Rob's challenge

[Rob]

Hi all, I am doing the bingo challenge (and going for a full house there) so hoping lots of my books can double up. I will try the decade challenge, but I haven't decided which consecutive decades to do yet so will list more than required and make a judgement later in the year about which gaps to fill.

1880 -1889 Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
1890 -1899 The War of the Worlds] by H.G. Wells
1900 -1909 Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
1910 -1919 My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
1920 -1929 The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
1930 - 1939 The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
1940 - 1949 A Mathematician's Apology by G.H. Hardy
1950 - 1959 The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
1960 - 1969
1970 - 1979 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
1980 - 1989 Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
1990 - 1999 The Firm by John Grisham
2000 - 2009 Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
2010 - 2019 All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

I like modern books too so doing a modern decade.
2000 Set in Darkness by Ian Rankin
2001 The Falls by Ian Rankin
2002 David Attenborough's Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster by David Attenborough
2003 Dissolution by C.J. Sansom
2004 The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson
2005 The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures by Louis Theroux
2006
2007 The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards
2008
2009 Open by Andre Agassi

Edit: Adding more modern decades because I was beginning to feel guilty about reading modern books that I enjoy and that is just silly. I won't be able to finish all of these obviously but I will have fun trying to get there.

2010
2011 The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin
2012 The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life by Andy Miller
2013 David Jason: The Autobiography by David Jason
2014 Lanterne Rouge: The Last Man in the Tour de France by Max Leonard
2015 Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
2016 Kind of Blue by Ken Clarke
2017The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
2018 The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
2019 Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

1990
1991 Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
1992
1993
1994 Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin
1995 Let It Bleed by Ian Rankin
1996
1997 Black and Blue by Ian Rankin
1998 The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin
1999 The Man Who Invented the Third Reich by Stan Lauryssens

[Rob]

Right I need some help please. I need a book for the 1900-1909 decade. I checked the list below.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/38

Most of the books on there that I have heard of are children's books that I don't want to read. Does anyone have any recommendations from that decade (they don't have to be on that list) for me to read?

[Luke]

Rob wrote: "Right I need some help please. I need a book for the 1900-1909 decade. I checked the list below.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/38

Most of the books on there that I have heard of are childre..."

Hello Rob. Some of the works I've liked from that period are:

The Land of Little Rain - Mary Hunter Austin - 1903 - A solid early travelogue and piece of nature writing concerned with the desert border of California and Arizona.

The Souls of Black Folk - W.E.B. Du Bois - 1903 - A short yet profound introduction to African American thought/sociocultural philosophy.

The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton - 1905 - A well written, devastating portrait of an upper class woman seeking stability in turn of the century US.

Sultana's Dream - Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain - 1905 - An excellent early feminist sci-fi/utopian work from an underread part of the globe.

The Book of Tea - Kakuzō Okakura - 1906 - A wonderful meditation on Japan's culture and interaction with the 'West' organized around the theme of tea.

The Convert - Elizabeth Robins - 1907 - An incisive feminist work focused on the turn of the century women's suffrage movement in the US (will probably be harder to get a hold of than the others).

Hope that helps.

[Darren]

some of my faves from that decade:
1901: The Hound Of The Baskervilles (Conan Doyle)
1904: Nostromo (Conrad)
1908: A Room With A View (Forster)
1909: Jakob von Gunten (Robert Walser)

[Terry]

This is what I read last year, with a quick comment on each:

1900 - The Wizard of Oz, Frank L. Baum. An easy read.
1901 - Kim, Rudyard Kipling. I found it interesting.
1902 - The Hound of the Baskerville, Arthur Conan Doyle. Classic Sherlock Holmes.
1903 - The Ambassadors, Henry James. I found it a long, boring drudge to read.
1904 - Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Kate Douglas Wiggin. I don’t actually remember anything about this novel, so I guess it didn’t impress me.
1905 - The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton. Superb.
- Where Angels Fear to Tread, EM Forster. Also great!
1906 - The Jungle, Upton Sinclair. Gruesome but interesting history of the Chicago stockyards.
1907 - The Shuttle. I enjoyed this novel very much, and recommend that it be more widely read. It was among the best.
1908 - A Room with a View, EM Forster. Great.

1909 - I meant to read A Girl of the Limberlost, Gene Stratton Porter. Just didn’t get to it.

1910 - Howard’s End, EM Forster. Another great one by Forster.

I hope this helps. I need to back up and read The Limberlost book. I have made some headway into the next decade, though, so I am taking a break before moving on. I do plan to read Death in Venice soon (1912) which will join two other books I have already recently read for that year.

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

Here are some that are not yet mentioned. Sorry but it does have a big dose of Jack London, what can I say he is a favorite.

Burning Daylight, 1902
The Call of the Wild, 1903
The Sea Wolf, 1904
White Fang, 1906
The Iron Heel, 1908

The Phantom of the Opera, 1900
The Story of My Life, 1902
The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1905
The Last Trail, 1909 An American Western

I will also agree with Terry on Where Angels Fear to Tread, it is really good.

I can also provide several good short stories for the time period.

[Rob]

Cheers for all the advice and reviews.

I think I will either choose either
Where Angels Fear to Tread or
Scarlet Pimpernel

I have never really got on with Sherlock Holmes and couldn't even finish the film version of Room with a View. I'll keep all the others in reserve though. Thanks!