novels i have bought

[lobelia321]

Over the last four weeks (since the Yorkshire creative writing workshop), I have bought a lot of novels, many from charity shops. In addition, I was given a whole pile for my birthday.

Here they are:

• Philip Roth, Indignation (am in the middle of it right now; it's great)

• Adam Thorpe, Hodd (I've read this one; it has a fantastic premise, a great ye mediaevally prose style but then sinks into a number of turgid bits where I found it hard to keep going)

• Harper Lee, To kill a mockingbird (read this decades ago and can't remember a lot)
• J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey (ditto)

• Madeleine Wickham, Swimming pool Sunday (alter ego of chick lit bestseller writer Sophie Kinsella whose chicklits I adore; her early Wickham books are more stolid but interesting to see a writer develop)

• Bernice Rubens, A five year sentence (a silly and badly-written book with a cute premise that kept me going, surprisingly)

• Harold Pinter, The caretaker (not a novel, I know, but a play and fantastic)

• Charles Webb, The graduate (the book upon which the Dustin-Hoffman-film was based; has surprisingly good bits and snappy dialogue but then descends into mannerism)

• D.H. Lawrence, The Fox (unadulterated Lawrence rubbish; reminded me how little I can stand this misogynist bore)

• Cassandra Clare, City of Bones (I lost interest by page 83 but may persevere as it's by a fellow slasher and I always like to support that lot, *g*, even if they would insist on writing in the fantasy genre wot i can't get into)

• Tatyana Tolstaya, The Slynx (I'm a fifth of the way into this and have decided to read it alongside another novel as it is too grim and Russian to sustain me 24/7; but it's grim in a good way and very classic post-apocalyptic science fiction as political allegory)

Not yet read:
• Markus Zusak, I am the messenger
• Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip
• Patricia Highsmith, The glass cell
• Agatha Christie, The body in the library
• Amnesty International, editor, Freedom (short stories by David Mitchell et al.)
• Chris Cleave, The other hand
• Michelle Spring, Nights in white satin
• John Grisham, The testament
• Kate Grenville, The secret river
• Daniel Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt
• Thomas Mann, Dr Faustus
• Anne Enright, The gathering
• Philip Hensher, The bedroom of the mister's wife
• James Joyce, Ulysses
• Margaret Atwood, The year of the flood
• Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse
• Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

Ah, I just love having a long shelf of novels to look forward to and not to worry that I may be running out of reading matter any time soon! Delicious! Plus I have an amazon voucher from t'parents and brick-and-mortar book vouchers from t'h. How happy am I!