Daily Archive

So, I got into a really deep conversation with my friend Silvery Dude before Christmas about how I might mark my turning 50. This has turned into two distinct projects: Films to Watch Before I’m 51 over on Bride of the Screen God, and now the The Big Re-Read, which is about re-visiting books that have been important to me for whatever reason over the years.

It won’t come as any great surprise that it took a great deal of consideration before I settled on my final what was supposed to be 12 books (one a month until 31 January 2013) and which is now what I’m calling a Baker’s Dozen plus Two. And I’m also starting a month later than intended which also tells you how much pondering I have done, adding books right up until yesterday. Some quite important titles haven’t made the cut for various reasons which I will explain when I get there.

I will write about these books once I’ve re-read them but they won’t be reviews as such, more an explanation of why they are important to me and a little bit of metadata (when I first read it, how many times since and so on). This is meant to be a fun thing, looking back over a reading life, which sounds a bit serious but really, really isn’t intended to be so.

Finally the list (in abasolutely no order whatsoever):

• Nemesis by Agatha Christie
• Katherine by Anya Seton
• The Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark
• The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
• Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
• Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
• Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
• The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse
• Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood
• Life: A User’s Manual by Georges Perec
• Gilles et Jeanne by Michel Tournier
• The Telling of Lies by Timothy Findley
• Goodbye Without Leaving by Laurie Colwin
• Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
• Bride of the Rat God by Barbara Hambly

The honourable non-inclusions are:

• Lord of the Rings – well , I’ve read this so many times and it had a huge impact on me but it is so magnificent that it really needs to stand on its own; and a re-read will happen at sometime I’m sure
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark – her masterpiece but already dealt with here
• Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin – covered here
• Duplicate Keys by Jane Smiley – a marvelous thriller/crime novel which I talked about here
• Espedair Street by Iain Banks – Scottish rock novel extraordinaire