Read all the books on my secondary top 100

Sabriel started off really slowly, and it took me several weeks to get into the rhythm of the book, but it ended up being quite good. Cliche in some ways, of course, but there were a few spanners thrown in that made it a worthy read. I do wish I had read it when I was about fifteen, though. I’d have loved it then, and maybe I never would have fallen out of love with fantasy for that year or so. (I will never forgive Sara Douglass and Maggie Furey for tag-teaming me into that state of mind.)

Bossypants was… I don’t know. Good? It had funny bits, and it was entertaining, but it kind of bothered me. Maybe it was a bit too soapbox-ey. Far be it from me to criticise Tina Fey, especially in her own autobiography, but I came out of the experience more disillusioned than anything else. I’m not quite sure what to make of that.

I started off loving this book. The first couple of hundred pages really grabbed my attention. And, I must say, I really liked the idea and the plot overall. If only I could have liked the protagonists.

They were just so… goddamn… perfect. If they hadn’t had such shitty luck in their lives, I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes reading about them. They were so smart and edgy and artsy and free-spirited and beautiful and beloved that I just couldn’t believe they were real. I kept hoping for a flaw, any flaw, and I couldn’t. They were wish fulfilment.

I also don’t understand why Niffenegger bothered with both protagonists having a POV, because they had identical voices and there was only one issue upon which they ever disagreed, and it was resolved very quickly. Having “Henry:” and “Clare:” and even “Later:” subheadings just kind of came across as a crutch that reminded me of the kinds of quirks you’ll find in juvenile fanfiction.

This book was, at its heart, trashy romance. I am loath to say it’s quite like Twilight, because it didn’t have too many of those facepalm-worthy moments (unlike the aforementioned, which was polluted with them), and it actually did have a plot. A good one, at that. But it wasn’t great, and I can definitely think of some parallels. Such a shame. In other hands, this story could have been a favourite.

Reading this book made me want to be a better person, and I don’t think there’s much higher praise for a book than that. Or for anything else, for that matter.

I would love to be half as eloquent, charming, worldly, humble, intelligent and witty as Stephen Fry, but alas, I am ever the jack of all trades, master of none. I suppose it’s no bad thing to be pretty okay at almost everything. We all have our insecurities, I guess.

Yup, finished both on the same day.

The God Delusion was good, but I found myself bored by most of it, mostly because I tend not to derive much interest by being the choir that is preached to. There were morsels of new information, though, and I enjoyed those.

Serial Killers was downright fascinating. Everyone should read it, even those with minimal interest in true crime. I loved it.

Fun little book. I enjoy Mike Birbiglia’s comedy, so I just imagine the whole thing spoken in his odd, self-deprecating drawl and it’s fantastically funny.

I actually read this a long time ago, as a child – like, pre-high school age. I had good memories of it, and I wanted to read the rest of the series, so I decided to add it here. And it was… okay. Nothing fantastic, but it’s certainly good for EU stuff. Far more Christie Golden than Richard Knaak (which is a reference probably only I will get, but oh well).

1. At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O’Brien
2. Atonement, Ian McEwan
3. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
4. The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
5. Deliverance, James Dickey
6. Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
7. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
8. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
9. Neuromancer, William Gibson
10. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
11. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
12. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
13. Red Harvest, Dashiel Hammett
14. Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
15. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
16. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, John Le Carre
17. Ubik, Philip K. Dick
18. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
19. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
20. The Trial, Franz Kafka
21. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon
22. Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Lynne Truss
23. The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
24. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
25. The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
26. On Writing, Stephen King
27. Sleepwalk With Me, Mike Birbiglia
28. Beyond Band of Brothers, Richard Winters
29. World War Z, Max Brooks
30. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clark
31. Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes
32. Wicked, Gregory MacGuire
33. The Once and Future King, T.H. White
34. My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult
35. The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
36. Moab Is My Washpot, Stephen Fry
37. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
38. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
39. Gardens of the Moon, Stephen Erikson
40. For the Win, Cory Doctorow
41. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
42. Decision Points, George W. Bush
43. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
44. Chronicles of the Black Company, Glen Cook
45. Bossypants, Tina Fey
46. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
47. A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick
48. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
49. Band of Brothers, Stephen E. Ambrose
50. Black Hawk Down, Mark Bowden
51. Cosmos, Carl Sagan
52. Song of Susannah, Stephen King
53. The Dark Tower, Stephen King
54. Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Jeff Lindsay
55. The First Man in Rome, Colleen McCollough
56. Frost/Nixon, David Frost
57. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Yasutaka Tsutsui
58. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
59. iWoz, Steve Wozniak
60. John Dies At The End, David Wong
61. The King’s Speech, Mark Logue
62. Life Itself, Roger Ebert
63. Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks
64. No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
65. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
67. Ringworld, Larry Niven
68. Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters, Peter Vronsky
69. Shutter Island, Dennis Lehane
70. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
71. Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman!, Richard Feynman
72. Timeline, Michael Crichton
73. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig
74. Sabriel, Garth Nix
75. Storm Front, Jim Butcher
76. The Briar King, Greg Keyes
77. The Blade Itself, Joe Abercrombie
78. The Red Wolf Conspiracy, Robert V. S. Redick
79. Talion: Revenant, Michael A. Stackpole
80. A Shadow in Summer, Daniel Abraham
81. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
82. Fevre Dream, George R.R. Martin
83. Looking For Alaska, John Green
84. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt
85. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
86. The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham
87. The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch
88. The Darkness That Comes Before, R. Scott Bakker
89. The Warded Man, Peter V. Brett
90. Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
91. Old Man’s War, John Scalzi
92. Collapse, Jared Diamond
93. Lamb, Christopher Moore
94. Marley & Me, Josh Grogan
95. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
96. Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas R. Hoftadter
97. Heir to the Empire, Timothy Zahn
98. Let The Right One In, John Ajvide Lindqvist
99. An Idiot Abroad, Karl Pilkington
100. Shadow of the Torturer, Gene Wolfe