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Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Vanity Fair is "a novel without a hero", set during the Napoleonic wars. It was originally published as a 19-volume serial, from 1847 to 1848 - and boy, does it show. The first couple hundred pages...
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Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
Catch-22 is set during WWII, between 1942 and 1944. The main character is a bombadier; Heller was also a bombadier during that very period, so apparently he took the whole "write what you know" thing...
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Emma – Jane Austen
Emma was the last of Austen's six novels to be completed, after the publication of Pride and Prejudice. A London publisher offered her £450 for the manuscript, and asked for the copyright for Mansfield...
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Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
Remember The Catcher In The Rye? Well, Money: A Suicide Note is basically the grown up's version. If you like your narrators drunk, rich, and horny, then this is the book for you! Amis reportedly based...
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Tropic Of Cancer – Henry Miller
To understand Tropic Of Cancer, you really need to understand Henry Miller. He grew up in the States, born in 1891 to German-speaking parents and only learning to speak English fluently during his...
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Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
The blurb on the back of this edition of Portnoy's Complaint proclaims thus: "Portnoy's Complaint must surely be the funniest book about sex ever written". It was released to a storm of controversy,...
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Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
Gulliver's Travels reads pretty much like the travel blog of a bloke who gallivanted around the world in the 1700s, when atlases were woefully incomplete. The story kicks off with his first voyage,...
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Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Stella Gibbons seems to be the poor cousin of early 20th century authors, ignored by academics and readers alike. Cold Comfort Farm was her first book, published in 1932, and she went on to write 23...
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The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy actually began as a radio series, first broadcast on 8 March 1978. Adams didn't adapt it to book form until the following year, but it's a good thing he did because...
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The Life And Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman – Laurence Sterne
When you pick up a book called The Life And Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, you figure that you're going to read all about... well, the life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, who was probably a...
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Scoop – Evelyn Waugh
It's kind of funny, really, to read a book about journalists and newspapers written before the News Of The World scandal. Scoop reads like a time capsule of the by-gone "heyday" of newspaper...
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Lolly Willowes – Sylvia Townsend Warner
Lolly Willowes (alternative title: The Loving Huntsman) was Sylvia Townsend Warner's first novel. It was published in 1926 and billed as an "early feminist classic". Even by today's standards, it's a...
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Less – Andrew Sean Greer
Arthur Less worries that he is the "first homosexual to ever grow old" (which made me laugh... until I thought about the heavier connotations, "old" gays being the only ones who survived the AIDS...
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The Manic Pixie Dream Boy Improvement Project – Lenore Appelhans
The Manic Pixie Dream Boy Improvement Project definitely goes out to all the word nerds and book geeks. The whole premise is a literary critique: Riley is a Manic Pixie Dream Boy, a sub-type of the...
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The Life And Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman – Laurence Sterne
When you pick up a book called The Life And Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, you figure that you're going to read all about... well, the life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, who was probably a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Scoop – Evelyn Waugh
It's kind of funny, really, to read a book about journalists and newspapers written before the News Of The World scandal. Scoop reads like a time capsule of the by-gone "heyday" of newspaper...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lolly Willowes – Sylvia Townsend Warner
Lolly Willowes (alternative title: The Loving Huntsman) was Sylvia Townsend Warner's first novel. It was published in 1926 and billed as an "early feminist classic". Even by today's standards, it's a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Less – Andrew Sean Greer
Arthur Less worries that he is the "first homosexual to ever grow old" (which made me laugh... until I thought about the heavier connotations, "old" gays being the only ones who survived the AIDS...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Manic Pixie Dream Boy Improvement Project – Lenore Appelhans
The Manic Pixie Dream Boy Improvement Project definitely goes out to all the word nerds and book geeks. The whole premise is a literary critique: Riley is a Manic Pixie Dream Boy, a sub-type of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sanditon – Jane Austen
Jane Austen began writing Sanditon on 27 January 1817. She wrote twelve chapters before setting it aside on 18 March that year. She wrote to her niece a few days later, complaining that she felt...
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