Page 96

No: 742 The Bling Ring by Nancy Jo Sales

The Bling Ring opens like a dream, or a nightmare, depending on your point of view. A pair of teenagers, a boy and a girl – having spent the day doing the modern-day, middle-class American things you would imagine; updating their Facebook pages, browsing the internet, getting high – find themselves looking out the window of…

No: 743 Faithful Place by Tana French

Sometimes – particularly after a book like Harvest – I like to treat myself to an entertaining, page-turning, ‘don’t have to think too hard’ thriller. That was the plan with Faithful Place, but I didn’t quite get what I bargained for. Faithful Place is Tana French’s third instalment in her Dublin Murder Squad series. Our…

No: 744 Harvest by Jim Crace

I am going to start this post with an utterly nonsensical and illogical statement. Jim Crace was robbed of the Booker Prize last year. Illogical because I have not read The Luminaries (although it is in the 746) nor any other of the Booker nominated novels. Nonsensical because I am a massive Jim Crace fan and…

No: 745 The Circle by Dave Eggers

In September of this year, some of the world’s most famous writers signed an open appeal against the National Security Agency stating that the U.S. government’s mass surveillance impedes freedom of thought. Orhan Pamuk, Günter Grass, Margaret Atwood and Don DeLillo are among hundreds of “writers against mass surveillance” worldwide who have signed the open…

Setback #1

Uh-oh…..

No: 746 Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

So, my epic challenge starts with a debut novel, one that was heralded with a seven-figure advance and subsequently short listed for the Guardian First Book Award. Burial Rites is a historical novel set in 1830 that narrates the final year in the life of the last woman to be publicly executed in Iceland, Agnes…

746 books should be enough, right?

I am an avid reader. I am an even more avid book buyer. I vaguely remember when I would buy a book, read it, then buy another one. Last time I did that was probably when I was about 14. I now read or hear about a book, buy it and plan to read it…