Guardian Newspaper 1000 Novels discussion
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How many of the LIST books have you read?
Just completed my guardian 2nd quarter update. I've read 395 of the list. I still haven't figured out which books I'm missing though. I think I have it down to ten.
Leslie wrote: "Fay wrote: "Leslie wrote: "Bryan "They call me the Doge" wrote: "Ever the slacker, I was only able to eke out 4 titles this last month...."
I was even more slack than that! I only read one new-to..."
Ugh! GOT...... I really enjoyed them at first but never made it through the fifth (which isn't like me) because I just didn't give a monkeys about any of the remaining characters!
Did you read them all?
BAM wrote: "Just completed my guardian 2nd quarter update. I've read 395 of the list. I still haven't figured out which books I'm missing though. I think I have it down to ten."Go You!!
Mod
still working on the others...
Just added it thanks D
I finished: 
A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell
Rating: 4 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Fay wrote: "Leslie wrote: "Fay wrote: "Leslie wrote: "Bryan "They call me the Doge" wrote: "Ever the slacker, I was only able to eke out 4 titles this last month...."
I was even more slack than that! I only ..."
This (Lonesome Dove) is the only one I have read. Westerns are generally not my kind of book, though I have liked some.
Bumper reading month for me (I always seem to get a couple of good reads in during summer. What season does everybody else read more in?) 13 new ones taking me up to 367Lady Audley's Secret
Le Père Goriot
Changing Places
Infinite Jest (tbf this was 3 months in the making....)
A High Wind in Jamaica
A Fatal Inversion
A Princess of Mars
The Outsider
Empire of the Sun
A Married Man
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Love in a Cold Climate
The Girls of Slender Means
Human Comedy:
Père Goriot
Le Colonel Chabert
The Atheist’s Mass
Commission In Lunacy
The Marriage Contract
Another Study Of Woman
Re-reads:
Norweigan Wood
Dissolution
Wow Fay that's so impressive.Just 4 from the list for me this month taking me to 221
Beloved
A High Wind in Jamaica
The Rings of Saturn
Norwegian wood
Wow, Fay - an amazing reading month for you! Congrats :)I read 3 -
A High Wind in Jamaica
The Years of Rice and Salt
Bones and Silence
plus one from Balzac's Human Comedy:
Domestic Peace
Mod
Go Tell It On The Mountain Baldwin, James - 3.5
A High Wind In Jamaica Hughes, Richard - 2.5
Norwegian Wood Murakami, Haruki - 4
Sister Carrie Dreiser, Theodore - DNF
Our Man In Havana Greene, Graham - 4
Victory Conrad, Joseph - 4
plus one Re-Read:
Titus Groan Peake, Mervyn - 4.5
I finished the crime classic: 
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins
Rating: 5 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
which brings me to 100 read! (Although that is counting series books, like Lord of the Rings, Discworld, etc., as separate books instead of one book for the whole series.)
I finished a few more List books since I joined earlier this summer:Blott on the Landscape, by Tom Sharpe
Atonement, by Ian McEwan
Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan
The Code of the Woosters, by P.G. Wodehouse
Death at the President's Lodging, by Michael Innes
Excellent Women, by Barbara Pym
Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
The Millstone, by Margaret Drabble
A Gun for Sale, by Graham Greene
Native Son, by Richard Wright
I am currently working on the Gormenghast trilogy, so I'll be checking off Titus Groan soon, too. But first I am finishing a non-list tome, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich(William Shirer), which I have been meaning to read for years. :)
I won't be reading any list books before August starts so I may as well post my July progress now. I finished 3 new-to-me books from the list in July plus 1 from Balzac's "Human Comedy" & 2 rereads:New to me:
Revelation Space
Joseph Andrews
The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
Balzac:
Paz
Rereads:
Of Mice and Men
The Code of the Woosters
I am now at 547 read out of 1000...
During July I read 7 new-to-me from the list.Revolutionary Road
On the Road
The Plague
The Odd Women
A Taste for Death
Orlando
Herzog
That brings me up to 228 total.
12 more this month which took me up to 379 (yay!)Definitely won't be racking them up in August though as I am planning on reading pure trash all month :-)
They were:
A Heart So White
Eugénie Grandet
Moo
North and South
The Awakening
A Voyage to Arcturus
The Plague
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Herzog
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Sign of Four
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Human Comedy:
Ursula
Eugénie Grandet
Pierrette
The Vicar Of Tours
The Black Sheep
Rereads:
A Study in Scarlet
Looks like I just eked out 1 for July:Mother by Maxim Gorky, which is pretty lame, by the way.
271 total
Mod
(btw do you not give your read books a Goodreads Star Rating?)
meanwhile, I managed a rather lowly (for me) 4 G1000-ers in July:
I Capture The Castle Smith, Dodie 1948 - 3.5 Stars
A Dark-Adapted Eye Vine, Barbara 1986 - 4
Diary Of A Nobody Grossmith, George 1888 - 3.5
The Crime of Father Amaro Eca de Queiros, José Maria de 1880 - 5 Star Masterpiece
making 423 total.
oh, and an "OTGA":
Island Huxley, Aldous 1962 - 2.5
and two "Should Be On The List"-ers:
High-Rise Ballard, J. G. 1975 - 5 Star Masterpiece
Independent People Laxness, Halldor 1934 - 4.5
@Darren. No I don’t give star ratings. I did for the for the first couple of years I was on here but then realised that I was grading differently for different genres and couldn’t decide whether I should grade on content or technical style or enjoyment or all three; especially considering that so much depends on my mood when I read it too. It’s also why I leave a lot of vague and flippant comments in discussions because I always want to bring too much into it so it’s easier just to say “yay” or “ugh” and come across all “valley girl” than wrote a thesis on all the components ;-)
Mod
;o)
I have spent the morning checking and ordering my shelves to find how many I have read and I am surprised that there are 99! Not bad as for a beginner. ;-)
Mela wrote: "I have spent the morning checking and ordering my shelves to find how many I have read and I am surprised that there are 99! Not bad as for a beginner. ;-)"Not bad at all! That's about where I was when I first discovered this list (I can't believe that it was 8 years ago now!!).
Darren wrote: "you could replace saying "yay" or "ugh" with 4 or 2 stars!;o)"
I will get on that ;-)
Mela wrote: "I have spent the morning checking and ordering my shelves to find how many I have read and I am surprised that there are 99! Not bad as for a beginner. ;-)"That's really good! Happy reading :-)
Fay wrote: "That's really good! Happy reading :-)"Thank you, Fay.
Leslie wrote: "Not bad at all! That's about where I was when I first discovered this list (I can't believe that it was 8 years ago now!!)."And how many have you read by now?
Mela wrote: "Leslie wrote: "Not bad at all! That's about where I was when I first discovered this list (I can't believe that it was 8 years ago now!!)."And how many have you read by now?"
547 if you count books tried and abandoned.
Leslie wrote: "547 if you count books tried and abandoned."Wow.
I finished: 
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Rating: 5 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rating: 4 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
and I started reading:
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
Just 7 new ones from the list this month taking me up to 386. I still find it really hard to rate them on a 5 star system but will give it a go.... The Third Policeman 3 stars (technically good, reasonably enjoyable but at times incomprehensible)
Red Dragon 3 stars (a gripping read but pretty much instantly forgettable)
Brighton Rock 4 stars (a page turner with some lasting effect)
True History of the Kelly Gang 4.5 (a page turning, one I will remember for a while. Technically very good)
A Dry White Season 4 stars (as above but I found the start quite slow and the end a bit anti-climatic)
The Riddle of the Sands 2 stars (not my thing at all. I don't like this kind of adventure story and the technical nautical details and geography made it incredibly dry. Ending sucked. I do get it was written with the purpose of making sure Britain knew that Germany could invade by sea unless they did something so that's why all the detail but still not for me)
Loitering with Intent 3 stars (fun and gripping but instantly forgettable)
Human Comedy:
The Illustrious Gaudissart ?stars (I don't remember this at all and I only read it 4 weeks ago.....)
The Muse of the Department 2 stars (I think my translation was dodgy, the two halves of the story didn't seem to gel. But I can remember it so.......)
The Old Maid / The Cabinet Of Antiquities 3 stars for both (fun snapshot of provincial life and actually gave me something to think about for a change)
Two Poets 3 stars (first in a trilogy and actually interested in what happens to them)
Well, it wouldn't have taken much effort to do better than the 1 book I managed to read off the list in July, but even still I only got 3, and a Human Comedy short.We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
plus
Melmoth reconcilié by Honoré de Balzac
That either brings me to 273 read (my tally), or 275 read (List challenges tally). Some cold lonely night, I'll look and figure out where the two missing books are.
I managed 5 new books from the list in AugustThe Crime Of Father Amaro by Eça de Queirós (this was brilliant 5*)
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
That brings me to a total of 233.
Plus I read one from the Comédie Humaine
Colonel Chabert
Finished since my last update:Thank You Jeeves by PG Wodehouse (reread)
Heavy Weather by PG Wodehouse
The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse (reread)
Joy in the Morning by PG Wodehouse (reread)
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
The Drowned World by JG Ballard
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Currently reading:
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
I consumed lots of Wodehouse over the past month. He wrote so many books that it'll still be a while before I finish all of them, but I'm working on it. The only one on the Guardian list I haven't read yet for sure is Picadilly Jim.
I went through several Wyndham novels. I was just finishing The Day of the Triffids when people started getting those packages of unordered seeds from China, so that was amusing timing. I am working through a few Ballard novels this week/month, currently starting Cocaine Nights, which is on the Boxall list, and I just finished High-Rise, also on the Boxall list and my favorite so far of Ballard's novels.
On List Challenges I'm now at 270.
I finished:
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I managed 6 new books from the list in September The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark
The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Last Seen Wearing by Colin Dexter
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
That makes 239 books, and hit a milestone of 50 books from the Love section
Well, numerically I did a little worse than last month, but I did get a couple doorstoppers out of the way:Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Middlemarch by George Eliot
List challenges has me at 277, but my count is only 275--not sure where the discrepancy is,
I've not done an update on this since May it appears which is no surprise really as my reading activity has really dropped off cause of stresses at work and general ennui. I have been re-reading some comforting classics and listening to the whole of the Harry Potter series for escapism (Stephen Fry is just sensational as narrator!).So since early May I've only managed 13 books from the list:
Lady Audley's Secret - 3/5
Love Story - 4/5
The Third Policeman - 2/5
A Far Cry from Kensington - 3/5
The Plague - 4/5
The Third Man - 2/5
My Ántonia - 3/5
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold - 3/5
A High Wind in Jamaica - 2/5
Go Tell It on the Mountain - 3/5
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - 3/5
Rebecca - 5/5
Castle Rackrent - 2/5
This brings me to 198 read which means I should be able to hit the 200 milestone this month! :)
Bryan--Treasurer, Middlemarch Appreciation Society wrote: "Well, numerically I did a little worse than last month, but I did get a couple doorstoppers out of the way:Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Middlemarch by George Eliot
L..."
I really enjoyed both of these! Did you like them?
Eglė wrote: "I've not done an update on this since May it appears which is no surprise really as my reading activity has really dropped off cause of stresses at work and general ennui. I have been re-reading so..."That's amazing! Go you!
I agree with Stephen Fry's HP narration being top notch :-)
I was really poorly so I read loads and loads of trash (which I always threaten to do and never get round to but I really did when I wasn't sleeping), so only managed to push it up to 390 with:A Sentimental Journey 2 stars. I will have to read this again with you guys and see if it was just mood and lack of context that made it so sucky (proper literary term.....)
Air 4 Stars. Bit clunky in places but I loved it.
Lonesome Dove 4 stars. Surprisingly good and readable. Not one second felt like a chore.
A Good Man in Africa 2 stars. I was weirdly against the horrific misogyny and racism in this novel. Normally I'm like "well of it's time and place etc" but this time I was like "how are STDs and racism in the slightest bit amusing?" Again, I will have to read this again with you guys and see if it was just my mood at the time.
Rabbit Omnibus:
Rabbit, Run 4. Awful, awful character is Rabbit. Amazing writing though.
Rabbit Redux 3. Still great writing but the just not sure what on earth was happening here and just how awful they all where.
Human Comedy:
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris. Lost Illusions Part 2.
Eve and David Ugh I can't even rate them they are just soooooooooo twee. At least I have a working knowledge of the French debtors and publishing systems (which I do understand is the real point of this mammoth collection - to gain an insight into actual day to day life in the period; Modern Realism and all that jazz. But seriously has no one ever noticed that this man has like 4 plots? He should have just written an encyclopaedia. I'm almost at 50% of the way through the monstrosity and when I reach that I'm taking at least another 100 list books off before I read anymore. I'm only keeping going so I can be one of the few people who've done it and I aren't even ashamed of my motivation so there!)
As an aside to my HC rant I just spotted that I started the good old HC on 9th October 2018. Ahhh 2 years work and not even halfway through........That's super encouraging!
Fay wrote: "I was really poorly so I read loads and loads of trash (which I always threaten to do and never get round to but I really did when I wasn't sleeping), so only managed to push it up to 390 with:[b..."
Fay, I’m a bit disappointed to hear that as I’ve just started on reading the Human Comedy! Did you like it initially, and then got bored of it because of the repetitive plots? Or did you dislike it from the start? I read Pere Goriot and The Chouans last month and liked both of them very much, so was hoping I’d like the rest of the Human Comedy too. But perhaps I should lower my expectations, given your experience with it.
Maggie wrote: "Fay wrote: "I was really poorly so I read loads and loads of trash (which I always threaten to do and never get round to but I really did when I wasn't sleeping), so only managed to push it up to 3..."No I've always hated them lol. Whenever he tries a plot I find it sickly sweet and twee and whenever it's plain realism I glaze over in boredom. They just aren't my cup of tea at all. I was bemused at how Pere Goriot and Eugenie made it separately onto the list because they were so sweet and moralistic they gave me toothache (although I hade read 30 or so others in the same vein by the time I got to those so it could just have been the repetitiveness).
I'm about to start The Thirteen cycle and I'm dreading it because I've 'met' the majority of the characters before and I'm already rolling my eyes at the "society is corrupt and only bad people can prosper in it" message coming my way.......
You will probably really enjoy them; I tend to have "off" taste and a general rule of thumb is normally if everyone else liked it I didn't. I'm just contrary!
Thanks, Fay. I don't think you're contrary, I'm sure there are plenty of people with the same tastes as you! I can definitely see how it might be tiring to read if all the plots are variations on the same theme. I'm reading the series mainly because I like it, and I'll continue reading as long as I like it. But if I get to the point where I'm dreading the next book, I'll stop.
I haven't read near as much of the HC as Fay, but I'm kind of ambivalent about them. Pere Goriot seems to be about the best of his that I've read so far. Cousin Bette was like a soap opera. I'd also agree that many of his plots are similar.
I didn't manage to read any new-to-me books (or even rereads!) from the list during September :-( This is the first month in several years that I didn't read at least one book from the list. Hopefully it will be my low point of the year!
Guardian Newspaper 1000 Novels
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A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...