I’m not looking forward to going to bed tonight. It’s going to be one of those humid nights where the bedsheets stick to your dampened limbs and you wake up feeling like you’ve battled against an army all night.

Just finished a book called The Musician’s Daughter by Rupert Holmes, which was very good. The original title of the book was Swing, and in their wisdom the publishers decided to change the title for their UK edition.

I guess that they were targeting a different demographic over here, trying to market the book as something akin to all those other books named after the daughter of a ‘memory-keeper’, or a pirate (which I recently read) or an abortionist. However, I felt that the original name was much more appropriate to the spirit of the novel. They also removed the complimentary CD of music which was attached to the original book. Sure I can download it from his website, but it’s not the same.

Moan, moan, moan. I know. My only excuses are the heat, and an annoying bellyache. Bedtime.

Samurai Frog recently wrote about a meme which involves the list of books which have been more frequently marked ‘unread’ on librarything. Perhaps they’re in line to be read or just tomes which look impressive on the bookshelf.

Unwashed philistine that I clearly am, I hadn’t even heard of some of them.

Code:
Read
Read for school
Started but unfinished
I’ll never read it, and will never own it
*I own and intend to read it at some point

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (I don’t know why, but I’d like to read it.)
Anna Karenina (ditto)
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude (I’d like to see what all the fuss is about)
*Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion (um, never heard of it)
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote (I’m looking forward to reading this at some point)
Moby Dick
Ulysses (Dubliners was enough for me)
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey (I’d like to read this someday too)
Pride and Prejudice (a satisfying read)
Jane Eyre (heart-wrenching)
A Tale of Two Cities (writing books always quote the first line of this, I want to read the rest)
The Brothers Karamazov (I’m curious)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (nah, mate)
War and Peace (maybe when I’m retired)
Vanity Fair (somewhat curious)
The Time Traveler’s Wife (amazing novel)
The Iliad (one day)
Emma (I have a noble mission to read all of Jane Austen’s books, so I’ll get to this one eventually)
The Blind Assassin (it’s a possibility)
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations (I should read this one)
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (with a title like that, who i am to refuse?)
Atlas Shrugged (I’m curious)
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (I doubt it)
Love in the Time of Cholera (I’m curious about this one)
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch (definitely one for the future)
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo (loved the film, definitely want to read the original)
Dracula (of course)
A Clockwork Orange (not sure I’d like it, but i’d give it a go)
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses (from what I’ve heard I wouldn’t like it)
*Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
*Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (one for my to read list)
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables (think I’ll watch the musical instead)
The Corrections (eh?)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (never heard of it)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
*Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita (diabolical, pure genius)
*Persuasion
Northanger Abbey (awful book)
The Catcher in the Rye (read it as a kid, then read it again last year – it was so true)
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down (the film was so sad)
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

What say you?

A few weeks ago I noticed that one of my goals for 2007 had been to read 50 books.

I’m happy to tell you that I’ve actually read 85 books.

Sure, some of them were easy reads, but I needed some filler to clear my head after some of the more intense novels.

Have you succeeded with any of your 2007 goals?

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS VERY BAD DESCRIPTIONS OF SEX. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN PERIL.

Fifteen years ago the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award was born. Its aim: “to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it.”

At the very least, this award shows how difficult it can be to write a decent sex scene. In the writers’ defence, I must say that I’ve just finished a book which was nominated for this award last year, A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon. When reading the selected scene in context, it fit perfectly with the overall tone of the writing and characterization. When taken in isolation though, it was ridiculous. (more…)