create a list of 100 must-read books and read them.

“What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole lifestyle he helped to create… a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that someone – or at least some force – is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel.”

What can I say? This book is fabulous in every way.

I saw the film a few years ago, and, though I can’t say I was overly impressed, the concept has always stuck in my mind. Picking up the novel after finding it in a charity shop, it was clear from the first chapter that no adaptation could ever do justice to the original. As you savour every perfect word, Garland’s style of writing at once inspires you to pick up a pen, then immediately disheartens you, as the awareness that you could never possibly create anything so delicious descends.

The beach is a tale of travelers trying to create the perfect society in the perfect surroundings. Viewing events through the eyes of young globetrotter Richard, the clear moral is the impossibility of such a task, as good, amicable people become manifestations of the very things they are trying to escape.

Wonderful book, I truly cannot fault it.

Picking up this book as a fan of much of Fry’s work, I must confess to being somewhat disappointed upon its completion. There are a few plot inconsistencies and I find Fry’s fondness for telling two stories at once, which will doubtless fuse at some point in a hitherto unknown way, at best annoying. If you’re thinking of reading a Stephen Fry book, you would do much better to read ‘The Liar’ instead. It is utterly fabulous in every way.

This is a list of all the un-read books I have collected over the years which I still think might be worth the effort:

1 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
2 The Dharma Bums – Jack Kerouac
3 War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
4 Burmese Days – George Orwell
5 Brick Lane – Monica Ali
6 Sons and Lovers – D. H. Lawrence
7 A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
8 Inside the Whale and Other essays – George Orwell
9 Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
10 off the map – Crimethinc
11 The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
12 Plato’s Republic
13 The Plague – Camus
14 The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
15 Atonement – Ian McEwan
16 The Tesseract – Alex Garland
17 The Beach – Alex Garland
18 A Clergyman’s Daughter – George Orwell
19 Nietzsche – an introduction – Vattimo
20 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
21 Notes From The Underground – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
22 Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
23 Maurice – E. M. Forster
24 Coming Up For Air – George Orwell
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Bonjour Tristesse – Francoise Sagan
27 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
28 The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality – Wilhelm Reich
29 The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter
30 Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
31 The Importance of Being Ernest – Oscar Wilde

Let the reading commence.