update, one year on:

I found this list last year and made bold the ones that I'd read. To my shame, it was only 7 out of the 100.

One year on, let's see how many:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy X
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon X
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov X
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

23 /100

As of todays date: 6th August 2009, I have only read 7 out of the 100. Thats pretty awful to be honest. Thought i'd post this up here though just to keep a reminder, and hopefully when i'll check again in a year the number of X's should be alot higher. I have a lot of these books in my collection, its just findin the time to read them.

As of todays date: 5th August 2009, I have only read 23 out of the 100. Not a bad improvement, that 16 books up from last year, still could have done better though. Best book out of the new 16? I'd have to say Tolstoy's 'WAR & PEACE'. Simply fantastic, beautiful.

The Pianist

Finished reading ‘The Pianist’ today. Most of you will be familiar with the film adaptation released in 2002, but the autobiography was first released back in 1945, or at least that’s when it was wrote. The book was suppressed by the new communist Russia as it was claimed to contain too many truths. Too much about the collaboration of the Nazi’s with the Ukrainians, Poles and Russians. It also was a bit too heavy, too much too soon you might say.

I found it rather disturbing to read. I’ve seen the film multiple times, so I knew what I was getting, but it’s always different reading the book. Sitting down, coffee in hand, iPod switched on, you connect with the book in a completely different way to how you view film. The book was pretty much the same storyline. The film didn’t miss anything out.

At the end of the book was some extracts from Wilm Hosenfeld’s diary. The German officer that found Wladyslaw towards the end of the war, hiding in the upstairs lofts. Wilm was out of contact with the war, as I presume most German’s would have been. They knew what was going on, yet they let it happen. Wilm reflects on these thoughts in his diary. I found that pretty upsetting to read.

If you’ve seen the film, then I suggest you read the book too. If you haven’t seen/read either, then do it now. This is something not to be missed. Very sad

A year of books;

Reading List: (August 09-10)

14/07/09 - 02/08/09
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

02/05/09 - 03/08/09
Animal Farm - George Orwell

03/08/09 - 14/08/09
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis

17/08/09 - 18/08/09
The Reader - Bernhard Schlink

19/08/09 - 23/08/09
Life of Pi - Yann Martel

23/08/09 - 26/08/09
Macbeth - William Shakespeare

26/08/09 - 30/08/09
Shakespeare - Bill Bryson

30/08/09 - 31/08/09
Lord of the Flies - William Golding

31/08/09 - 01/09/09
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

13/09/09 - 14/09/09
The Magicians Nephew - C.S.Lewis

14/09/09 - 16/09/09
The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe - C.S.Lewis

17/09/09 - 02/02/10
The Horse and His Boy - C.S.Lewis

23/09/09 - 25/09/09
The Catcher In The Rye - J.D.Salinger

25/09/09 - 30/09/09
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald

30/09/09 - 13/10/09
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hermingway

13/10/09 - 25/10/09
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

01/11/09 - 08/11/09
Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell

10/11/09 - 15/11/09
Crap: A Guide to Politics - Terry Arthur

12/11/09 - 24/11/09
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

25/11/09 - 06/12/09
Columbine - Dave Cullen

06/12/09 - 09/12/09
Beyond Good & Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche

11/12/09 - 14/12/09
On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan

15/12/09 - 04/01/10
How To Be Good - Nick Hornby

22/12/09 - 30/12/09
Homage To Catalonia - George Orwell

04/01/10 - 08/01/10
The Road - Cormac McCarthy

09/01/10 - 11/01/10
Slam - Nick Hornby

14/01/10 - 27/01/10
Mr Nice - Howard Marks

29/01/10 - 31/01/10
Into The Wild - Jon Krakauer

03/02/10 - 09/02/10
Shooting an Elephant: And Other Essays - George Orwell

07/02/10 - 12/02/10
Touching The Void - Joe Simpson

14/02/10 - 17/02/10
Billy Liar - Keith Waterhouse

20/02/10 - 21/02/10
No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy

21/02/10 - 28/02/10
On The Road - Jack Kerouac

01/03/10 - 05/04/10
War And Peace - Leo Tolstoy

05/04/10 - 23/04/10
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

24/04/10 - 04/05/10
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

07/05/10 - 16/05/10
Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell

17/05/10 - 27/06/10
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

01/06/10 - 02/06/10
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

08/06/10 - 09/06/10
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

19/06/10 - 23/06/10
Nine Stories - J.D.Salinger

27/06/10 - 04/07/10
Republic - Plato

04/07/10 - 09/07/10
The Hobbit - J.R.R.Tolkien

09/07/10 - 12/07/10
The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

44 Books in Total.

1.18 Books a Week Average.

Something to try and beat next year.

And the ones I didn't finish:

01/09/09 -

The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

06/09/09 -

The Two Towers - J.R.R.Tolkien

31/12/09 -

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

09/01/10 -

The Old Testament - Various

28/01/10 -

History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell

18/02/10 -

Buddhism: Plain & Simple - Steve Hagen

24/05/10 -

Paradise Lost - John Milton

I woke to a scream,
I was stuck to my bed,
held in place.
The door opened,
it was death,
I couldn't breath.

time to eat;

as little.
like i'm homeless.
bread and tea.

whats on tv;

nothing. absolutely nothing. not when you get up at half 8 in the morning anyways. i literally scanned the channels all morning not finding anything worth watching, apart from frasier maybe but even then that got boring. (sorry frasier)
then i clicked onto the music channels which to put it simply were disgusting. there's no good music out at all at the moment, not pop stuff that gets played on tv anyways. there was an arctic monkeys song, i dunno if its new or not, it was ok like, never really been a big fan of theres, think they're sorta hoggin the zutons sound a bit now though. but then after that one okish song, nothing. honestly, i had to sit and watch a madina lake video, just so i could see which band it was at the end, and i can honestly say if you like that band, you are wrong in the head. they're just the weirdest most awful looking band i've ever watched or heard. the next best thing on was george michael, but i'm hardly in the mood for a bit of george. anyways i gave in in the end and decided to read. then the neighbour started playing r'n'b, and kids on the other side started screamin, honestly it was like being back at fairfield. i came home hoping to get some peace and quiet, i've hardly had any.

john mayer is improving my life a lot lately, if you haven't heard of him/listened to his stuff i suggest you do, you might as well check him out. if you're into blues/acoustic? honestly i think the mans a legend and i'm really loving his music, best tracks are 'gravity' 'slow dancing in a burning room' and 'stop this train'

looking back;

that blog has played on my mind for days.

tonight has been awful.
liverpool are a disgrace, that's our season well and truly over.
i'm bored of uni and this whole exhibition thing.
ah i don't even know.
back to winch tomorrow, can't wait to have a coffee in west cornwall (pasty shop)

when i was younger i used to go to my nan and grandads on a sunday
after lunch an ice cream van would go around the square outside
they were sold by a man named badgy
last week 4 boys drove into the square in a car
they pulled out a gun on badgy and told him to get them the money and the cigarettes

moderntimes;

OK if you've made it this far then thank you for visiting my blog and i hope you enjoy what you read. there's sort of no point in my writing this thing unless people come and take a look, have a short read, and what i would love is to get some sort of feedback, positive or negative, all is welcome.

few things I'd like to discuss in the blog, some touchy areas as well. the first is the KKK.

i just watched a programme on natgeo conveniently titled 'Ku Klux Klan.' basically, i knew what i was in for, i knew the programme was going to get me angry, full of hatred, and was going to start this chain of thoughts of events that will fill my mind for the coming days, but meh, who cares lets just watch the damn thing. i want to say now loud and clear (as loud as i can get) if you are a racist, if you believe in any of the things that they're about, if you like who they are, if you are a ''skinhead'', or class yourself as a Nazi, then i don't want to know you, and as far as i am concerned you are a sick human being who should be locked away. forget democracy and a freedom of speech, you are a mindless confused idiot that has had a poor upbringing, a poor education, and now want to spread your filth onto good humble citizens. forget your rallies and your marches, you don't deserve any kind of stage where you can spread your hate. if there's one thing on this planet that i hate most it is your kind of people, you scumbag racists. we can bring this closer to home and take a look at the bnp. once again, uneducated idiots who don't even want to take into consideration that you might have actually descended from a non-white background. like that matters anyway. what is wrong with you people that think a white man/woman is superior. this is the year 2010 for Christ's sake, seriously you need to open your god damn eyes. sorry for my blasphemy by the way but I'm trying my hardest not to swear. the bnp believe that Britain should be for British people, they put on a front that all that they want to do is to shut the door to immigration, focus on the British people, and keep Britain what it is. but what is it? what was it? why are you so afraid of culture? they want a white country. which means every non-white then has to leave, or god forbid would be punished or enslaved. this is absolutely disgraceful and I'm sick of it. you can forget about democracy because these people are idiots. and i believe that i have the right to call them idiots.

i'll look back over that ^ in a few weeks probably and think 'oh i should have said this' or worded things differently, but that is how it is at this moment in time. i think i've made myself clear. i would also just like to say, if you are reading this, and you have me added on facebook or any other networking sites, and you believe in any 'racist' organisation, either message me to discuss your opinions (for which i would be grateful to have a discussion) or simply delete me from your friend list.

the second thing I'd like to discuss is slightly, only slightly, less heated. it's over this recent news of Jamie Bulger's killer Jon Venebles being sent back to jail, and the question of whether or not the breach of his terms of release should be made public. do the public have the right to know what Jon Venebles has done, and how long he is back in jail for. my answer is yes they do. i say this for a number of reasons. i think first of all Jamie's parents undoubtedly have the right to know. as far as i am concerned, i believe that these killers are sick people. i believed it then and i still believe it. to me it is not a question of whether or not they knew what they we're doing, of course they didn't fully understand, but they still knew that they we're taking a life, or causing a grievous amount of bodily harm. these boys should have been given life sentences and they should have never walked free. the fact that we pay to house them, then fund new identities is wrong. Jamie's parents should get what they want. the public are concerned. i personally want to know how long Venebles will be back in prison for, simply because i believe he is back where he belongs, and i hope he will remain there now for the rest of his life. it is said that his breach may have been the smallest of criminality's, but to me, that is not the question. he has broken the rules, however small, so in my eyes, he hasn't learnt, and he should go back to jail. another important point i would like to make is that if the courts where never planning on releasing details about Venebles' breach, then why say anything at all. by bringing this whole thing up again, it feels almost as bad as 1993. it will cause problems in jails because any new inmates that come into the prison could well be Venebles. the inmates will be aware of what has gone on and an innocent (but still criminal) person could be wrongly accused. god only knows what it has put Jamie's family through again, and it has caused this whole stir in the media and in the courts that will not be settled, probably until the details of his breach are released to the public. people are angry over this, and they will fight for the answers.

the last thing i would like to discuss is tonights Question Time. having just watched the show (in which the Bulger question came up) i would just like to voice my dis likening of Boris Johnson. i think the man waffles on and on about rubbish and i would like to congratulate him on turning me further and further away from the Tories. i am looking forward to the televised debates, i think they are a great idea, and as they said, a great opportunity for the Lib Dem's to be sat as they should be beside the Conservatives and the Labour party. it is a shame that the smaller parties, particularly the Green party, weren't given the opportunity. I'd also like to say that i am a fan of will self, but people don't half suck up to him at times.

thanks for reading, any comments/questions please feel free to ask. apologies if anyone has been offended by my views/opinions, but this is a blog after all.

for other reasons i would just like to state that my opinions of the outcome of the bulger trial are purely personal, and i do not wish to spread any kind of hate or negativity towards any of the families involved. it was a horrific tragedy that changed so many peoples life's. similar to columbine, the question of who is to blame crops up time and time again. the family cannot be blamed, and i have an open heart to every human on this planet. i wish for a similar respect.

manana;

Hola! Que tal?
Hello, how are you?
Muy Bien Gracias, y usted?
Very well thank you, and you?
Hasta Pronto!
See you soon!
Si, Hasta Manana!
Yes, see you tomorrow!