Nine Below

Touched

2013-02-01T15:22:48Z

View Poll: #1893840

Context if context be needed be.

The Question Obama Ducked

2013-01-11T16:09:29Z

View Poll: #1889669

Old Kent Road

2013-01-10T11:48:40Z

View Poll: #1889469

Keith

2012-12-23T13:31:29Z

View Poll: #1886505

New Car Smell

2012-12-18T09:50:08Z

Driving down the M1 the other day, we got talking about the possibility of getting a new car. At one point, I said: "Well, I doubt we'll ever own a brand new car." My wife was taken aback by this. Turns out that whilst I don't know anyone who has ever bought a brand new car, her whole family do this.

View Poll: #1885462

"My veal cutlet come down, tried to beat the shit out of my cup of coffee. Coffee just wasn't strong

2012-12-17T16:41:59Z

View Poll: #1885312

Moxtons

2012-10-11T16:58:11Z

View Poll: #1871883

Who Gon Stop Me

2012-03-20T10:02:45Z

View Poll: #1827590

Roasting Giant Rudders

2011-10-10T15:44:31Z

View Poll: #1785581

Context.

Just The Two Of Us

2011-10-10T14:28:37Z

View Poll: #1785567

Crowdsourcing

2011-10-05T16:27:02Z

View Poll: #1784485

World Book Night 2012 Top 100

2011-09-13T11:27:53Z

World Book Night asked people to nominate their top ten books to create a list that would feed into the selection of next year’s titles to be given away. Here is the list, usual rules apply.

1 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
2 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
3 The Book Thief Markus Zusak
4 Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
5 The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger
6 The Lord of the Rings J. R. R. Tolkien
7 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
8 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
9 Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier
10 The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini
11 American Gods Neil Gaiman
12 A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini
13 Harry Potter Adult Hardback Boxed Set J. K. Rowling
14 The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon
15 The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien
16 One Day David Nicholls
17 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks
18 The Help Kathryn Stockett
19 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
20 Good Omens Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
21 The Notebook Nicholas Sparks
22 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Stieg Larsson
23 The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood
24 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
25 Little Women Louisa M. Alcott
26 Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
27 The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold
28 Atonement Ian McEwan
29 Room Emma Donoghue
30 Catch-22 Joseph Heller
31 We Need to Talk About Kevin Lionel Shriver
32 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman
33 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis De Bernieres
34 The Island Victoria Hislop
35 Neverwhere Neil Gaiman
36 The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver
37 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger
38 Chocolat Joanne Harris
39 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro
40 The Five People You Meet in Heaven Mitch Albom
41 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
42 Animal Farm George Orwell
43 The Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett
44 The Eyre Affair Jasper Fforde
45 Tess of the D’Urbervilles Thomas Hardy
46 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl
47 I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith
48 The Wasp Factory Iain Banks
49 Life of Pi Yann Martel
50 The Road Cormac McCarthy
51 Great Expectations Charles Dickens
52 Dracula Bram Stoker
53 The Secret History Donna Tartt
54 Small Island Andrea Levy
55 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
56 Lord of the Flies William Golding
57 Persuasion Jane Austen
58 A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving
59 Notes from a Small Island Bill Bryson
60 Watership Down Richard Adams
61 Night Watch Terry Pratchett
62 Brave New World Aldous Huxley
63 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon
64 Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell Susanna Clarke
65 The Color Purple Alice Walker
66 My Sister’s Keeper Jodi Picoult
67 The Stand Stephen King
68 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell
69 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov
70 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
71 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons
72 Frankenstein Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
73 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Mary Ann Shaffer
74 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
75 Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell
76 The Graveyard Book Neil Gaiman
77 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
78 The Princess Bride William Goldman
79 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
80 Perfume Patrick Suskind
81 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
82 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy
83 Middlemarch George Eliot
84 Dune Frank Herbert
85 Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel
86 Stardust Neil Gaiman
87 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
~~88 Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie~~
89 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone J. K. Rowling
90 Shantaram Gregory David Roberts
91 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
92 Possession: A Romance A. S. Byatt
93 Tales of the City Armistead Maupin
94 Kafka on the Shore Haruki Murakami
95 The Magus John Fowles
96 The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas John Boyne
97 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry
98 Alias Grace Margaret Atwood
99 Norwegian Wood Haruki Murakami
100 The Wind-up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami

People really like Gaiman, don't they?

Yoga

2011-09-07T10:31:09Z

View Poll: Yoga

Context.

2012

2011-06-18T11:15:05Z

View Poll: #1753263

To Celebrate The Resurection Of LJ (In Advance Of Its Continued Slow Death)

2011-03-31T09:56:37Z

View Poll: Herbal

Humiliation

2011-02-09T14:20:37Z

View Poll: #1679277

Breaking news: infrastructure often foreign owned

2010-12-03T15:51:37Z

View Poll: #1652613

At The Risk Of Over-Exciting Myself

2010-12-02T10:29:49Z

View Poll: #1652001

Non-Diverse Poll

2010-12-02T09:58:51Z

View Poll: #1651996

29 April

2010-11-23T18:17:30Z

View Poll: #1648326

Battle Of The Teas

2010-10-11T14:50:50Z

View Poll: There can be only one...

It's Been Too Long

2010-10-11T12:46:24Z

View Poll: #1630209

The Heart Of School Life

2010-10-06T15:41:25Z

View Poll: Gove

Trolley

2010-09-28T15:05:38Z

View Poll: #1624974

Books: August 2010

2010-08-31T09:10:17Z

#29 Swords & Dark Magic, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders

Read for review for SF Site.

#30 By George by Wesley Stace

Recommended by ajr as his book of 2009. My wife got about half way through before putting it down as boring but I'm not sure what her problem was. It is a family mystery told by characters from two different generations, one of whom is a ventriloquist's dummy. Perhaps slightly contrived but very satisfying.

I also hadn't realised that the author is John Wesley Harding. The singer, not the gun in every hand guy.

#31The Servants by MM Smith

Another of Michael Marshall Smith's transparent psuedonyms which in this instance announces his move into children's literature. I don't think MMS could write a bad book but he's certainly written a dull. Specifically it is a worthy but dull Young Boy's Cancer Primer.

#32 The Fire Gospels by Michel Faber

Another minor work from a major author. This is part of the Canongate Myths series and concerns the discovery of a fifth gospel that shows that there was no resurrection. It unfolds much as you would imagine and whilst Faber is always an impressive writer, I wish he had written something more substantial.

#33 Far North by Marcel Thoreux

As I mentioned to coalescent, I think this is probably a better novel than The City & The City but I would have still given the Arthur C Clarke Award to China Mieville. I'm not usually a fan of post-apocalypse novels - too limited - but this is wonderful, a sort of science fictional version of Primo Levi.

#34 The Rule Of Bone by Russell Banks

Coming of age is used quite casually to refer to pretty much all children's novels. This is the real thing though; a novel about a child who accidently and then deliberately sets out to discover the the right way to live. Bone lives in a small town in upstate New York. His interests are typical - weed, heavy metal and petty crime - but then he discovers Rastafarianism. Again, it can be a little contrived but it is immensely powerful as Bone opens himself up to a new way of understanding only to run up against the inherent limitations both of this philosophy and of the world itself.