100 Books of Solitude

For those of you that have been following my Quest (it deserved a capital ‘Q’ for its epic nature) to read one hundred book in a year, you may or may not be interested to know that yesterday I finished book 100, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.

I started this mad cap adventure last Christmas day and if it hadn’t been for the European Championships (in which we English foolishly persuaded ourselves that as we had no chance of winning, then we must, in fact, be in with a shout because that’s how logic works in films) I would have had at least a couple more books on the board.

Here’s that list in full:

1. The Rebel – Albert Camus
2. Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History - Adam Nicolson
3. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
4. Hadrian VII – Frederick William Rolfe
5. The Divine Comedy – Dante Alegheri
6. Aku-Aku – Thor Heyerdahl
7. The Man Every Woman Wants – Miranda Lee
8. Night of the Crabs – Guy N. Smith
9. The Rights of Man – Thomas Paine
10. Gullivers Travels – Jonathan Swift
11. God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations For Modern Science – James Hannam
12. Of Love and Other Demons – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
13. No One Writes to the Colonel -  Gabriel Garcia Marquez
14. Under The Jaguar Sun – Italo Calvino
15. Knowledge of Angels – Jill Paton Walsh
16. The Book of Imaginary Beings – Jorge Luis Borges
17. Lewis Carroll In Numberland – Robin Wilson
18. The Dogs and the Wolves – Irene Nemirovsky
19. Jezebel - Irene Nemirovsky
20. The Football Men: Up Close with the Giants of the Modern Game – Simon Kuper
21. Death of a Dustman – M. C Beaton
22. Down and Out in Paris and London – George Orwell
23. Danse Macabre – Stephen king
24. No Smoke, No Fire – Dave Jones
25. Wasa-Wasa - Harry Macfie & Hans G. Westerlund
26. Measuring the World – Daniel Kehlmann
27. Snuff – Terry Pratchett
28. Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
29. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci – Jonathan D. Spence
30. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
31. Fahrenheit 451 – Rad Bradbury
32. In Siberia – Colin Thubron
33. The Red House Mystery – A. A Milne
34. The Mystery of Holly Lane – Enid Blyton
35. The Devil and Sherlock Holmes – David Grann
36. Mr Bliss – JRR Tolkien
37. Drinking Arak off An Ayatollah’s Beard – Nicholas Jubber
38. Berlin -  Antony Beevor
39. The Wind Through the Keyhole – Stephen King
40. The Battle for Gullywith – Susan Hill
41. Have A Little Faith – Mitch Albom
42. Educating Jack – Jack Sheffield
43. Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination – Robert Macfarlane
44. This is not the end of the book; – Umberto Eco
45. My Quest For the Yeti – Reinhold Messner
46. The Elephant Vanishes – Haruki Murakami
47. Allan Quatermain – H. Rider Haggard
48. My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes - Gary Imlach
49. Death of a Celebrity – M. C Beaton
50. In Arcadia – Ben Okri
51. The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
52. Bertrand Russell’s Best – Bertand Russell, edited by Robert E. Egner
53. The Art of Travel - Alain de Botton
54. All Our Worldly Goods – Irene Nemirovsky
55. Elephants Can Remember – Agatha Christie
56. Jeeve’s in the Offing – P. G Wodehouse
57. Fifty Shades of Grey – E. L James
58. The Mystery of Tally-Ho Cottage – Enid Blyton
59. The Histories – Herodotus
60. ‘Salem’s Lot – Stephen King
61. Vita Brevis – Jostein Gaarder
62. Wonderstruck – Brian Selznick
63. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
64. The Second World War – Antony Beevor
65. The Screwtape Letters – C. S. Lewis
66. Death of a Village – M.C Beaton
67. The Road – Cormac McCarthy
68. Strange Pilgrims – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
69. The Story of San Michele – Axel Munthe
70. The Hundred and One Dalmatians – Dodie Smith
71. Why England lose and Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained – Simon Kuper & Stefan Szymanski
72. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
73. Red Dragon – Thomas Harris
74. The news Where You Are – Catherine O’ Flynn
75. Strange Meeting – Susan Hill
76. The Greatcoat – Helen Dunmore
77. Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
78. A Brief History of Infinity: The Quest to Think the Unthinkable – Brian Clegg
79. The Mystery of the Missing Man – Enid Blyton
80. Crabs’ Moon: Night of the Crabs 2 – Guy N. Smith
81. David Golder – Irene Némirovsky
82. Memoirs From the House of the Dead – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
83. Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations – Mark Goodman
84. Ur of the Chaldees – Sir Leonard Woolley
85. TV Cream Toys: Presents You Pestered Your Parents For – Steve Berry
86. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
87. A Maze of Death – Philip K. Dick
88. Death of a Poison Pen – M. C Beaton
89. Up In The Bronx – Stephen Baum
90. In Evil Hour – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
91. Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
92. The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster
93. Myths of the Near Future – J. G. Ballard
94. The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
95. Rush: The Autobiography – Ian Rush
96. Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
97. The Painted Veil – W. Somerset Maugham
98. But Not Yet – Lucy Tasker
99. Through A Glass, Darkly – Jostein Gaarder
100. Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel

There have been many highlights: The Rebel, Aku-Aku, Night of the Crabs, God’s Philosophers, The Second World War (to name but a few),  Lowlights: Fifty Shades of Grey, The Divine Comedy, Wonderstruck, The Greatcoat, and Oddlights: The Virgin Suicides, The book of Imaginary Beings, In Arcadia…

Overall though the purpose and point of what I was trying to do was throw an eclectic mix together to push my understanding of all types of genres and styles of writing.  Not only that but it fuelled my interest in restarting this blog and hopefully keeping you entertained as you travel through the vast spaces that make up blog land.

After such a romp through the literary word and also world, all that remains to be said is that I hope you all have a wonderful and magical Christmas with crackers that do actually go bang and contain terrible jokes that you can then stick into your blog posts throughout the year, I’ll be checking on that last one.  See you on boxing day!

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