, with only one category to go.

Well you said I tend to spend my life chasing rainbows

So the next chapter in the Guardian Books saga is love.

Read
Joaquim Maria Achado de Assis - Don Casmurro
Charlotte Bronte - Villette
Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss
F Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Ford Maddox Ford - The Good Soldier
Lewis Grassic Gibbon - Sunset Song
Thomas Hardy - Far From The Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy - Tess of he D'Urbervilles
Nathaniel Hawthorne - THe Scarlet Letter
Pierre-Ambrose-Francois Chodorlos de Laclos - Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Love In The Time of Cholera
Ian McEwan - Atonement
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Bernard Schlink - The Reader
Anne Tyler - The Accidental Tourist

Still On Shelves
Gustav Flaubert - Madame Bovary
Paul Gallico - The Snow Goose
Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Surprisingly, well at least to me, there are none on this list that I started but didn't finish, or was supposed to read but couldn't be bothered. There are quite a few on the list that I probably should have read. It seems strange to me that I haven't read any Austen, for example....

I think for my own list of must-read books, I'd choose The Great Gatsby and that's it.

In any case, I make my running total 72, and there are 2 categories left. I don't think I am going to make it to the 100....

Who wants love Without the looks

So, continuing my trek through the Guardian's list, next category is Family and Self. If it means what I think it means, I could score highly-ish, although I doubt anything will come close to my crime figure. But before I start, I forgot to pick out those from my crime list that I would add to my own list of essential books would be Brighton Rock, The Secret History, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and LA Confidential. Much as I love Sara Paretsky, I don't think either of those would be one that I would choose.

Anyway, on to Family and Self.

Read
Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
Kate Atkinson - Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Iain Banks - The Crow Road
Lynne Reid Banks - The L-Shaped Room
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex
Graham Greene - The Power and the Glory
John Irving - A Prayer For Owen Meany
Bernard Malamud - The Assistant
Sue Townsend - The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and 3/4
Alan Warner - Morven Callar
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Albert Camus - The Outsider
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
JD Salinger - The Catcher In The Rye



Still On Shelves
William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury
Laurie Lee - Cider With Rosie

Books I Am Supposed To Have Read
Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things

So, that is 15 read, bringing my total to 56. This particular category actually includes my favourite book of all time, The Outsider, so that goes on my on essential list. Others? Well, probably Middlesex, the Power and the Glory and The Crow Road.

I wonder if I am going to make 100...

I've seen it in your eyes And I've read it in books

OK, round three, and this could and should be a biggie. Crime. I read a lot of crime fiction. Tons in fact. Although not all of it would probably be construed as literary. So, maybe I won't do as well as I think.

Anyway, here goes.

Read
John Buchan - The Thirty Nine Steps
Patricia Cornwell - Postmortem
Brett Easton Ellis - American Psycho
Ian Fleming - Casino Royale
Ian Fleming - Goldfinger
Ian Fleming - You Only Live Twice
Graham Greene - Brighton Rock
Stephen King - Misery
Johnathan Lethem - Motherless Brooklyn
Walter Mosely - Devil In A Blue Dress
Sara Paretksy - Toxic Shock
Sara Paretksy - Blacklist
John Steinbeck - Of Mice And Men
Donna Tartt - The Secret History
Jim Thompson - The Getaway
Agatha Christie - And Then There Were None
Agatha Christie - The Mysterious Affair At Styles
Agatha Christie - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Agatha Christie - The Secret Adversary
Agatha Christie - The Murder At The Vicarage
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Study In Scarlet
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles
Michael Dibdin - Ratking
Michael Dibdin - Vendetta
Michael Dibdin - Dirty Tricks
James Ellroy - LA Confidential
James Ellroy - The Big Nowhere

Still On Shelves
Wilkie Collins - The Woman In White
Wilkie Collins - Moonstone
Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose
Frederick Forsyth - The Day of the Jackal
Dashiell Hammet - The Glass Key
Partricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train
Graham Greene - The Ministry of Fear
Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird

Books I Started And Got Most Of The Way Through But Just Could Not Get To The End
Peter Hoeg - Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow

So quite a lot read in crime then. However, there are still some oddities. I am a huge Christie fan, but cannot fathom why they chose The Secret Adversary. And why on earth was The Black Dahlia not on there (I agree with the other two Ellroys, but it seems an odd omission). And to only choose one Jim Thompson is just criminal. There are so many to choose from and the man is a genius. Still, I am glad to see that Sara Paretsky made the list. She is probably the only contemporary writer today in the genre whose new books I genuinely look forward to reading.

27 crime novels in total, taking me up to 41.

I said there’s more to life than a broken heart dear console you

Update on the Guardian's 1000 Books You Should Read. It turns out I calculated wrongly. The pages also have side links, which I thought were just supplementary. But no, apparently they count too.

So firstly a little addenda to my previous post. In addition to those War and Travel that I have already blogged about....


Still On Shelves
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurty
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig

Not really made a whole lot of difference, but it does with some of the categories.

So, next up is Comedy. I didn't hold out much hope for this one either, but it was a little more fruitful than I was expecting. But not much.

Read
Helen Fielding - Bridget Jones Diary
Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews
Graham Greene - Our Man In Havana
Graham Greene - Travels With My Aunt
Mark Haddon - Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night
Nick Hornby - High Fidelity
Jerome K Jerome - Three Men In A Boat
Armistead Maupin - Tales Of The City

Of these, the ones I would put my list would be High Fidelity (which is just one the best books on music ever written, by someone who understands why the question "who would you kill come the musical revolution" is endlessly fascinating.

Still on Shelves
Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
Kenneth Grahame - The Wind In The Willows

Books I Am Supposed to Have Read
Will Self - Great Apes

I started this, and got about 3 pages in. It was chosen by someone in my book group whose opinion I respect hugely, but we appear to have differing tastes in literature.... But you know, it makes the world go round.

So after two categories, the running total is: 14

You said you couldn’t find anyone to love you

The Guardian newspaper recently published a feature on 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read and it has proved a quite obsessive discussion point for me and my friends The Family Moo, mainly regarding how many we had read and how aghast we were at the low number (Mummy Moo is currently leading with 170 something, but then as her name suggests, she is old enough to be our mother). And also expressing surprise/disgust at the ones they had chosen to omit.

They've split them into sections and I've worked my way through them systematically. While it was interesting to see which I had read, it was just as fascinating to see which of them I had bought but still had on my shelves (having just not got round to them). And then there was the list of those which I was supposed to have read, either at school or university, or for my Book Group.

The first section is War and Travel. I wasn't expecting much from this and this proved true. It broke down as follows.

Read
Nina Bawden - Carrie's War
William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War
Sebastian Faulks - Birdsong
Khaled Hosseini - The Kite Runner
Robert Louis Stevenson - Kidnapped
Robert Louis Stevenson - Treasure Island

2 of these I read at school, and were I compiling a list of books that I think people should read, I would probably include Birdsong. It was one of those books which once I read I bought for quite a few people as presents. Books like these don;t come along that often.

Still on shelves
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurty
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig

Books I am supposed to have read
JG Farrell - The Siege of Krishnapur
Irene Nemirovsky - Suite Francaise
Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything Is Illuminated
Laurence Sterne - A Sentimental Journey


Anyway, not exactly the most auspicious start - 6 books read out of a possible 117. And just as many that I was supposed to have read or still had on my shelves, intending to read.

And there is an oddity in this section. There's a book that I think I have read, but I can't actually remember. The book in question is All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. The reason I think I have read it is complicated. As a teenager I was a goth, and was obsessed with the messages (or run out etchings as they are apparently known) scratched into the centre grooves of vinyl releases by the Sisters of Mercy. On the 12inch of Alice, one of these messages was Im Westen Nichts Neues, which is the original German title of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front. It stands to reason that as an earnest goth I would have tried to read it and I vaguely remember borrowing it from the library. But as to whether I read it or not, I have no recollection.

Anyone, first category down. Perhaps I'll do better with some of the other categories. Although given that the next one is Science Fiction and Fantasy, I wouldn't hold your breath.