Book – HombreAuthor – Elmore LeonardYear – 1961Genre – Western With the slight exception of the fantasy tinted Gunslinger earlier this year, Hombre is – I believe – the first Western novel that I have ever read. Generally considered to be a true classic example of its genre (at least by Wikipedia), it tells the…
Month: September 2010
Book 68 – No Country For Old Men
Book – No Country For Old MenAuthor – Cormac McCarthyYear – 2005Genre – Fiction Cormac McCarthy is generally considered to be one of the greatest American writers of our time. With books such as this and The Road he is held with high regard across the Atlantic, and – possibly off of the back of…
Book 67 – Grave Peril
Book – Grave PerilAuthor – Jim ButcherYear – 2001Genre – Fantasy Detective The Jim Butcher Dresden Files series is becoming a little bit of a guilty pleasure for me. I am not one hundred percent certain of its relative artistic merit compared to, say, Dickens, Austen or even modern writers such as King or McEwan, but…
Book 66 – Fury
Book – FuryAuthor – Salman RushdieYear – 2001Genre – Fiction Salman Rushdie is an undoubtedly brilliant writer. Fury is full of clever illusions to classic art, pop culture, politics and science, of intelligent discourse on the state of the world, of impressive parallels between characters and real life issues. Unfortunately, it is also really really…
Book 65 – A Clockwork Orange
Book – A Clockwork OrangeAuthor – Anthony BurgessYear – 1962Genre – Dystopian Fiction For no particular reason (well, except for a Book Club 10 for a fiver deal, and a coincidental theme in the charity shops) I have recently acquired a lot of books which later became massive films. Being the kind of person who doesn’t…
Book 64 – The Winslow Boy
Book – The Winslow BoyAuthor – Terrence RattiganYear – 1946Genre – Play It has been two weeks since I last blogged a book review, but don’t think for a second that I haven’t been reading. It’s just that through a remarkably anal sense of how I am doing this, the pictures of the covers of…
Book 63 – Brave New World
Book – Brave New WorldAuthor – Aldus HuxleyYear – 1932Genre – Dystopian Sci-Fi It can feel quite wonderful to read a book considered a classic, but at the same time, incredibly boring. In this challenge so far this year I think I have made it three or four pages into about six different ‘classics’, before…
Book 62 – The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios
Book – The Facts Behind the Helsinki RoccamatiosAuthor – Yann MartelYear – 1993Genre – Short Stories Last year was the first time that I attempted The Book Challenge – falling short at ninety-six – and of all the books I read, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi was one of the very best – a fantastic story…
Book 61 – Hitman
Book – HitmanAuthor – Bret HartYear – 2007Genre – Autobiography Well, following on from my big gap between reviews (I just managed to keep it under a month) I chose a ‘slobberknocker’ of a book to start up again on. At just over six hundred pages, it is a good job that this is a…
Sound of Silence
My going nearly a month without adding any new books here on my blog is not necessarily a sign that I have not been reading very much recently. So have I done much reading recently? Well, no, I haven’t, but that is by the by. August always ends up a very busy time for me. …