flying_kangaroo

The project of the year that really caught my attention (so, not the dissertation then) was the ridiculous-sounding A Century of Books. That is, you read a book published in each year of the century. I'd thought about it a couple of times before but dismissed it as being way too much faffing about what with finding a book to read for each year and then figuring out where I'd find it from - nah. Simon over at Stuck in a Book came up with the original idea: http://stuck-in-a-book.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/century-of-books-some-suggestions.html.

However, given a job with ridiculous amounts of down-time and with my dissertation providing an clear incentive to procrastinate, it was obviously the right time to reconsider. In January I found myself making a careful list - I mean, spreadsheet - of books that I owned and hadn't read, potential books which fitted each year that I didn't own, and happily scouring charity shops, bookfinder.com, Barnet libraries, and the amazing free bookshop in Stratford (I will be sorry to leave the job in Stratford on this basis alone but my bookshelves will probably thank me). In the end I only bought 8 or 9 books and only spent about £25 on this.

Then I set out to read them. In the order they were published. I may have been a little obsessed. Keith teased me a lot.

1900 Three men on the Bummel - Jerome K Jerome (excellent! why have I never read this before? I bought a lovely edition containing this and Three Men in a Boat while we were in York and I'm looking forward to reading Three Men in a Boat .. at some point ... )
1901 My Brilliant Career - Miles Franklin
1902 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
1903 Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm - Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin (got this muddled up with Pollyanna. They are different. But only slightly.)
1904 The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen - Elizabeth van Arnim (I really enjoyed this, and I'm looking forward to reading more van Arnim)
1905 The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
1906 The Four Million - O Henry (cheating a bit, this was a short story!)
1907 Father and Son - Edmund Gosse
1908 The Man Who Was Thursday - GK Chesterton
1909 Martin Eden - Jack London

1910 Literary Lapses - Stephen Leacock
1911 In a German Pension - Katherine Mansfield
1912 The Unbearable Bassington - Saki
1913 The Custom of the Country - Edith Wharton
1914 Kokoro - Natsume
1915 The Thirty-Nine Steps - John Buchan
1916 Understood Betsy - Dorothy Canfield Fisher
1917 The Setons - O Douglas
1918 Sunflower - Krudy
1919 Journal of a Disappointed Man - W. M. Barbellion

1920 Main Street - Sinclair Lewis
1921 Scaramouche - Rafael Sabatini (swashbuckling adventures)
1922 The Enchanted April - Elizabeth van Arnim (slightly less swashbuckling, still adventures)
1923 Confessions of Zeno - Italo Svevo
1924 The Constant Nymph - Margaret Kennedy (I was not expecting the twist at the end, still a bit cut up about this one actually)
1925 The Bread Givers - Anzia Yezierska
1926 The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway (cheapo edition I read spoilt it somewhat with all the typos)
1927 Journal - Katherine Mansfield
1928 Brook Evans - Susan Glaspell
1929 Street Haunting - Virginia Woolf

1930 As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
1931 All Passion Spent - Vita Sackville-West (I discovered a new desire to read books about old ladies)
1932 Bricks and Mortar - Helen Ashton
1933 Edward Wilson ... - George Seaver
1934 Voyage in the Dark - Jean Rhys
1935 Illyrian Spring - Ann Bridge (another in the old-lady vein)
1936 The New House - Lettice Cooper (thinking about moving out of our house, this was somewhat comforting)
1937 Of Mice and Men - Steinbeck
1938 The Children Who Lived in a Barn - Eleanor Graham
1939 The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler (yay Marlowe)

1940 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog - Dylan Thomas
1941 Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton (bleak but very good writing)
1942 Dust Tracks on a Road - Zora Neale Hurston
1943 The Makioka Sisters - Tanziaki
1944 There Were No Windows - Norah Hoult (this is so sad! but excellent too)
1945 Thursday Afternoons - Monica Dickens (infuriating because it's another one of those surprise endings and I've read it twice now and it gets me every time.)
1946 Consider the Years - Virginia Graham
1947 Hetty Dorval - Ethel Wilson
1948 The Locusts Have No King - Dawn Powell (was hoping I'd enjoy this more than I did, can't put my finger on why, but didn't find it great)
1949 How to Run Your Home Without Help - Kay Smallshaw (now I have visions of 'doing' a room each day! glad I have a hoover)

1950 Some Tame Gazelle - Barbara Pym
1951 My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier (brrr)
1952 Other Inquisitions - Jorge Luis Borges
1953 The Erasers - Alain Robbe-Grillet
1954 Katherine - Anya Seton
1955 The Winds of Heaven - Monica Dickens
1956 Every Eye - Isobel English
1957 The Nine Guardians - Rosario Castellanos (I wanted to like this because South American female writer)
1958 Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter - Simone de Beauvoir
1959 The Cubs and Other Stories - Mario Vargas Llosa

1960 The L-Shaped Room - Lynne Reid Banks
1961 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
1962 We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson (so good. properly scary, or perhaps creepy is the better word)
1963 Hopscotch - Julio Cortazar
1964 The Italians - Barzini
1965 The Carlyles At Home - Thea Holme
1966 Godhanger - Dick King Smith
1967 The Palace of Love - Jack Vance
1968 A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K Le Guin
1969 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

1970 Mr Sammler's Planet - Saul Bellow
1971 Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont - Elizabeth Taylor (I've been meaning to read Elizabeth Taylor for ages and she's so good! must find more)
1972 Roadside picnic - Strugatsy brothers (Tarkovsky's Stalker was based on this, I've heard a lot about it, really should watch it sometime)
1973 The Summer Before the Dark - Doris Lessing
1974 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Bob Pirsig (didn't realise til I reached the end that this was essentially true, all the philosophy made my head spin)
1975 The Great Railway Bazaar - Paul Theroux
1976 Meridian - Alice Walker
1977 Falconer - John Cheever
1978 Art in Nature - Tove Jansson
1979 Life Before Man - Margaret Atwood

1980 Human Voices - Penelope Fitzgerald (whisked back to the 1940s and the BBC in wartime, bit of a shock to the system)
1981 The Delta Function - Rosa Montero
1982 The Stainless Steel Rat for President - Harry Harrison
1983 In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens - Alice Walker
1984 Changeover - Margaret Mahy
1985 The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler
1986 The Cat Inside - William S. Burroughs
1987 The Shell Seekers - Rosamunde Pilcher (I sooo wanted to like this but actually by the end I found the characters grating)
1988 The Beginning of Spring - Penelope Fitzgerald
1989 Passing On - Penelope Lively (made an unintentional, interesting contrast to The Shell Seekers, mothers dying, children left behind etc)

1990 Soul Mountain - Gao Xingjian (ugh!)
1991 Such a Long Journey - Rohinton Mistry
1992 Looking for Alibrandi - Melina Marchetta
1993 The Elephant Vanishes - Haruki Murakami
1994 Beside the Ocean of Time - George Mackay Brown (superb, Scottish isles and mysterious time bending and poetry and whoooo)
1995 Wicked - Gregory Maguire (read this for bookgroup, curious to see the musical now because such a lot happened in this! there's so much to fit in!)
1996 Leaning towards Infinity - Sue Woolfe (boobs and maths. driven mothers and their babies.)
1997 Grace Notes - Bernard MacLaverty (more funerals, this time in Ireland, and music, and driven mothers and their babies, another interesting but unintentional pair)
1998 Summer Sisters - Judy Blume (OH GOD I'd forgotten how much Judy's habit of making her characters' sentences trail off ... irritated me every. time.)
1999 The Boy Who Kicked Pigs - Tom Baker (brrr too dark and not funny for me!)

2000 Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi (EXCELLENT now where is the second book)

(hurrah! finished my century! in only 9 and a half months!)

2001 Bush Oranges - Kay Donovan
2002 That Old Ace in the Hole - Annie E. Proulx (Took a few pages to get into but then YES - now where is Accordion Crimes I'm sure I have a copy somewhere)
2003 The Rules of Engagement - Anita Brookner (why is Brookner so dismal? and what's with her looong sentences with all those commas?)
2004 - 2014 yet to be decided / read but will definitely finish with Alice's new book, her first novel, Laurinda, which just came out this month.

So. Yeah. Boooks!

Clenched Soul: Pablo Neruda

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.

What kind of pirate am I? You decide!
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I have interviews. Yes! 2 this week. I might tell you more if I survive them..

I really need something of interest to do.
Instead, here, have a ( song words meme )

Ebay isn't very helpful:

860 items found for stuff i don't need