Guardian Newspaper 1000 Novels discussion

I started reading:


Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen

I'm going to have to pay more attention to what I'm doing--I got a big fat zero for the month of October. On the plus side, though, I started November out with one and I'm rereading another right now, plus I plan on joining in on the two group reads this month, so I'll add a few to my total

I also had a quiet month and only managed 2 in October - The Good Soldier and Hideous Kinky. They were both pretty good though.

I got through four in the month of October:

Consider Phlebas - 4/5
The Good Soldier - 3/5
The Radetzky March - 5/5
Blott on the Landscape - 3/5

Since my last update I've finished
The Woman in White
The Leopard
Casino Royale
No Orchids for Miss Blandish
The Mask of Dimitrios
The Big Sleep
Double Indemnity
Titus Groan
Porterhouse Blue
The Secret Agent
Piccadilly Jim

I'm at ~281 now, though I am not sure if my listchallenges number matches the count on my spreadsheet yet.

I am still wading through Don Quixote, and I am going through the James Bond books in order, so I won't get to You Only Live Twice until I finish another one not on the list. I am done with the PG Wodehouse books on the list though, and Tom Sharpe. I'll also get to The Long Goodbye and finish off Raymond Chandler's listed books soon. And, I finally added a sheet to my books spreadsheet so I can track my Guardian 1000 reading easier.

Wow Jamie - that is an impressive list! Congrats :)

I finished 2 new-to-me books from the list in October and 2 rereads.

New ones were The Heat of the Day and The Bluest Eye.

so, through August-September-October
read another 15:

Bonfire Of The Vanities, The Wolfe, Tom - 4.5
Tortoise And The Hare, The Jenkins, Elizabeth - 2.5
Their Eyes Were Watching God Hurston, Zora Neale - 3.5
Mother London Moorcock, Michael - 4.5
Death Of Virgil, The Broch, Hermann - 5 - MASTERPIECE!
Williwaw Vidal, Gore - 3
Millstone, The Drabble, Margaret - 4.5
Three Musketeers, The Dumas, Alexandre - 2.5
Forever War, The Haldeman, Joe - 3.5
Loitering With Intent Spark, Muriel - 3.5
Shadow Of The Torturer, The (Book Of The New Sun, The: Book#1) Wolfe, Gene - 3
Journey to the End of the Night Celine, Louis-Ferdinand - 3.5
Life And Loves Of A She-Devil, The Weldon, Fay - 4.5
Of Love And Hunger Maclaren-Ross, Julian - 4
Possession Byatt, A. S. - 4

making 438 total...

I finished:


Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Wow Darren - nice job! You'll be hitting the halfway mark soon if you keep polishing them off at that rate :-)

RJ from the LBC wrote: "I finished:


Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."

Hilarious book!

I just checked using listchallenges.com. I have only read 64 of 1000 ( technically 62 as I'm currently reading 2 of them). I hope by November 2021, I have moved from 6% to 12%.

After being a sluggard in adding to my totals for the last several months, I really kicked it this time.

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Le Petite Prince: Illustré by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett (a re-read, but still)

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household

It helps that several of them were very short.

I ended up feeling at least favorable about them all, though Werther and Rogue Male were my least favorite. Remains of the Day was far and away the one that appealed to me the most.

Bryan--Pumpkin Connoisseur wrote: "After being a sluggard in adding to my totals for the last several months, I really kicked it this time.

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

[book:Le Petite Pr..."
Good Going!

Darren wrote: "so, through August-September-October
read another 15:

Bonfire Of The Vanities, The Wolfe, Tom - 4.5
Tortoise And The Hare, The Jenkins, Elizabeth - 2.5
Their Eyes Were Watching God Hurston, Zora ..."
Go you!

Jamie wrote: "Since my last update I've finished
The Woman in White
The Leopard
Casino Royale
No Orchids for Miss Blandish
The Mask of Dimitrios
[..."

That's so impressive! Well done and great goals!

Poor couple of months for me so I've held off updating until I hit the big 4 0 0! No HC or other chipping away at any series or trilogies the last couple of months though.

The Radetzky March
The Good Soldier
Dombey and Son
The War of the Worlds
The Bluest Eye
Kim
The Passion
The Magus
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Wise Children

400! That is amazing work, Fay. At the rate you read, you’ll be over halfway through by the end of next year. Congratulations.

Congrats, Fay!

Well Done Fay!
I passed the 400 in April, but I think you are rapidly catching me up!

I did 5 more in November:
London Fields Amis, Martin - 4
A Dry White Season Brink, Andre - 3.5
Tales of the South Pacific Michener, James - 4
Camp Concentration Disch, Thomas M. - 4
Black And Blue Rankin, Ian - 4

making a total of 443

Well done Fay, a milestone reached!

After my feeble showing in October, I did better in November and read 7 new books from the list

Castle Rackrent 4*
The Radetzky March 4*
Look At Me (5* would recommend if you like your love stories bleak)
Jude the Obscure (2* Hardy is not for me)
The Bluest Eye 4*
The Color Purple 3*
The Red Badge of Courage and Other Stories 3*

My total is now 248, so should hit my target of 250 by the end of the year

Pamela wrote: "Well done Fay, a milestone reached!

After my feeble showing in October, I did better in November and read 7 new books from the list

Castle Rackrent 4*
[book:The Radetzky March|4228..."
Well done! You'll definitely get to 250.

Bryan--Pumpkin Connoisseur wrote: "Congrats, Fay!"

Thanks

Darren wrote: "Well Done Fay!
I passed the 400 in April, but I think you are rapidly catching me up!

I did 5 more in November:
London Fields Amis, Martin - 4
A Dry White Season Brink, Andre - 3.5
Tales of the So..."

I don't think I will ever catch you up. Both see if we can reach 500 next year?

I finished a few more List books since my last update.

Love in a Cold Climate, by Nancy Mitford
The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro

I also looked at The Man of Property, by John Galsworthy, and realized that it is just the first 3rd of The Forsyte Saga, which I read last year.

So, my listchallenges count now is at 288 finished. Now that I have finished my annual Goodreads goal (300) I may see if I can finish 12 more List books this year for an even 300 by 2021. :)

Well done everyone!

I only had one new-to-me book in November, which was our group read of October, The Radetzky March.

At the end of November I had read 438 from the list. Most have been read this year. I'm pretty pumped!

I;m new to the group, but love the idea of updating progress on the list. I have been tracking for a couple of years and I'm currently at 220 total from the list. Hoping to read 20 to 30 every year.

Jason wrote: "I;m new to the group, but love the idea of updating progress on the list. I have been tracking for a couple of years and I'm currently at 220 total from the list. Hoping to read 20 to 30 every year."

Welcome to the group, Jason! One of my reading goals for the past several years has been the same - to read 25+ new-to-me books from the list. I make it slightly easier on myself by counting individual books from series on the list (such as the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett).

Wow, amazing progress from everyone!

Only one new read for me in November - The Shining (4/5)

Sadly, I have had to relegate Emma to DNF for now as I've started it again in early summer and not managed to get past more than third.. I've loved everything by Austen so far so not sure what's going on here.

I don't think Emma is a very likeable character

I was surprised to see that I actually read 40 titles off the list this year, especially since my month-to-month totals seemed pretty lackluster. I made a decent push toward the end of the year--I read 13 of them in the last two months.

What was the best book from the list I read last year, you ask?

Well, you know, The Friends of Eddie Coyle was pretty darn good, surprisingly, given all the pushing I was doing trying to get it voted in. I really liked The Third Policeman too. Remains of the Day probably gets top honors though, but those three books are so different that it an apples-to-oranges thing.

What were the worst? I didn't like Mother, by Gorky, or Greenmantle by Buchan. Perfume by Susskind didn't do much for me either, though I know a lot of people really like it.

Well, that's it. I end the year with something like 289 read, which, at this rate, means another 18 years of reading before I finish the list. See you there.

Have a happy new year everyone

Happy New Year to you too Bryan!

I have read 38 new-to-me titles from the list this year, with one more in progress, and reread 21 titles.

As Bryan mentioned, it is hard to pick a best of the "new" titles since the books varied so much but I think the ones I liked best were Men at Arms by Waugh, The Baron in the Trees by Calvino, A High Wind in Jamaica by Hughes & Joseph Andrews by Fielding.

The ones I liked least were The Wings of the Dove by James, Uncle Silas by Le Fanu & Melmoth the Wanderer by Maturin.

My last update for 2020 for this list:

I finished:
Crash, by JG Ballard
Millennium People, by JG Ballard
The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass
Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh
Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh

I had thought about trying to hit 300 by January 1st, but that didn't quite happen. Still, I ought to be at ~293 now. I really need to double check my numbers so I know for next year what my official count is. :) Happy New Years, folks!

ok so in 2020 I read 70xG1000, plus 5x"OTGA"
none rated 10/10, but I rated 4 as 9.5, namely:
A Lost Lady Cather, Willa
The Death Of Virgil Broch, Hermann
The Bonfire Of The Vanities Wolfe, Tom
The Crime of Father Amaro Eca de Queiros, José Maria de

I've only read 98 books from the list. I wanted to hit 100 by the end of 2020, but I was just short! I read 21 books on the list in the year, probably the most I've read in any year (I usually read that number of books in a whole year, list and non-list). My favourites were Père Goriot, The Third Policeman and The Radetzky March. I also read other works in Balzac's Human Comedy, and one of the the Discworld books. I didn't like the Discworld book much and probably won't read the rest, but I've loved the Human Comedy works that I've read so far and will continue to read more in 2021. 2021 will probably be a poor reading year for me as I'll be busy – but then I thought the same of 2020!

I joined the group in March at 200 books and since then have read 51 new books from the list, plus a couple of Balzac’s Comedie Humaine so am now at 251. I’m aiming to get to 300 in 2021.

My favourites were The Crime Of Father Amaro, Look At Me and Cakes and Ale. Only two I didn’t care for much - Jude the Obscure and A Dark-Adapted Eye.

Happy New Year everyone and enjoy your next 1000 Books choices!

I read eight last year (2020) bringing me to a grand total of 104 read (counting Discworld, Narnia, and LOTR books individually and not as one).

2020 Guardian 1000 books read, in order of rating:
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
Mort by Terry Pratchett
Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Just went through my reading for the year, and I managed to read 40 books off of the list this year. I also did a review of my list and discovered the 3 books that are part of A Dance to the Music of Time but also listed separately. I also uncovered the fun fact that the Stranger by Camus is known as the Outsider in the UK. 4 free books! That brings my total to 233 to end the year.

Favorite books of 2020:
Giovanni's Room
Maus
The Bluest Eye
Pere Goriot

Just discovered, to my pleasant surprise, that I've read a 154 books on the list!
https://www.listchallenges.com/guardi...

just to finish up 2020

I read 5 more G1000-ers in December:
At Swim-Two-Birds O'Brien, Flann - DNF
The Egoist Meredith, George - 3.5 Stars
Whisky Galore Mackenzie, Compton - 3.5
42nd Parallel, The (U.S.A. #1) Dos Passos, John - 2.5
Lost Souls Brite, Poppy Z. - 2.5

not the highest quality month ever, but redeemed by a 4-Star "OTGA":
Near To The Wild Heart Lispector, Clarice

and a 5-Star Masterpiece "Should Be In The List":
The Viceroys De Roberto, Federico

making 448 total...

an increase of 66 on the year
and boding well for reaching 500 in 2021...

How did the start of the reading year go for everyone?

My brain is so sluggish atm that I've only read a few "real" books since last time I posted taking me up to 403. But one was a beast!

I read
Cold Mountain (4 stars)
The Magic Mountain (3.5 stars)
Tender Is the Night (4 stars)

Human Comedy
The Girl With The Golden Eyes (2.5)

Reread
Waiting for the Barbarians (3.5)

I read 11 books in January
with a high "G1000 Coefficient" containing
7 more from the list:

Asterix the Gaul Goscinny, René - 3
Hello Summer, Goodbye Coney, Michael G. - 2.5
Beyond Black Mantel, Hilary - 4
Air Ryman, Geoff - 4
The Four Just Men Wallace, Edgar - 4
Native Son Wright, Richard - 3.5
A Bend in the River Naipaul, V. S. - 4

making 455 total

best of month, however, were two "Should Be On The List":
The Bridge on the Drina Andric, Ivo - 4.5
The Golden Days (The Story of the Stone #1, aka Dream Of The Red Chamber) Cao, Xueqin - 4.5

My January Guardian List books:
Black Mischief, by Evelyn Waugh
Vile Bodies, by Evelyn Waugh
Men at Arms, by Evelyn Waugh (finished the whole trilogy, very good)
Trainspotting, by Irvine Welsh (didn't like this one, though reading the dialect was a bit of an entertaining challenge)
The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett
Get Shorty, by Elmore Leonard

The rest of my reading for January was mostly the Charles Paris series by Simon Brett, which I just finished yesterday (20 books so far). I like that the Guardian has a crime fiction section, but I wonder why certain authors were included with multiple books, while others were left out entirely. I would have expected some Ngaio Marsh, at least, and maybe Arthur W. Upfield. I'd also have included books by Elizabeth George, Simon Brett, Jussi Adler-Olsen, and Rennie Airth.

Oh, and I passed the 300 books milestone in January. I have finished 301 so far as of today. :)

I've currently been obsessed with some other things, and my reading has dropped off some, but I still knocked out a couple last month:

Love in the Time of Cholera
Portrait of a Lady

I don't think this month is going to be much more productive, but we'll see.

I only read two from the list in January, both 4* for me
The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

I did read a couple from the series on the list
A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell from A Dance to the Music of Time
Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield from the Provincial Lady series

That’s 253 read so far

January I got through 4 “new to me” Guardian Oist books

A Quiet Belief in Angels
Asterisk the Gaul
Waiting for the Barbarians
Fingersmith

Technically I only finished the last one on the am of Feb 1, but it was a long book (and excellent) so I’ve popped it under January anyway.

This takes me up to 299 from the list.

I read 2 new-to-me books from the list in January - sadly, I didn't really like either of them!

No Country for Old Men
The Bonfire of the Vanities

I think that my disappointment in these books was at least in part due to my state of mind while reading them, so don't take this reaction as a reason not to read them yourself! But because of it, I was less motivated than usual to proceed to one of our group reads so Waiting for the Barbarians is still on my to-read shelf.

Poor showing again this month. Well kind of. One was a beast and another was a multiple book read. I'm also devouring Urban Fantasy like a fat kid loves cake lol. New total stands at 409.

The Sorrows of Young Werther (3 stars)
Nights at the Circus (3.5 stars)
Rabbit Omnibus: Rabbit Run / Rabbit Redux / Rabbit Is Rich (5 stars for the body of work as a whole)
Jacques the Fatalist (3 stars)
Les Miserables (1 star. Absolutely dire. Unsure how this is so lauded or why they made it into a musical. Can't decide if the Human Comedy has ruined all French Literature for me or if French Literature of the 1800's was just really preachy and dull)

Human Comedy
Scenes From Parisian Life / The Rise And Fall Of Cesar Birotteau / The Secrets Of A Princess: La Comedie Humaine of Honore de Balzac

Rabbit Tetralogy
Rabbit Is Rich
Rabbit at Rest
Rabbit Remembered

Reread
Camp Concentration

I only managed 3 books from the list in February

The Daughter of Time (4 stars)
Evelina: Or, The History of A Young Lady's Entrance into the World (3 stars)
The Sorrows of Young Werther (3 stars)