Sanddancer's 2013 challenge

After a year and half in the wilderness, I'm hoping to be back reading and posting on here regularly in 2013. I read 100+ books in 2009 and 2010, about 75 in 2011 and probably around 40 in 2012. So it will be interesting to see if I can make it to 75 in 2013.

I tend to read a lot of modern fiction with pretty middlebrow tastes. My favourite authors include Paul Auster, Dan Rhodes. Milan Kundera and Kazuo Ishiguro. I also read a bit of non-fiction - usually about music, film or travel. I'm a member of a bookclub which often takes me outside of my reading comfort zone - and can sometimes slow my reading down as I struggle through something I wouldn't normally choose myself.

I'm not setting any other challenges at the moment but will see how I'm getting on with the numbers and may set myself some additional challenges if I'm doing well.

Nice to see you back Justine, I've missed you.

Hi, as someone else from South-East England I thought I'd come and say hello.

Welcome back!

Thanks for the welcomes.

Luci - glad you remembered me!

Hello, and welcome back. I'm sure you'll quickly find some irresistible challenges to join!

1. The Dead by James Joyce
Not off to the quickest start as I've only just read my first book - and really it is probably just a short story, but it is sold on its own and is the topic for my book club this month, so I'm counting it as a book.

I started to read it before Christmas, but to be honest I was just skimming it, so I went back and read it from the start and appreciated it much more. At first, I wasn't particularly interested, thinking it was just another story about stilted relationships in a bygone age, but on reading properly, I found the writing beautiful. It is about a party on Ephinany held by two aging aunts and attended by their favourite nephew, Gabriel, a somewhat awkward man. Not a huge amount happens, but the story is poignant and full of symbolism and allusions to the Irish situation that will no doubt be discussed at my book club next week.

This was the first thing by James Joyce I've read - although I appreciated this, I'm not sure I loved it enough to tackle a whole book of his.

Justine - well done you've managed to unearth something by Joyce I haven't read yet. I spent weeks and months in a state of perplexity after Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses was read many moons ago. I must re-read them sometime to see whether I really am thick or Joyce was just hopelessly obtuse (I suspect a bit of both).
Have a lovely weekend.

Paul - it is apparently the last story in Dubliners but is considered the best story which is probably why it is being sold separately. I suspect anymore of his stuff will leave me perplexed too.

2. It's Not Me, It's You!: Impossible perfectionist seeks very very tidy woman by Jon Richardson
Now for something completely different moving away from James Joyce to non-fiction by a stand-up comedian.

But actually it wasn't perhaps as lightweight as you might first expect, because the book is about his obsessive compulsive behaviour and how this has stopped him having a relationship for 8 years. His quirks include constant worrying about not locking his doors and windows, having a very particular order for eating his food and of course, being very tidy. Some of these things don't necessarily seem to preclude people from having relationships and indeed many people probably share these traits, but it is more his obsession with perfection that is holding him back.

He is a likeable narrator and it is very funny in places, but I expected it to include more of him actually meeting and dating women than it did and it seemed to end rather abruptly.

Paul, Dubliners including The Dead isn't nearly as daunting as Ulysses let alone that other one. I read them Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as course reading, and prefer the stories. It was also made into a film directed by John Huston and starring his daughter Anjelica, which came out at the end of 1987 - I remember seeing it at the cinema fairly soon after reading it.

3. Hector and the search of happiness by Francois Lelord
A psychiatrist named Hector is concerned that while he is preventing his patients from getting worse, he doesn't know how to make them happy. So he sets off on a journey to discover what makes people happy, a trip that takes him from China to Africa to America.

It is written a faux-simple style a bit like a children's story, which I do quite like and it works well with the story - but I can see that some might find it annoying. On the surface the list of things that he discovers might be a bit trite, but they are none the less true. The world he discovers isn't all happiness - he does encounter some nasty and some sad things along the way. There were perhaps a few too many coincidences towards the end that were necessary to tie the story up.

This is the first one in a series - in the next one he investigates love. I may return to the series in time when I'm looking for something light to read, but I don't think I coud read the another one right away.

4. The Panda Theory by Pascal Garnier

One review I read on here for Hector and the search for happiness mentioned it being one of several books by the publisher Gallic Books that they had read. This made me curious to know what other books they'd published and it turns out I'd read a few from them too. So I search on Kindle by publisher for the first time to see what else they had and this was one that caught my eye.

It isn't anything like Hector, except it is short and by a French author. This is much darker material. The mysterious Gabriel is staying in a hotel in a small town. During his stay, he befriends a local bar owner whose wife is ill, a couple of dubious character and the hotel receptionist. There is a twist in this tale - which took me by surprise. I'll definitely read the other two of Garnier's novels that are available in English.

5. Sabra Zoo by Mischa Hiller
Another Kindle book bought on a whim in a sale, but this one I've had for a while. I read a couple of pages when I first bought it but couldn't get into it, which is odd because I read it easily in a couple of hours this time.

It is set in Beirut in 1982. The main character Ivan is 18 years old, half Danish and half Palestinian. His parents are important figures in the PLO and have left the country. He stays behind, working undercover for the PLO and as an interpreter for medics at the Sabra refugee camp. Amongst the politics and horror of the conflict, Ivan has typical 18 year old feelings about friendship and falling in love for the first time.

I must admit that although I know a bit about the Middle East situation, I didn't know anything about the particular historic events that feature in this book. But that didn't stop me from appreciating it (enjoying won't be the right word considering the subject matter).

Sabra Zoo looks interesting. What were the particular historical events involved?

It was interesting. The events are the assassination of the Lebanese president which led to retaliation against the Palestinians with a massacre in two refugee camps, one of them being Sabra. A particularly bleak episode in a terrible conflict.

Well--after I posted above, I followed the link for the book over to Amazon, where I ended up buying it for Kindle for $5.99. :)

I'd be interested to hear what you think when you've read it.

One I have to get to, probably bought around the same time you did.

Luci - I think I bought it a few months ago when Amazon did the Readathon sale - I've still got plenty more from that to read.

6. The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney
Another Kindle bargain, although this one I only bought last week!

The book starts with private investigator Ray Lovell lay in a hospital bed, partly paralysed trying to remember how he got there. He had been hired by a gypsy man to track down his daughter who he hadn't seen since she married into another travelling family, who then claimed she had ran off with another man. Ray has been chosen for this job as he is part gypsy, although his father married outside and settled in a house. Ray has an awareness of gypsy culture, but is still something of an outsider to it.

The other narrator is 14 year old JJ, the nephew of the missing woman's husband. He is more part of traditional gypsy culture than Ray, but his young age means he doesn't fully understand everything that is going on but is starting to questions things. The story moves between the two of them as Ray digs deeper into the history of the Janko family.

To be honest I guessed the twist/explanation fairly early on in the story, but this didn't actually spoil the book for me as I liked both the main characters and was just as interested in how things worked out for them as I was about the mystery being solved.

I found your thread and will be following throughout 2013

Happy New Year

Hello Linda. Nice to see you again!

7. The Rest is Silence by Carla Guelfenbein
Another book with multiple narrators - three this time. The book opens with a family wedding in Chile. Tommy, an eleven year old who is small for his age due to a heart condition, is hiding beneath a table where grown-ups are gossiping. Amongst the idle chatter, he overhears something he shouldn't - that his mother wasn't ill, but had killed herself.

At the same wedding his father's second wife Alma meets a former lover, who she knew as a teenager and old feelings are stirred. The third narrator is Alma's husband and Tommy's father, a successful heart surgeon, who is preoccupied with a case of a boy the same age as Tommy with the same heart condition.

The story moves back and forth between the three of them, as Tommy tries to find out more about his mother and Alma rekindles the old romance. Alma and Tommy's stories are engrossing and they speak with distinct voices. In comparison the father's story and character is well developed than the other two, with less time given to him until near the end. But at the end his story is just as moving - and what an ending. I didn't see it coming and it hit me hard.

8. Billy Lynn's long halftime walk by Ben Fountain
I think I bought this based on it appear in a list of the books that appeared in the most "best books of 2012" lists - (here if anyone is interested - http://www.flavorwire.com/355928/the-books-that-made-the-most-best-of-2012-book-...

Normally I don't like books about war, the one exception being Catch-22 - which this book has been likened to. This book perhaps doesn't revel in absurdity quite as much as Catch-22 - although there is a nod to that book when Billy's sister talks about how you'd have to be insane to want to go back to war.

The hero of the book is Billy Lynn, a 19 year old from Texas who is a soldier posted to Iraq. Billy's unit have been involved in an incident with insurgents, which was filmed by Fox News and has become a sensation back in the USA. So the unit are on a "Victory Tour" of the country which includes meeting President Bush and ends with a trip to the Dallas Cowboy Stadium. Most of the book is set during this visit, where they are paraded about and generally greeted as heroes. But this doesn't sit comfortably with Billy and the rest of his unit.

I really enjoyed - it is thought-provoking, funny in parts and moving. It builds beautifully to its climax and is perfectly paced. I was relieved that there wasn't much about their time in Iraq on the frontline and the ins and outs of fighting and military life as that really wouldn't interest me. Instead this is much more about the hypocrisy and hysteria that surrounds the war and soldiers. Billy is likeable and easy to sympathise with - Hollywood, the super-rich, football players and Beyonce don't come out of it looking so good.

9. The Conductor by Sarah Quigley
I started reading this last year, but stopped part way through, possibly because I was struggling to concentrate on reading anything. But picking it back up again I quite enjoyed it. The book is what is often called "faction", a fictionalised account of a true story. It is a genre that divides people, but I like it. This one is set in Leningrad which is under attack from the Nazis. The characters include the composter Shostakovich, his circle of musician friends and Karl Eliasberg, the socially awkward conductor of the lesser Radio Orchestra. I think I may have got more from the book if I knew Shostakovich's music (classic music is a huge gap in my knowledge which I really ought to do something about), but even without this knowledge I found the book interesting and the last half a compelling read. The portrayal of Leningrad's citizen's starving was harrowing, although the ending ultimately offered a glimmer of hope.

10. Hurry up and wait by Isabel Ashdown
Another one bought in the Kindle sale a while back. The book opens with a man and woman, John and Sarah, who haven't seen each other in over 20 years, about to go into a school reunion. Sarah is nervous about seeing old school friends again after so long and we are given the impression that something particularly bad happened to make her feel this way.
Then things move back to the 1980s, where Sarah is a 15 year old school girl, going through the usual teenage troubles with bitchy school friends and a fickle first boyfriend. In the final chapter it returns to the present day at the reunion, where some of what had happened is revealed.

I was rather taken with the opening and interested in finding out what had happened to Sarah, but the main section of the book was rather pedestrian. The book seems to delight in the 1980s detail but it was laid on a bit thick and rather too obvious. There have been other books about 1980s school days like The Rotters Club which have been done with more skill and had more interesting characters and context than this.

I liked Hurry Up and Wait ok but agree The Rotters Club was better - however, it's set in the 1970s. Ashdown was born a year after me so I was drawn to the book by the 80s detail, whereas Coe (and his characters) are that few years older.

The Conductor is going on my TBR list. I love historical fiction from that time period.

Luci - of course, you are right - it was the 1970s in the Rotters Club. What have I read that was set in the 80s? Maybe it was Black Swan Green I was thinking of that was from then, although the characters are much younger in that. The other one I've read from the 80s recently which did cover sort of similar age and era was The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock - did you read that one? Another Kindle bargain!

Thornton - I do recommend it, so long as you don't mind the fiction taking some liberties with the truth.

David Mitchell is the same age as me, Black Swan Green of lots of books I have to get round to reading some time.

Yes, I've read The Book of Lies before it came up as a Kindle bargain - I didn't like it very much though I did get a Kindle copy with a view to getting rid of the paper book.

I thought The Conductor was very good, though not quite as powerful (or as sad) as Helen Dunmore's Siege of Leningrad novel The Siege.

Not sure I could cope with anything more powerful and more sad. The later section of The Conductor was sad enough for me!

Dunmore's The Siege is already on my TBR list.

11. Diamond Star Halo by Tiffany Murray
Ridiculously long working hours and a lot of stress this week has left me too tired to do anything much, including reading, so a book that would normally only have taken a couple of days to read took the whole week.

This was another book I picked up in Kindle's Daily Deal. I wasn't too sure about it but the music element to it persuaded me - and afterall it only cost 99p so not a huge gamble! It is about a family who run a music studio in rural Wales, that is used by a steady stream of rock stars over the years. It begins in the 1970s when the middle child, Halo or Lo-Lo befriends the young female singer from an American band that otherwise consists of seven brothers. The singer, Jenny, is heavily pregnant with Halo's gran predicting that the baby will be born there. Turns out the gran is right and for reasons I won't spoil here, baby Fred is taken in by Halo's family and grows up as their brother. The story moves from the 1970s, through their childhood and teenager years until near enough present day when they are adults.

I have mixed feelings about this book. My main issue with it was that I felt very uncomfortable with the sexualisation of a child in Fred. From birth he is described as being like Heathcliff, the older Halo has feelings for him that are sexual from an early age and he is described in a very sexual way at the age of eight. Now I don't have children myself and am from a family that is dominated by females, so I have very little experience of 8 year old boys, but it didn't sit right with me. My other gripe was Halo - who was another one of these too good to be true female characters, totally self-sacrificing for her family and seemingly so beautiful herself that people are equally obsessed with her, yet she doesn't notice it - she reminded me a bit of the 50 Shades of Grey heroine! She was by far the least interesting person in the whole story.

But just as I was considering giving up on it, I was won back over. Halo's mother suffers from depression throughout the book, but later she becomes physically ill and this is where Tiffany Murray showed herself to be an excellent writer. Her own mother, Minny, comes to visit - a tough little woman with a ascerbic tongue about the rest of the family, but so tender with her daughter that it was heartbreaking. So what was the saddest part of the book, was for me by far the best part.

Putting aside dubious relationships with foundling children and rock stars, Tiffany Murray can write about complex real family relationships.

12. Waterline by Ross Raisin
Our book club's February's book, picked because most of the members enjoyed his debut novel a few years ago. That was before I joined, so I hadn't read that, so was coming to this without any expectations.

The book is about a Glaswegian man whose wife has just died from mesothelioma, caused by the dust brought home on his clothes from his days working in the shipyards. He has two sons, one lives in Australia and the other he has a strained relationship with. Once he is alone, he quickly descends into depression and his life falls apart.

The book is pretty bleak, although with occcasional bits of humour and a tiny glimmer of hope at the end - but the writing is beautiul - it has a real rhythm to it and captures the Scottish dialect well without ever being hard to read. The style reminded me a bit of Jon McGregor, in particular If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things for tone, although closer in subject matter to his Even the Dogs. Not exactly enjoyable, but recommended.

Having read 12 books before the end of January, I'm cautiously optimistic about making the 75 target this year - cautious because I always read lots in January and have gone off course during the year before after a strong start.

Anyway, several for February to update too.

13. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
I think this was the book I meant to buy when I bought Billy Lynn's Long HalfTime Walk - easily confused - both have a man's name in the title and that one has walking in the title, whereas this one is actually about an epic walk!

Harold Fry is retired and bored with his life. One day he receives a letter from an old colleague who is dying from cancer. He replies to to the letter and takes it to the postbox, but instead of posting it, he becomes inspired to walk from one end of England to the other to deliver it in person. Along the way, he meets some lovely kind people who touch him, but this isn't entirely sentimental - he also meets some not too nice people as well.

It is a very easy read, but in turns sad, moving and funny - and whilst the idea may seem a little contrived, the characters seem all too real and I really enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

14. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
The second bestseller of the month - the plot of this one intrigued me the minute I heard about it and it didn't disappoint. Nick and Amy have been married five years but on their anniversary, Amy disappears. The narrative moves between Nick in the present time and Amy's diary entries starting when they met, moving towards the present day. At the beginning it seems like a great relationship, but gradually cracks begin to show and you begin to wonder if Nick is quite the caring husband he seemed at first. I loved the narrative techniques and the twists and turns of the plot. I thought it was a great idea, superbly executed.

15. Eleven by Mark Watson
The lure of the Kindle Daily Deal again! The main character, an Australian living in London, has the initals XI. There are also eleven interconnected characters in the book. Xavier moved to London to escape his past in Melbourne and has tried to get by without getting involved in any else's lives or problems, although in his job as a late night radio host, he regularly dispenses advice to his listeners. This book isn't anything particularly original, but I quite like these kind of stories. It won't change the world, but if you want something pretty light to read, then this is pretty good.

16. How's the pain by Pascal Garnier
Having enjoyed The Panda Theory I bought this and read it in the same day when I was looking for something new to read and didn't fancy anything already on my Kindle. It was similar in tone to The Panda Theory - what is being described as French Noir - which seems to have a dash of absurdity that you don't expect from regular noir. Simon is an exterminator - although it quickly becomes clear, that is not just of bugs and rodents. Doing one last job, he meets Bernard, a young naive man who lives with his difficult mother and offers him a job as a driver.

The book is very short (around 170 pages) so there isn't that much of a plot to it, but the characters are brilliant. The blurb makes comparisons with Tarantino and Coen Brothers films, but I'd also say it reminds me of Magnus Mills and the darker side of Dan Rhodes. It seemed to end a bit too suddenly for me - perhaps partly because I would have happily read alot more about these people. At the moment there is just one more of his books available in English, but I see another one will be released in August which is good as this is an author I want to read more of.

17. Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
Having enjoyed Gone Girl I decided to read an earlier work by Gillian Flynn. Another thriller with a different narrative perspectives. This time the main character is Libby Day, whose family were all killed apparently by her brother with her testimony putting him away. The narrative moves between Libby in the present day, where she starts facing up to the past and questioning whether her brother really did it and her mother and brother's versions of the events of the days leading up to the killings. Libby is a prickly character and difficult to like, but nonetheless I was drawn into her story. It perhap isn't quite as unusual story as Gone Girl but still a compelling read.

18. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
My first ever graphic novel - the choice of my book club for next month. I have seen the film version and enjoyed that so was keen to give this a go. I read it very quickly and quite liked the graphic novel format - although I think it was more because of the subject matter - growing up in Iran around the time of the cultural revolution - and perhaps the more usual sci-fi/fantasy type subjects for graphic novels still won't appeal that much. I like the stark black and white illustrations. The story itself was interesting although I preferred the first part about her childhood over the later part about her teenage years and 20s - I found the older Marjane a bit irritating - although I suppose she was very honest about herself.

19. Capital by John Lanchester
I'll confess I brought this mainly because it was such a bargain on Kindle - just 20p. Even better value considering it is over 500 pages long. It is set on a well-to-do London street and offers a snapshot of the lives of the residents and people who work there. Some residents are very rich like the banker and his spoilt wife or the football agent, whilst others such as the old lady have lived in the area from before it became so desirable. There are also a Muslim family who run the local shop, a traffic warden and a builder who work in the street. Their stories interconnect and whilst there wasn't anything hugely original here, it was a good read. It was very similar to A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks although with a few more characters. At times I did think that some of the characters were a bit of a cliche, but the author had an excellent way of describing people's personalities in a line or two.

20. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
I was stuck for something to read, so downloaded the only remaining book by Gillian Flynn that I had yet to read. Damn - now I've read all of her books and enjoyed them all - who should I read next? Like her other two books, this one features a spiky troubled female narrator - this time Camille, a report who is returning to her small hometown to report on the murder of two young girls. She has a difficult relationship with her mother, drinks too much and has a history of self-harm. Again the book really gripped me and although the ending was perhaps a little too hurried, I found it a great read - very very dark though.

I haven't read Gillian Flynn so can't suggest a comparison, but may I suggest Denise Mina as worth a try if you're interested in well written crime fiction with interesting female characters?

21. Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
I'd heard good things about this book - and what book lover can resist a book about a bookshop?

20-something narrator Clay takes a job in a mysterious bookshop when he is made redundant from his web design job. He covers the nightshift in a shop that doesn't really seem to sell much, but has a regular clientele who borrow books from a section at the back of the store.

I enjoyed this book, but not quite as much as I thought I would. Technology and new media feature just as much as books, with Clay's girlfriend working at Google and his best friend being a billionaire programmer. And this side of the story irritated me a bit - it felt like an advert for Google a lot of the time with the company seeming as much like a cult as the mysterious book club at Mr Penumbra's (which may have been intentional). I may also be too old to love technology as much as the characters here do. There was a line in it about creating some computer programme that said if you thought it sounded hard to do, then you were probably over 30!

22. Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
It is the 1980s and 14 year old June's favourite person in the whole world is her uncle Finn. But Finn is HIV positive and this is in a time before there was any treatment and there was still a terrible stigma and misinformation about the disease. When Finn dies, June meets his boyfriend Toby and an unlikely friendship develops.

I loved this book. June, Finn and Toby are wonderful characters that you can't help but love. And whilst June's mother and sister could be easy to dislike, it is hard not to feel compassion for them too. The setting back in the 80s is a reminder of how difficult things were for people with HIV/AIDS and how terrifying it must have been. Highly recommended.

23. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
I bought a Kindle book with all five Hitchhiker's books for a bargain price. They were my favourite books as a teenager but I no longer have my paperback copies. I'm not normally one for re-reading books, but I've been dipping into this in between new reads. So far I've finished the first installment so I'm listing it here. Having read them all before, the content of the first book seemed quite slight - not much really happens in it, although it is still gloriously inventive and funny.

24. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
I heard about this book from Flavorwire where it was featured in a list of great American novels of this century. A Visit from the Goon Squad which I also enjoyed was in that list, so I decided to look up some of the others and this one just happened to be available cheaply on Kindle. And I'm really glad it was because I loved it.

The book begins in Ireland, introducing us to Corrigan and his brother who will be central to the novel, but then it moves to New York. We meet Corrigan again as an adult where he is a priest, but has chosen to live in a rough area amongst prostitutes and drug addicts, trying to help them where he can. Most of the story happens around the time of the real life event of Philippe Petite tightrope walking between the Twin Towers, which provides an interesting backdrop to the stories here.

There are various strands to the novel, but the characters are all linked in some way - something that I like in a novel and here it is done with such skill - without being contrived or too obvious. Although I didn't mind both, seeing it done so well here, makes Capital and A Week in December seem amateur in comparison - but perhaps there is some difference in writing a book set in New York than London. This book certainly moved more than either of those did.

25. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
The second instalment of the Hitchhikers 'trilogy'. Re-reading these is like putting on a comfortable pair of slippers. One of the images that has stuck with me for years from these books is of the creature they eat in the restaurant that has been created to want to be eaten. It surprised me here how small a part of the book that is as it made a huge impression on me.

26. The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
Another cheap Kindle buy. Edie Middlestein is obese and it is killing her. We briefly see how her comfort eating began, but then most of the novel is from the point of view of various family members; her estranged husband, her aloof daughter, her teenager granddaughter and neurotic daughter-in-law. I thought the portrayal of addiction and the sense of hopelessness of watching someone you love destroy themselves very accurate, but because you aren't given much of a sense of Edie as a person and none of the others were particularly likeably, I found it hard to really be moved by it. The author probably didn't want to fall into being overly sentimental, but at times went too far the other way.

27. The 10 PM Question by Kate De Goldi
Yet another cheap Kindle purchase! Mixed feelings about this again. It is about a teenage boy in New Zealand whose mother won't leave the house, but no one talks about it. A new girl starts at his school who are strikes up a friendship with, whose own home life is also unconventional in a different way. I liked the main character and the idea of this, but there was way too much in here - too much quirkiness across all of the characters. I know that people aren't defined by one characteristic, but there was too much here that it became irritating and unnecessary.

28. Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams
Continuing my trip down memory lane, although it turns out that I hadn't really remembered much about this one at all. It is a more self-contained story than the previous two and centres around the planet of Krittet, who ethereal inhabitants are intent on destroying everything else in the universe. Their history supposed to be the inspiration for cricket - which was particularly fitting given that England were grinding out a particularly memorable and ridiculous draw at cricket at the time I was reading it.

29. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman
Picked this up in the Kindle sale for 99p, having been curious about it when it was released to much controversy a few years ago. Full disclosure here - I'm not religious so was never going to be offended by this - but I did go to a religious school so probably know the Bible better than many.

This is a retelling of Jesus' story but instead of one birth, Mary has twins; Jesus and Christ. Jesus is the religious preacher that we sort of know from the Bible, but Christ is the brother living in his shadow, who is persuaded by a mysterious stranger to chronicle Jesus' teachings for history and the founding of a new church.

The book is slight and an easy read, although it does still provide a bit to think about. Jesus here isn't exactly as in the Bible with some of the things we think of him as having said and done being slightly different. The versions we know are what Christ changes them too. It is an interesting idea, but what is odd is that actually Christ doesn't always seem like the scoundrel of the title and Jesus isn't always the most likeable. On the whole I'd say I was a bit disappointed as I was probably expecting something more from this, but perhaps if it was my beliefs that were being written about, I would have felt differently.

30.So Long and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams
Nearly finished with theses. This one is very different from the other books in the series, but it had some of the most memorable, inventive characters in it - the long distance lorry driver who is a rain god but doesn't know it and Wonko the Sane, who has built a house inside out so he can live outside of the asylum the world has become. In this book, Arthur Dent meets a woman and for once things actually go well for him. Although part of me found it a bit of a cop out that earth hadn't actually been destroyed.

31. A Fault in Stars by John Green
I picked up this recommendation from a list of books that always make people cry. Quite why I wanted to intentionally be upset, I'm not sure. It is a Young Adult book and is about teenagers with cancer - you can see why it was billed as a tear-jerker. The narrator is Hazel, a 16 year old with cancer that is incurable, but she is on a drug that is lengthening her life. At her support group, she falls in love with Augustus, who lost a leg to cancer but is in remission and is at the group with his friend Isaac who is about to lose an eye. There was a lot of detail about a book the characters like and some computer game they play, which I found rather dull. But it was moving in places and insightful into how it must feel to have an illness that you know it can't be cured and the impact that has on your relationships.

32. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
My book club's book for April. Before I'd even started reading it, members of the club were moaning on email about not enjoying and dismissing it was pretentious. Because of it this I wasn't in rush to start and expected to struggle with it, but equally I don't like the description 'pretentious'. So I tried to keep an open mind reading the book.

The first part of the book is about Jakob, a young Jewish boy in Poland whose family have been killed by the Nazis and who is found hiding in mud by a Greek geologist. He is taken to a Greek island where he spends his childhood before moving to Canada, where he becomes a poet. The second part of the book is from the perspective of Ben, who is a fan of Jakob's poetry and the child of Holocaust survivors.

Firstly, it must be said that the book is beautifully written - Michael's certainly has a way with words and imagery. But unfortunately I can't say I really enjoyed it - I admired it but felt no emotional connection with it. The ideas behind the book were very interesting and I was particularly interested in the references to geologists who faked evidence to fit in with Nazi ideology. There wasn't much in the way of plot, but that wasn't my problem. It was that the characters never felt real to me, which is what stopped me from feeling anything for them and their histories. Although beautifully written, the voice seemed the same to me when it was Jakob as a child and an adult and I couldn't distinguish that from Ben's voice later in the book.

33. Drown by Junot Diaz
The stories are mainly about Dominican immigrants living in New Jersey and some seem to visit the same characters at different points in their lives. The standout stories for me were Aurora and Negocios. I wasn't blown away by this collection of short stories in the way that many reviewers were and I didn't enjoy it as much as The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - but that isn't so much the fault of the author, but that I'm not a huge fan of short stories. His writing is great though with its flashes of Spanish and slang - and perhaps if I'd read this before his full length novel I'd have been more impressed. But still recommended to anyone who hasn't read anything by him yet or who likes short stories more than I do!

34. This is where I leave you by Jonathan Tropper
Another quite random choice on Kindle, I was attracted to the promise of humour. I hadn't read anything by Tropper before and it was only later I realised I had heard of How to Talk to a Widower which I will be seeking out soon.

It is about a Jewish family of three brothers and a sister, whose father has just died. His last wish was that they sit Shiva for him - essentially the whole family spending a week together and receive guests to mourn him. At first I thought I wasn't going to like it that much - it started sounding like a typical book about whinging unlikeable people, but a couple of chapters in, I realised that although flawed and damaged, these were people that I wanted to hear more about and grew to really like. It is narrated by Judd, the middle son, whose wife has just left him for his boss. Between the siblings and their various partners, there are is some unresolved issues, animosity and anger - but still a lot of in-jokes and affection the way that you can only with close family.

I really enjoyed this - it made me laugh several times and I particularly liked the younger brother, Philip, a charming drop-out. But it almost made me cry a couple times too. Good stuff!

35. The End of Everything by Megan Abbott
I've had this one on my Kindle for ages - I'd tried to get started on it a couple of times - but today I realised what the problem was - there wasn't much space between the lines which was making it physically hard to read. I fixed that problem and read it in a day.

Evie and Lizzie are best friends and neighbours. They are 13 years old, spend all of their time together, playing field hockey, spending time with Evie's charismatic father and speculating over Evie's older sister, the aloof and glamorous Dusty. But then one day, Evie disappears. A local married man has also gone missing and quickly becomes the main suspect. The book is narrated by Lizzie, so the events are filtered through a naïve, confused teenager, who perhaps doesn't always know what is the right thing to do.

I liked this a lot - I thought it had a similar feel to it as The Virgin Suicides - being about adolescents and infatuations, but with a dark side. The subject matter is certainly a tricky and unpleasant one, but I thought this worked well and I'd definitely read more by Megan Abbott.

Had a bit of a reading lull but back on it again - just a quick note on what I've read - details to be added later.

36. Metroland by Julian Barnes

37. Lost and Found by Tom Winter

38. Blue Remembered Hills by Dennis Potter

39. Where the Bodies are Buried by Chris Brookmyre

40. When the Devil Drives by Chris Brookmyre

41. The Orphan Choir by Sophie Hannah

42. Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

36. Metroland by Julian Barnes
A choice for my book club. We'd recently read Sense of an Ending which most people enjoyed but I think this probably followed on too soon from that as it covered similar ground. But I didn't enjoy this one as much - the main character irritated me - I struggled to sympathise with his problems with his place in life.

37. Lost and Found by Tom Winter
A random Kindle buy. An unhappily married woman starts to vent her frustration in letters 'to the Universe' which she actually posts. A post office worker, nearing retirement, is given the job of sorting out undeliverable letters - letters to Santa etc, amongst which he finds her letters and starts to read them. I enjoyed this - I thought it was similar to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

38. Blue Remembered Hills - Dennis Potter
Another book club read - showing how little I read in May that it came so close after the previous one. Each year we read one play, chosen based on what is on at the theatre so we can try to see it as well. This was my first brush with Potter, whose stuff I remember being on television when I was younger, but I was too young to watch it. Reading plays can often be a bit tricky without having seen it performed, but this one worked ok read, but I'm looking forward to seeing it non stage. It is about a group of children and the tensions within those friendships - but the cast is entirely made up of adults.

39. Where the Bodies are Buried by Chris Brookmyre

After a bit of disjointed reading, this was the first book in ages that I'd read with real unputdownable enthusiasm. Would-be actress Jasmine Sharp is working with her uncle as a private investigator - when he disappears she investigates bringing her into contact with Glasgow's underworld of gangsters, drug dealers and corrupt police. Brookmyre's previous book were crime, but with more of a comic tone than this, which is darker, but I enjoyed it and immediately started the next one in the series.

40. When the Devil Drives by Chris Brookmyre
Featuring the same investigator and police as Where the Bodies are Buried this book was set in the arts world, with the theatre featuring heavily. Jasmine Sharp is hired to find the estranged sister of a dying woman, who hasn't seen her sister for 30 years. The plot involves drugs, devil worship and a lot of theatre. I spotted one twist coming along way off but that didn't spoil it for me.

41. The Orphan Choir by Sophie Hannah
Being in the mood for thrillers following the Brookmyre books, I turned to Sophie Hannah, picking the cheaper of the two books by her that I haven't read. This one falls outside of her usual series and was written as part of a Hammer Horror series. Louise is having trouble with a noisy neighbour who is playing music too loud, but then the attacks turn personal with choir music - a sore point for Louise whose son has gone to boarding school where he is a member of the school's elite choir. I found Louise rather irritating as a main character but enjoyed the modern update of the classic ghost story.

42. Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
I'd wanted to read this for a while being a fan of the film and having enjoyed The Stepford Wives also by Levin. Rosemary and her husband, Guy, a struggling actor, move into the New York apartment building the Bamford. They are warned by a friend that it has a reputation for bad things happening to residents, but they love the apartment. The other residents are very friendly, especially an old couple the Casavets. But when Rosemary becomes pregnant she starts to worry that things aren't what they seem. The book isn't jump out of your seat scary, but I found it creepy and the very ordinariness of the surroundings added to that.

43. Coffin Dodgers by Gary Marshall
This was recommended on Amazon based on the Brookmyre books, although it is closer to the comedic style of his older books rather than the more serious direction of his most recent books. If anything, it reminded me, in tone, of Choke my favourite of the Chuck Palahniuk's books that I've read. Twenty-something Matt and his friends Amy and Dave work in a casino in the not too distant future - a world where most babies are born through IVF to parents in their 50s and people are living and working much longer than now. Matt has an accident in his car, but when he finds out that someone else died in a similar incident at the same time, he begins to suspect that it was attempted murder. It took a few chapters to get going - really until the accident, but after that I loved it -the combination of the plot with the narrator's distinct voice and a truly likeable set of characters.

44. The Henchmen's Book Club by Danny King
Another good Amazon recommendation. Like many prolific readers, I'm drawn to books about books and reading and was tickled by the idea of the henchmen of criminal masterminds having their own book club. The narrator is Mark Jones, a mercenary available for hire by super villains through the mysterious Agency. But the work often involves a lot of sitting around, so he sets up a book club - when we first join them, they are debating The Time Traveller's Wife which is very amusing. There is a lot more action in here than I was expecting - and at first I was disappointed there wasn't more scenes like the opener, but then I started to really enjoy the ridiculousness of the henchmen, criminals and the secret agents. Very funny and clever.

45. Arcadia by Lauren Groff
One of the books that I keep coming across on the website Flavorwire, which has proved a great source of recommendations for books to read. The book centres on Bit, who is 5 years old when the book begins, living with his hippie parents Abe and Hannah in a commune. The community is restoring an old mansion, Arcadia, that sits on the land so they can live in it together according to their ideals. But inevitably things don't work out to be quite so idyllic. The rest of the books moves through Bit's life with his time at Arcadia casting a lasting shadow over the rest of his life.

The book is beautifully written and found myself completely absorbed by it. However, I enjoyed the first two parts, set in Arcadia more than the latter two, mainly because I'm interested in that period in history and whilst the final chapter was very emotional, I didn't like the near-future setting so much. But all in all a great book and I can see why it was receiving such praise.

46. The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

47. Where'd you go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

46. The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
In the not too distant future, the world is devastated by an epidemic, killing millions and leaving behind an isolated few who will do anything to survive. The main character is Hig, a pilot who is clinging onto last shreds of human decency despite what world around him. He lives next door to Bangley, a hardened cynical man who he never quite trusts, but is looking out for their survival.

Comparisons have been made between this and The Road and there are definitely similarities, although I think this book has a less stark writing style and a touch more optimism. I thought it was brilliant and would definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in a dystopian novel that is about real humans, rather than sci-fi.

47. Where'd you go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Books that are told through diary entries, emails and letters have the potential to be disjointed and irritating, but thankfully this was neither and in a month where I've read some really good books, this has been my favourite. The Bernadette of the title is a one-time architect, now living in Seattle, where her husband is something of a technology superstar at Microsoft. Her daughter Bea attends a local school where Bernadette clashes with the narrow-minded local mothers.

I loved this - it was funny particularly the petty-mindedness of the Seattle mothers and Bernadette's scathing contempt for the area - but it was also genuinely touching -with Bea and Bernadette's relationship being truly special and both being wonderful creations.

This was one of the those books that I really was sorry when it ended as I would have happily read more about these characters.

48. The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
Hilary is just a baby when her brother Robin is murdered. Police never solve the case and his death casts a terrible cloud over her whole family. Aged 12, she decides to solve the case herself and becomes convinced that the killer is Danny Ratliff, a classmate of her brother who is from a family of criminals.

I'd avoided reading this because I'd heard it didn't live up to The Secret History and most reviews seem to focus on that. It is certainly very different from her first novel, but I'm not sure it was necessarily inferior. Whilst the Secret History struck me as her very much writing about people quite like herself in terms of intellect and college life, whereas this book is from a very different perspective and represents a bigger challenge as a writer.

An outline of the plot makes it sound much simpler than it was - there are layers to the narrative and it is a book that I think I may want to re-read so I can fully appreciate it. On the downside, it did seem a little long and even with nuances in the writing and depth to the story, it could probably have been trimmed a bit.

49. Standing in another man's grave by Ian Rankin
Rankin returns to Rebus! He's no longer in the police but is in a civilian job in a cold case unit. An attractive middle-aged woman turns up talking about her daughter who disappeared in 1999 and claims it is connected to a recent disappearance of another girl and other old cases. Rebus' old sidekick Siobhan Clarke is in charge of the current investigation so Rebus finds himself back on at his old station.

I really enjoyed this - it was good to have Rebus back and there was enough intrigue around the crimes to keep me interested. Fox, from the internal complaints team that stars in Rankin's post-Rebus books, also features here, bringing the two characters into direct contact and Fox doesn't come off well for me in this, whereas I quite liked him in The Complaints.

70: I recently watched a documentary in which Ian Rankin talks about writing this book in which he seems to feel Fox suddenly turned on him, he didn't say his characters are out of his control but implied it. I'm reading and very much enjoying it at the moment, though I think it's one for Rebus' old friends rather than new acquaintances (but then it took me 5 books, and I didn't like #4 very much, to completely fall head over heels for his dour charms and to "get" what the fuss is about).

That's very interesting and makes sense of the way Fox is in this book. I agree it won't convert anyone new to Rebus or Rankin either.

I think I had a bit of thing for Ian Rankin before I'd read any of his books - based on his appearances on Newsnight Review and other such shows, so I was ready to like Rebus form the offset. I think I started with his books at the third one then started again back at the first and then just read them according to what was in the library. I do remember really struggling to finish Resurrection Men

50. Mr g: a Novel about the Creation by Alan Lightman
I liked this very much. As the title explains, it is the creation story, but with a scientific twist. The narrator, never named in the book, but the Mr g of the title (note the small g), lives in the Void with his aunt Penelope and uncle Deva. He awakes from a nap bored and decides to do something - which since he is immortal being, turns out to be creating time. He then graduates onto creating universes.

The book is an interesting mix of science and the big philosophical questions - but written in a humorous and easily accessible way that even I could understand it. I loved the aunt and uncle characters and wit in describing the Void in which they live - an infinite expanse of nothing - but they go for sightseeing walks and the aunt takes home pieces of the void for her own use.

There is also a darker side to the story with the appearance of a devil-like character Belhor, who engages with Mr g in philosophical debates on free will and the nature of good and evil.

Highly recommended.

51. Flatland by Edwin A Abbott
I was looking for other books by Alan Lightman and ended up buying this which he just wrote the intro for. It is a Victorian novella about a world with just two dimensions. It is populated by two dimension shapes, whose social standing is decided by the number of sides they have - triangles are at the bottom of the order, then squares, moving up to polygons and then circles at the top. The Females are just lines so are the lowest of the low. It was an interesting idea, but my interested waned in it mid way through. Perhaps someone with more of an interest in mathematics would have fully appreciated it.

52. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
This is my book club read for July. I loved The Road but struggled with Child of God so I wasn't sure what this was going to be like. Unfortunately, this was closer to Child of God for me - the writing was absolutely stunning, but the plot didn't interest me and the characters didn't really engage me. I nearly gave up on it but persisted - but I think this will be my last of Cormac McCarthy.

53. Eat him if you like by Jean Teule
Gallic Books really has provided me with some interesting little books. I really liked Jean Teule's Suicide Shop - just the kind of black humour I enjoy so was intrigued by this one which was apparently based on a true story of one of the most shameful incidents in French history. The premise of the story is simple - a decent patriotic nobleman is turned on by a crowd, who become convinced he is a Prussian spy, during France's war with Prussia. It is a very short book, but an excellent look at mob rule and despite being brutal and shocking is funny is a dark way.

54. The Hitman Diaries by Danny King
Danny King's stock-in-trade seems to be writing comic novels about people in immoral activities. I read his book about Henchmen last month and picked this one as it was cheap - he also has others about burglars, gangsters and love cheats. It was very similar in tone to the henchman one - funny and makes you feel sorry for the main character despite what he does for a living. Since his books do seem to be quite similar, I probably won't read another one for a while, but will probably return to him again when I want a light read.

55. The Hundred Brothers by Donald Antrim
I came across this in a list of surreal books and liked the idea, as suggested in the title of 100 brothers. 99 of the brothers get together in the red library of their family home to scatter the ashes of their father. The opening sentence is a work of genius - in one long sentence, he names and to some extent describes all of the brothers. It is a very clever little book and I think I would have missed some of the allusions in there had I not gone back and read Jonathan Franzen's introduction to it.

56. Field of Blood by Denise Mina
Two boys are accused of murdering a toddler. Would-be journalist, Paddy Meehan discovers that one of the accused is her fiancé's cousin which puts her in a difficult position between her family and her career. But something about the crime doesn't seem quite right to her and she starts to dig deeper. The main plot is interwoven with the story of the real Paddy Meehan, a Catholic petty criminal who was the subject of a notorious miscarriage of justice.

Huge thanks to Luci for recommending Denise Mina - I never know where to begin with crime writers, but I really enjoyed this and am pleased to have an author with a substantial back catalogue for me to work my way through.

57. Tampa by Alissa Nutting
This is a difficult one - an absorbing, well written, compelling book - but with such an abhorrent subject matter that I'm almost scared to admit to reading it, much less to enjoying it.

At the most simplistic level it has been compared to Lolita, except here the predator is a woman. But it is really just a superficial likeness - here you never feel any pity for Celeste, a 26 year old beautiful woman who has trained as a teacher so she can get close to 14 year old boys. And the writing is clinical, calculating and explicit.

But I read it over the course of an afternoon, grimly fascinated by it, appalled yet intrigued. For many the subject and graphic nature will be a deterrent, but if you don't baulk at that too much, then I think it is testament to Nutting's writing skills.

Glad you liked the Denise Mina. Her first book, Garnethill, is one of this month's under £2.99 Kindle books - £2.49.

Yes, I spotted that this morning and I'm reading it now.

Any other recommendations welcome.

58. Garnethill by Denise Mina
So glad I picked this up cheaply from Amazon. I really enjoyed Field of Blood but I loved this one. Maureen wakes up after a drunken night out to find her married boyfriend murdered in her lounge. With a history of mental illness, Maureen is a strong suspect, so she begins to investigate herself.

What set this book apart from other crime novels for me was the portrayal of people with mental illness and victims of abuse - you don't expect to feel moved by crime books in the way I was by this. It was prevented from falling into misery memoir territory by good doses of black humour and down-to-earth banter between Maureen and her friends - which again is certainly true to life of the British character of getting through tough times with grim humour.

59. Sanctum by Denise Mina
Another absorbing crime novel from Denise Mina, but a stand alone novel and quite different from the others. It is written in the form of a diary belonging to the husband of a doctor who is convicted of murdering the serial killer she has been treating. At first we feel sympathetic towards the husband, but as the story unfolds, we begin to doubt his reliability as a narrator. I enjoyed this, although perhaps not as much as the other two books of hers, but still it had my hooked quickly.

60. Lost Girls by Celina Grace
An Amazon daily daily so I took a chance on this author I'd not heard of. When she is 10 years old, Maudie's best friend Jessica disappears when they are on holiday in Cornwall and is never found. Now an adult, struggling to cope with her father's recent death, she starts seeing a blonde woman wherever she goes. Could it really be her long-lost friend? This was an ok read and I wanted to know what was going to happen, but in the end it seemed rather ridiculous.

61. Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
I've wanted to read this for years and being caught up in the Ashes seemed like the perfect time to read a novel about cricket in New York. A Dutch banker living in New York following 9/11 finds friendship in a cricket team and in particular with the charismatic Chuck Ramkissoon who has ambitions to bring cricket to the whole of America. The descriptions of cricket, New York and relationships were all perfect. Great book and glad I eventually got round to reading it.

62. The Falling Sky by Pippa Goldschmidt
Another cheap Kindle book - this one about astronomy and relationships. The central character is a post graduate astronomer who is competing for a permanent position when she sees something in the skies that calls into question the Big Bang theory. At the same time, she begins to have a relationship with her previously straight flatmate. This story is happening in alternate chapters headed Now. The others deal with Then, which was her childhood when her older sister died swimming and the impact this had on her family. I had expected something along the lines of Scarlett Thomas' books and this wasn't really like that. The author is an astronomer herself and whilst there isn't anything wrong with writing about what you know about, there was probably too much science for me and the story was never inspired as much emotion as it should.

63. The Trial by Franz Kafka
Book club choice and another classic that I think I would have appreciated more if I'd read it when I was younger. The opening chapter is excellent and I remained intrigued for a while, but then it just seemed too long, losing momentum for me.

64. Brilliance by Anthony McCarten
Picked this up in the library and really glad I did. It is a fictional account of the life of Thomas Edison in particular his business relationship with the banker J P Morgan and their competition to against Tesla and Westinghouse to provide the electricity solution for the USA. It reminded me of the books of T C Boyle - although this was a lot shorter than his tend to be. It switches back and forward between him as an old man, nearly deaf and filled with regrets and the period in his life when he was working on electrical currents. It was an excellent portrayal of the downside of being a genius, how relationships suffer and whether or not new technology necessarily means progress. Highly recommended

82: I think Sanctum is brilliantly done but it's not my favourite of her novels, because I think the narrator of the story is quite unpleasant, and I started to think so quite quickly, even before I realised how unreliable his version of things is.

65. A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin

66. Spilt Milk by Chico Buarque

67. Still Midnight by Denise Mina

68. Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

69. Elephant Moon by John Sweeney

70. Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

71. The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin

72. The Carrier by Sophie Hannah

73. Triburbia by Karl Taro Greenfield

74. The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

75. The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler

76. Marbles by Ellen Forney

Congrats on 75!