Tuesday, 5 January 2010

The The 100+ Reading Challenge


Saw the '09 challenge late last year and made a mental note to take part in 2010's. Nearly forgetting about it, I stumbled across it again and caught it just in time. Fortunately I'm already off to a good start. Reviews shall possibly follow some, definitely not all. More for myself than for anyone else, though if you've suggestions...


1. Queer, William S. Burroughs (Started 01/01, finished 02/01)
2. Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence (Started 02/01, finished 05/01)
3. Who Sleeps with Katz, Todd McEwen (Started 06/01, finished 08/01)
4. When to Walk, Rebecca Gowers (Started 09/01, finished 14/01)
5. Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh (Started 15/01, finished 17/01)
6. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf (Started 18/01, finished 25/01)
7. Man or Mango?, Lucy Ellmann (Started 25/01, finished 27/01)
8. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh (Started 28/01, finished 02/02)
9. Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut (Started 02/02, finished 08/02)
10. Lust, Elfriede Jelinek (Started 13/02, finished 18/02)
11. Less Than Zero, Easton Ellis (Started 18/02, finished 19/02)
12. Generation X, Douglas Coupland (Started 19/02, finished 03/03)
13. Desolation Angels, Jack Kerouac (Started 04/03, finished 15/03)
14. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe (Started 15/03, finished 29/04)
15. Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf (Started 25/03, finished 27/03)
16. The Song of Lunch, Christopher Reid (Started 01/04, finished 01/04)
17. The Real Cool Killers, Chester Himes (Started 30/04, finished

Sunday, 20 December 2009

A bit about the author:

Books? Here: big fan of the Beat Gen. a la Ginsberg (Howl, Kaddish), Kerouac (On the Road, Dharma Bums, the Subterraneans). Move on (back?) to the modernists, affecting a taste for Joyce; throw in a bit of French existentialism: Camus; dystopia w/ Huxley & Orwell (of course); Vonnegut & Joseph Heller. Turn things arse about face, now for something completely different: Evelyn Waugh (BRIDESHEAD!); Maugham (Of Human Bondage, YES) and a modern affair in Stephen Fry, Bret Easton Ellis and Ben Elton. Some BIGGIES in Whitman, Wilde, Salinger, Keats & Byron. Name drop, name drop, name drop, you get the idea.