Book #43 Various Pets Alive And Dead by Marina Lewycka

Various Pets Alive And Dead

Various Pets Alive And Dead is the story of Serge and Clara, both former commune kids whose parents were activists in their younger days. Each has grown up to rebel or conform in their own way, Clara has become an ordinary member of society, Serge has gone in the polar opposite direction and become a stock broker. Their younger sister Ulyana who has Downs Syndrome still lives at home; and for reasons none can explain their long cohabiting parents are suddenly desperate to reunite the old gang, and formally marry.

Having already read A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian and found it deeply unfunny despite its marketing as a comic novel, I doubt I would ever have voluntarily read Various Pets Alive And Dead which was a book club choice. This was also marketed as a comic novel, HILARIOUS, claims the front cover. I didn't laugh once.

The entire Serge story is disengaging and beyond annoying, attempting to declare its own relevancy by having Northern Rock and Woolworths collapsing about him. This entire storyline made my eyes glaze over and I really couldn't have cared less. My entire reading group concurred that the novel would have been vastly improved without Serge. At one point he wanders into the lair of a dominatrix, awkwardly encounters a colleague, and wanders back out again. It hangs in mid air with a question mark as to why this scene exists, as do much of the other events. 

Of his sisters Clara's storyline reminded me entirely of A Casual Vacancy (not a compliment) as she inhabits a cliche of a downtrodden and mousy primary school teacher attempting to do good on an estate. All the working class people are of course, a Daily Mail stereotype of grubby underfed chavs who would steal your purse as soon as look at you.

Their sister who has Downs is the most embarrassingly written of the lot, there is nothing to her character whatsoever other than an uninhibited and inappropriately expressed desire for sex, with no other personality to speak of else. Did research into Downs basically amount to a bit of googling here?     

There are two shoutouts for equality here though, for one it's nice to have a character with a disability in a novel, doesn't happen often, and for two a cardboard cutout with no depth she may well be but at least the same can be said of every other character in the novel. She hasn't received any lesser treatment, all are two dimensional at best.

A further problem exists in that there really is no plot to speak of making this a character led piece with rubbish characters. Throughout the book I kept thinking that the real story in this book belonged to the prime of the commune and perhaps particularly to the fire that destroyed it, and that a novel which had laid its focus there would have been a better one. Surely the idea that children reject the values of their parents is an obvious and worn one?
Some people said that perhaps books about communes had been overdone but I couldn't think of any.

For me, there was a total disengagement, I was not at any point involved with this novel. It was literally just words on a page that I turned. I certainly did not enter its world or feel anything except irritation at any point.

In fact, personally, the novel had just two high points, my home town got name-checked and you never see it in literature and also an obscure pub in London that I happen to have been in, the road its on, and the cemetery opposite. When those are your take away highlights from a novel that is nearly 400 pages long, you've got a problem.

The denouement is terrible, one of those summations of what happened to everyone which I happen to loathe, there's a "revelation" in there which has no impact because you don't care, and you realise that the whole pretext of "the plot" came to naught. Outcomes for other characters seem hastily concocted as though a deadline approached. Some further, cliched, distasteful, remarks are made about the sex life of our Downs Syndrome character.

The End. 

Dismal. I've read this, now you don't have to. Avoid.

4/10 Tweet

Book #35 Where'd You Go Bernadette? by Maria Semple

Where'd You Go Bernadette?

Where'd You Go Bernadette? is an irritating, garish novel existing entirely of exaggerated caricatures instead of characters and implausible, extreme, plot sequences which though they attempt to satirise the over-achieving private school yet liberal Tiger Parent set, end up grating upon the reader substantially. There is no touchstone here no means of identifying with any of it, unless you too are a competitive Mom who gave your child a silly name, is over involved with the school and either works in tech or has a spouse who does. For a comic novel, it's not particularly funny either, just annoying.

Also, the premise of the book is about the fact that Bernadette has gone missing and that her daughter Bee has set out to piece together what happened. Bernadette actually goes nowhere for 3/4 of the novel and Bee finds her relatively quickly and easily.

Bernadette's husband is a foul character and yet all his misdeeds are as forgotten at the end of the book as though they didn't happen, and alls well that ends well.

Over sold, over hyped, and over the top. Avoid. 2/10   Tweet

Book #21 The First Phonecall From Heaven by Mitch Albom

The First Phonecall From Heaven

In summary of the plot, The First Phonecall From Heaven by popular American writer Mitch Albom is about a group of people from a fictionalized Clearwater, Michigan who begin to receive phonecalls from loved ones who are deceased and the ensuing consternation, scepticism and media coverage.

This is not a book that I would ever have voluntarily chosen but it was selected for Book Club this month. Normally, when I take a dim view of a book before reading I chastise myself for prejudice and book snobbery and hope, sometimes correctly, that I will be proven wrong.

Unfortunately, my prejudices against this novel were entirely borne out. This book is so badly written that I cringed. It is tripe of the highest order, complete and utter bilge. It is easily the worst book I've read in the last 3 years since the blog began in 2011, and would probably rank highly as one of the worst books I have ever read in my whole entire life.

Diabolical.

Verdict : 0/10

Book #53 To Say Nothing Of The Dog by Connie Willis

To Say Nothing Of The Dog

Length Of Time In Possession : 2/3 weeks (Part of A Blogging Good Read)

To Say Nothing Of The Dog has all the hallmarks of a book that I should really love. A time travel element, a historical/academic element and a 19th Century novel element, everything about it seems designed to appeal to me and I approached it with enthusiasm.

Imagine my disappointment therefore that I spent weeks on this novel barely getting through a few pages at each attempt and stopped before page 200 or so.

In many ways I saw it as a waste of a great opportunity. Time travel has been invented and yet all anyone does with it is research Coventry Cathedral on the whim of some rich woman who is trying to rebuild it in the future, with particular emphasis on 'the bishop's bird stump' a missing artefact.

In some ways this is part of the point & its all supposed to have a kind of tongue in cheek wit to it, but instead of being amused by it, I found it asinine and at times twee. I cared neither for the characters or the outcome and exited the novel shortly after the introduction of the superbly punchable Tossie at which point I decided the degree to which it was not worth the effort was painful.

Time spent in manfully attempting to read this book has meant a real shortfall in the usual number of books I would read in September which has caused it to aggravate me even further!

Other people I imagine might enjoy this book & the book it reminded me most of was Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series of which I am not a fan but many are.

Verdict : Not for me

Destination : Charity Shop 

Book #34 Perfume by Patrick Suskind

Perfume

Length of Time in Possession : 6 years at least

I've been having a problem with the number of books I've read thus far this year. Not only am I much busier now but the books that I am reading are books that I have possessed for years and haven't got through, Perfume being an example of this. More and more I am realising that the reason I've had certain books for so long is because my desire to read them was so low, and usually there's a reason for that. It's been so long since I read an amazing book I'm getting pretty frustrated.

Perfume is a case in point, though it was a book club choice, I've also had it for years. I will probably get negative feedback from people who disagree, but I thought this was one of the worst books I've read in a long time, potentially ever.

The story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an illegitimate orphan with a superhuman sense of smell, he becomes a murderer in order to keep scents of women he enjoys.

The books ultimate strength is in its descriptive prose of smells of all kinds, these areas are well written, but, in terms of the plot the book is simply bizarre.

Though it is labelled Perfume : Story Of A Murderer, a murder barely described, occurs early then not much happens murder wise for a very long time in an essentially short plot until Grenouille goes on a spree near the end, but when this does happen they are referred to like news 'and then another girl died' and are barely described. For a vast section of the books 269 pages he goes on a long walk and then lives in a cave.

There are two endings if you like an end to his killings and then the ultimate end of the book, and both these events are among the most bizarre, ludicrous, laughable and stupid plot points I've ever read in any book.

I hated this book as did my book club. Did not really enjoy it on any level though I respected the quality of prose at times.

Verdict : I would literally only give this book a 2/10

Destination : Charity Shop

Book #31 C by Tom McCarthy

C

Length of time in Possession : Nearly 2 years

C by Tom McCarthy is a strange little book, I got it when it was on the Booker shortlist nearly 2 years ago now, and had several false start attempts with it before finally completing it a few weeks ago.

Unlike many books I read in which I have a lot of areas to discuss about things I did and didn't enjoy with C I find myself at something of a loss.

C is the story of Serge Carrefax and the novel follows him through his childhood in the grounds of the Deaf School run by his father, then to a period of recuperation following an illness, then to the Great War and then Egypt.

Though the novel initially gets off to a good start : Serge's sister Sophie is an interesting character; after it moves on from his childhood and adolescence the novel entirely lost me, I understood what was going on but felt a total sense of disconnect as a reader from either the plot or the characters.

I read it but I was completely disinterested in it, and was not moved in any way by it nor engaged in its outcome.

I suppose fundamentally what I'm saying here is that I was bored, and couldn't find anything about it either remarkable or special which leaves me mystified at its Booker inclusion.

Sorry, Tom McCarthy

Verdict : 4/10

Destination : ebook storage  

Book #28 American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

American Psycho

Length of Time In Possession : 2 weeks

I'm going to say right from the off with this review that I fucking hated this book, and thought it was total and utter gash, which in the two year history of the blog is the rudest and most damning sentence I have ever described a book with. I don't think I've ever sworn before so my apologies to any of those who may be offended, I'll edit it out if I get complaints.

It was my book clubs book of the month so I had to read it, one friend said I'd love it, several told me I'd hate it.

I think immediately people would assume that if someone doesn't like American Psycho it's because they're averse to violence, I'm not particularly, I've read rape scenes before I've read violent murder scenes, I've watched Tarantino and Korean cinema, I'm not bothered by shocking violence. I've read worse than what is in American Psycho, violence wise, and that violence has often been more eloquently expressed.

No, the reason American Psycho is so offensive, is its breathtaking banality. Various quotes about how it is seminal adorn its covers. Seminal? Seminally shit.

Right from the off lead character Patrick Bateman is concerned with aesthetics and money, the best restaurants, the best business card; the fact that in terms of character development he has no further depth, and is a hollow shell of a man, a damning indictment of grubby 80s capitalist parasites is the point. There is nothing more to him. Yet because of the way in which this is illustrated, it becomes : a) a one note point that just repeats itself ad nauseum across 300 odd pages and b) utterly tedious as a reading experience, tedious to the nth degree.

Here is a quote from page 27

"Vidal Sassoon shampoo is especially good at getting rid of the coating of dried perspiration, salts, oils, airborne pollutants and dirt that can weigh down hair and flatten it to the scalp which can make you look older. The conditioner is also good."  

Nothing at all "Psycho" happens before Page 127. Sure there are hints : he takes his clothes to the laundry, they're covered in blood. He makes an internal remark about the violent death of his girlfriends neighbour. He decides not to kill someone who has connections....but mostly what you can expect from the first 127 pages is having to read shit like that quote above.

Bateman only notices the designers people wear, and is only interested in possessions, whilst this is the point of 80s greed culture, it is unbelievably tiresome in its vapidity.

When the violence actually occurs, it actually comes as respite from the relentlessness of this, it's clever, to a degree, it can be appreciated, on an intellectual level what Ellis is trying to show with Bateman, and the question marks he raises around the distinctions between reality and delusion later on, but there is zero character development. The idea is that these billionaire wankers are sub-human so there is no character but hey, even Donald Trump has opinions! Bateman has none, he's just a talking Vogue Magazine spread on designers and beauty products.

After the initial point is made, all further reiterations of it are superfluous and annoying. The problem is not the concept, but the execution, because even a novel making an acerbic social comment has to at least not be entirely turgid so as to give the reader a positive reading experience. It doesn't really matter how dark a book is if it's well written, if it engages, but this book never engages you as a reader. It's a bit like flicking through a clothing catalogue into which some violent pornographic images have been inserted at odd intervals.

Avoid this book like the plague.

Verdict : 0/10

Destination : Charity Shop

Book #22 Hawthorn and Child by Keith Ridgway

Hawthorn and Child

Length of time in possession : 5 months

In Hawthorn and Child - a story of two policemen, an investigation into a criminal named Mishazzo, and the shooting of a young man, I feel that I've encountered my old friend "Emperor's New Clothes" in which a book that other people have raved about is a book which is completely lost on me, and a book which I feel is empty and hollow, masking itself as something superior.  Not just superior to other books, but superior to anyone who doesn't get it, because they mustn't be "clever enough"

What is in actual fact a linked short story collection, it is also masquerading as a novel, an incredibly short one at that. Each short story is vaguely linked to either the case or the duo, the first, 1934, starts well, introducing the duo. Other stories struggle to seem in any way relevant.

Not only is there no cohesive plot to speak of, characterization is so sparse as to barely exist.

It reminded me of Paul Auster and that's really not a compliment.

It's not remotely worth the cover price. Avoid.    

Verdict : 4/10

Destination : Ebook storage

Turbulence by Samit Basu

Turbulence

On paper, Turbulence by Samit Basu, seems to be directly aimed at me as its target market. Superheroes? I'm there. Ordinary people acquiring super powers? Again up my alley. Similar to the NBC series Heroes? Go on then.

A group of people are on a flight from London to New Delhi - they all have strange dreams, fantasies of who they could be, and when they wake up they have acquired a power which correlates to their fantasy, so Vir the pilot can fly, Uzma the wannabee actress is irresistible to those around her, Aman the computer geek can mentally hack into any computer, the journalist gets premonitions about newsworthy events and so on...

The trouble arises with the structure, we meet our heroes shortly after powers have been acquired and to my mind the huge opportunity of an origin story is missed the chance to build up the scene of all these people before the flight and boarding it, dreaming and disembarking. A chance to build wonder, and mystique. It all seems a bit disjointed somehow.

Additionally the powers they possess are either bog standard (human flight) or a bit naff in terms of their capacity for dramatic impact (mental internet, the power of allurement) And the guy who can control the temperature with his stomach, what's that all about? Useless!

By far the greatest and for me fatal flaw of this piece is the dialogue. It's dialogue heavy, and the dialogue is extremely poor and weak, cringe inducing even. "Hey! we're like the X Men!"
When the writing switches to prose or private thoughts it isn't so bad, but it isn't long before you're hit in the face with yet more cliched conversation of the most contrived, artificial kind. A masterclass in how not to write a cheesy, one star action film that flops at the box office.

I gave this book up at around the 100 page mark, persuaded myself to give it a second go, and quit for the second and final time at around page 140, which is why there's no number present on my count towards 100.

 I just found the excessive, and dire, dialogue too much to bear. This is why Turbulence doesn't have a number by its name as it's classed as "Failure To Finish"

Of the 10 Amazon reviews present for this novel, 9 give it 5 stars something that genuinely baffles me, as it is so marred by its flaw as to not even succeed as a genre piece of fluff.



Can't really mark it out of 10 seeing as I failed to finish.

Book #65 Death Comes To Pemberley by PD James

Death Comes To Pemberley

Like many, I am a big fan of Pride and Prejudice, both the original Austen novel and 1990's BBC adaptation starring Colin Firth. Over the years, many "sequels" have been produced by other writers, with mostly insipid, cheesy covers capitalising upon and sullying another writers genius, at which I have resolutely turned my nose up.

But....the premise of this was, in theory, a different and original look from a respectable writer with established credentials, a murder mystery, with our beloved couples at the centre. The idea was too good to resist.


Sadly the execution does not match the readers anticipation. Darcy and Lizzie die a little under James' pen, and lose their charisma Lizzie particularly losing all vivaciousness, and the portrait of their life at Pemberley is very slight. Both seem cowed by others at times and not at all their assertive selves.

When I turned the page to the description of a servant scrubbing the silver, I sighed with a "Who Cares?" disappointment, and the entire servant saga was completely uninteresting.

At the end of Pride and Prejudice we are told that Kitty Bennet divides her time between the Bingley's and Darcy's and becomes a great friend of Georgiana and yet James chooses to erase Kitty from the story entirely and she does not feature except as a passing mention.

Additionally great chunks of the novel seem to recap past events from Pride and Prejudice and even in some cases, recycle dialogue used in the Andrew Davies script, though the reader has a fondness for this history, it seems to exist to bump up the word count, if these elements were stripped away, you would perhaps be left with a short story or at best a novella.

The only thing of note was an expansion of the story behind the relationship of Wickham and the mysterious baddie Mrs Young, but taken as a whole, the novel is sub par as an Austen sequel, and if it were a novel in its own right and therefore not relying on Austen's already established parameters and characterisation, it would be abysmal.

I will be returning to my former rigid rule of never reading a sequel not by the original author, a phenomenon which has always dismayed me and am really rather mad at myself that I broke that rule for this mess. 2/10      

Book #64 Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Pale Fire

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov is the story of Charles Kinbote, who following the death of his "friend" the esteemed poet John Shade, publishes Shades last work Pale Fire, a poem of Four Cantos, alongside a personal introduction by Kinbote, and an extensive commentary upon the lines of the poem.

Kinbote, certainly is more than he appears to be, and who he is, or more accurately who he thinks he is, is revealed slowly via his introduction and commentary. Kinbote, obsessed with Shade, develops a stalker like infatuation with him, and in many ways steals this last poem, ferociously inserting himself and the story of his homeland Zembla into the inspiration and meaning behind Shade's last work, a work which to the reader appears to actually be autobiographical and about Shade's wife and dead daughter.

The vast majority of the novel concerns delusional, mentally compromised, Kinbote taking small lines of Pale Fire perhaps a word or two and then extrapolating huge chunks of Zemblan history from it, various kings, queens, and dissidents, at enormous length and the life of Shade as reflected in the poem barely gets a look in.

The prose is "purple prose" excessively verbose and extremely annoying. Though this is in keeping with the character of Charles Kinbote, for me, it was a complete turn off as a reader.

If I am to be perfectly honest about this novel, I thought it was fucking dreadful, I didn't enjoy it on any single level, I was by turns bored and irritated beyond measure and if it had not been as few as 239 pages I would have given up on it entirely.

I really could not have cared less or been less interested in bloody Zembla and yet it goes on, and on, and on, with few moments of respite.

My overall feeling about Pale Fire in the end is that it is one of "those books" that people make a fuss over and praise because they think it's an intelligent novel and to praise Nabokov is to announce to your general acquaintance that you belong to a certain kind of elitist "intelligentsia" which elevates you from the average general masses you have the misfortune to be surrounded by. Basically a wanky book about a wanker for  other wankers to name drop into the conversation, and then say "Oh....you haven't read Pale Fire" and thereby claim some kind of arbitrary superiority of their own invention.

I'm sure, faithful readers, you can tell how much I liked this book!!!! 0/10 Turd!

(Yes, that's right! I gave 50 Shades more points than Nabokov)

The White Lie by Andrea Gillies

The White Lie

Regular readers will note that this book unlike all my other blogposts is not preceded with a number informing my readership where I'm up to in the 100 books challenge, this is because The White Lie has the ignominious distinction of being the first book this year that I have failed to finish, and only the second novel in the last two years.

The novel is the story of the Salter extended family. Its narrator Michael is dead, and his death and the complex circumstances around it continue to haunt the family. I began the book and read about 25% of it according to my Kindle, but I wasn't enjoying it. I didn't like the style, nor the characters, found the plot though initially intriguing lacking in credibility, that such a big scandal could or particularly WOULD  be covered up by such a large number of people of all ages over such an extended period of time. I also found the relationship definitions (as in who is whose sister, cousin etc) between characters confusing.

I left it and read something else, but I found when I re-opened it and came back to it, I just didn't want to carry on, I didn't care and I wasn't engaged, and I simply couldn't face plodding on interminably over what was a large percentage of book remaining. I bought this novel because of the sheer amount of 5 star reviews on Amazon, and now find myself utterly amazed by them, I don't know what I missed that seemed to click with so many, but blimey this book was boring.

Book #47 The Girl Who Leapt Through Time by Yasutaka Tsutsui

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

This, at 170 pages is a brief book, so allow me to be equally brief. It comprises of two short stories "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" and "The Stuff That Nightmares Are Made Of"

In the initial story school girl Kazuko finds herself falling through time; in the second two siblings confront their nightmares.

These stories are appallingly written, piss poor would be the best description. Perhaps it's just a truly terrible translation but it reads like a precocious 13 year old wrote it.

It's not just the style of language that makes this poorly written though, it's also the construct of the plot, particularly in the first story.

Mediocre on every level, definitely don't read this! 0/10

Book #54 There But For The by Ali Smith

There But For The

This book had two five star reviews on Amazon and has an interesting premise, that's why I chose it. Apparently it was also well reviewed by The Guardian. A couple in Greenwich hold a dinner party, one of their guests Mark brings a friend Miles, between the main course and the sweet, Miles locks himself in the spare room and refuses to leave, this lasts for days, then weeks then months.

The blurb of the book says :

Imagine you give a dinner party and a friend of a friend brings a stranger to your house as his guest.

He seems pleasant enough.


Imagine that this stranger goes upstairs halfway through the dinner party and locks himself in one of your bedrooms and won't come out.


Imagine you can't move him for days, weeks, months. If ever.

So, this is the question, and the people this happens to are Genevieve and Eric Lee (Gen and Eric - ooo isn't THAT clever....? Sigh.) Gen and Eric and Miles are the people that are caught in this event, but we do not hear from them. The novel is split into four sections 'There' 'But', 'For' and 'The' and each section focuses on a different character.

'There' introduces Anna who is summoned to Greenwich by Genevieve after she finds Anna's email on Miles' phone, but Anna hasn't seen Miles in nearly twenty years and cannot do anything for Genevieve and cannot explain why he had her email address.

'But' gives us Mark Palmer, the man responsible for bringing Miles to the dinner party but he barely knows him either.

'For' gives us Mary, the most connection she has to Miles is that he still remembers the anniversary of her long dead daughter Jennifer, and visits her or sends a card once a year.

'The' ends the novel with Brooke and the perspective on events of a nine year old who attended the dinner party with parents.

The 'But' section told in the third person about Mark recounts in minute detail the events of the dinner party. Gen, Eric and their friends are revealed to be patronising, self important fools who invited Mark because he was homosexual (my, how interesting) and Brooke's parents because they were black (how disappointing that they were not from Africa, as was thought, but Harrogate) On previous occasions they had included a Jewish and a Palestinian family at one of their soirees. (so entertaining) The dinner party conversation, a long, or it felt long section basically amounts to reading about a group of insufferable people having insufferable conversations. If I had been attending this dinner party I would have made an excuse and left, and that's what I wanted to do with this book, leave. If this book is making any social comment it is about privileged white people looking down their noses at minorities and using them for a curiosity and entertainment value. The fact that the characters are so dislikeable makes it thoroughly unpleasant reading.

In addition, the rest of the book is quite random. We are introduced to elderly Mary in her hospital bed, and are told her story, and you spend the majority of her section wondering who she is, how she connects, and when you discover why she does, what the hell it has to do with anything. Mark's section is random too, a hodge-podge of his inner thoughts and rhymed conversations with his dead mother (Irritating) and then Brooke, the written equivalent of a precocious child talking at you incessantly for a very long time about nothing. Intensely irritating. Waffle.

The really frustrating part of this book is that the true story rests with the characters Gen, Eric and Miles and we hear NOTHING from them. The psychology of an event such as this, the effect of an intruder within your personal home, your space who won't leave, and the psychology of a  man who feels the need to do this, the inner workings of his mind whilst isolated in a spare room, are NOT EXPLORED WHATSOEVER. And that is not only what would make the book intriguing, but is also what it falsely purports to be about.  Even the introductory section with Anna involves much pointless waffle. 

Also, I refuse to believe that the Lee's would have allowed the situation to continue as interminably as they did for the sake of an expensive door. I refuse to believe that the Community Mental Health Services wouldn't have intervened very early on, or at least that the police wouldn't have taken more action than simply knocking on the door. The ending is also a waste of time, a TOTAL anticlimax.

Ridiculously exasperating this novel is without a doubt the worst I have read on this challenge. Pretentious and the worst case of Emperor's New Clothes I have EVER seen. 0/10

Reflections at the Halfway Point

On completing Nigel Farndale's 'The Blasphemer' I have now reached 50 books and am officially halfway through the challenge. I have made it to 50 before the end of the first 6 months and am slightly ahead of myself now. As far as the challenge has been going for me, May was particularly difficult, I realised that I was slightly behind and towards the end of May became stressed out about needing to read to keep the pace going. Reading because of necessity rather than desire can somewhat spoil your enjoyment of the book, so the challenge has had to a degree that effect, though June has been much calmer.

I have noted however that of the 50 books I have read just TWELVE have been written by female authors, as a woman with writing aspirations I feel I must remedy this forthwith and have set myself a challenge within a challenge to make sure that the next 10 books I read are by women. This resolve however may be jeopardised by the forthcoming release of the fifth A Song Of Ice And Fire book, George R.R Martin's 'A Dance With Dragons' on 12th July. Which gives me 17 days to read 10 books. Pressure.

In terms of the Don't Read That Read This aspect the Top 10 Read This books would be as follows:

1) A Game Of Thrones (and then its sequels)
2) The Vintner's Luck
3) Lady Chatterley's Lover
4) The Things They Carried
5) My Antonia
6) Rivers Of London
7) A Monster Calls
8) The Art Of Racing In The Rain
9) Physics Of The Impossible
10) The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

In the Don't Read That Corner - Top 10

1) The Obelisk
2) Crow Country
3) The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ
4) The Year Of Magical Thinking
5) The Patience Stone
6) Joe Gould's Secret
7) The Girl With Glass Feet
8) The Blasphemer
9) The New York Trilogy
10) One Day

with everything else falling somewhere in between the two and being classified as average.

Anyhow enough typing, back to reading. Let us see what the female authors I've chosen have to say for themselves. Here come the girls.