27 July, 2011
Currently Reading
The Chrysalids
John Wyndham
27 July, 2011
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the L…
Lewis Carroll
Alice is one of the most beloved characters of English writing. A bright and inquisitive child, one boring summer afternoon she follows a white rabbit down a rabbit-hole. At the bottom she finds herself in a bizarre world full of strange creatures, and attends a very strange tea party and croquet match. This immensely witty and unique story mixes satire and puzzles, comedy and anxiety, to provide an astute depiction of the experience of childhood.
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
Liza’s England
Pat Barker
27 July, 2011
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Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Pip s life as an ordinary country boy is destined to be unexceptional until a chain of mysterious events lead him away from his humble origins and up the social ladder. His efforts to become a London gentleman bring him into contact not just with the upper classes but also with dangerous criminals. His desire to improve himself is matched only by his longing for the icy-hearted Estella, but secrets from the past impede his progress and he has many hard lessons to learn.
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
Being Dead
Jim Crace
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Tracy Chevalier
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
Changing Places
David Lodge
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
The Secret Scripture
Sebastian Barry
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
Engleby
Sebastian Faulks
Mike Engleby says things that others dare not even think. When the novel opens in the 1970s, he is a university student, having survived a traditional school. A man devoid of scruple or self-pity, Engleby provides a disarmingly frank account of English education. Yet beneath the disturbing surface of his observations lies an unfolding mystery of gripping power. One of his contemporaries unaccountably disappears, and as we follow Engleby s career, which brings us up to the present day, the reader has to ask: is Engleby capable of telling the whole truth?
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
On The Beach
Nevil Shute
After the war is over, a radioactive cloud begins to sweep southwards on the winds, gradually poisoning everything in its path. An American submarine captain is among the survivors left sheltering in Australia, preparing with the locals for the inevitable. Despite his memories of his wife, he becomes close to a young woman struggling to accept the harsh realities of their situation. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from the United States and the submarine must set sail through the bleak ocean to search for signs of life. On the Beach is Nevil Shute s most powerful novel. Both gripping and intensely moving, its impact is unforgettable.
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
Coming Up For Air
George Orwell
Coming Up for Air looks back from the sprawl of thirties housing estates, new arterial roads and the domination of the motor-car, to an idealised golden England, largely rural and unmechanised when, in the nostalgia of childhood, it was ‘summer… always summer’. It looks forward to the destruction wrought by air-raids (though written in 1938-1939, war is expected in 1941) leading to ‘The world we’re going down into, the kind of hate-world, slogan-world. . the rubber truncheons. . the posters with enormous faces’ that will be Nineteen Eighty-Four. Yet, despite its sense of loss and its grim foreboding, Coming Up for Air is a very funny book, with a rich sense of the incongruity of life and people, and it is illuminated by Orwell’s wry, sardonic wit in which there is not a little self-parody.
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
Like Water For Chocolate
Laura Esquivel
The number one bestseller in Mexico and America for almost two years, and subsequently a bestseller around the world, Like Water For Chocolate is a romantic, poignant tale, touched with moments of magic, graphic earthiness, bittersweet wit – and recipes. A sumptuous feast of a novel, it relates the bizarre history of the all-female De La Garza family. Tita, the youngest daughter of the house, has been forbidden to marry, condemned by Mexican tradition to look after her mother until she dies. But Tita falls in love with Pedro, and he is seduced by the magical food she cooks. In desperation Pedro marries her sister Rosaura so that he can stay close to her. For the next twenty-two years Tita and Pedro are forced to circle each other in unconsummated passion. Only a freakish chain of tragedies, bad luck and fate finally reunite them against all the odds.
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
The End Of The Affair
Graham Greene
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MONICA ALI The love affair between Maurice Bendix and Sarah, flourishing in the turbulent times of the London Blitz, ends when she suddenly and without explanation breaks it off. After a chance meeting rekindles his love and jealousy two years later, Bendix hires a private detective to follow Sarah, and slowly his love for her turns into an obsession.
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
Perfume
Patrick Suskind
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides
27 July, 2011
Previously Read
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