Read the review 88 Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman (2001) TheĪuthor gets unwittingly pregnant at 16, yet the story has a happy Sage grew up with her grandparents, who hated each other: he was a drunken philandering vicar his wife, having found his diaries,īlackmailed him and lived in another part of the house. That is one of the best accounts of family dysfunction ever written.
#THE BEST BOOKS YOU WILL NEVER READ...EVER FULL#
Read the review 89 Bad Blood by Lorna Sage (2000)Ī Whitbread prizewinning memoir, full of perfectly chosen phrases, The turbulent waves of 20th-century history crash over it as the house is sold by a Jewish family fleeing the Third Reich, requisitioned by the Russian army, reclaimed by exiles returning from Siberia, and sold again. Read the review 90 Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck (2008), translated by Susan Bernofsky (2010)Ī grand house by a lake in the east of Germany is both the setting and main character of Erpenbeck’s third novel. Three narrative strands – spanning far-future space opera, contemporary unease and virtual-reality pastiche – are braided together for a breathtaking metaphysical voyage in pursuit of the mystery at the heart of reality. One of the most underrated prose writers demonstrates the literary firepower of science fiction at its best. The result is both sharp and dreamy, sliding in and out of different phases of Dylan’s career but rooted in his earliest days as a Woody Guthrie wannabe in New York City. Read the review 95 Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan (2004)ĭylan’s reticence about his personal life is a central part of the singer-songwriter’s brand, so the gaps and omissions in this memoir come as no surprise.
Some readers wept all night, some condemned it as titillating and exploitative, but no one could deny its power. One man’s life is blighted by abuse and its aftermath, but also illuminated by love and friendship. This operatically harrowing American gay melodrama became an unlikely bestseller, and one of the most divisive novels of the century so far. Read the review 96 A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (2015) The Triwizard Tournament provides pace and tension, and Rowling makes her boy wizard look death in the eye for the first time.
#THE BEST BOOKS YOU WILL NEVER READ...EVER SERIES#
Book four, the first of the doorstoppers, marks the point where the series really takes off.
Read the review 97 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling (2000)Ī generation grew up on Rowling’s all-conquering magical fantasies, but countless adults have also been enthralled by her immersive world. The high-level intrigue beguiled millions of readers, brought “Scandi noir” to prominence and inspired innumerable copycats. Radical journalist Mikael Blomkvist forms an unlikely alliance with troubled young hacker Lisbeth Salander as they follow a trail of murder and malfeasance connected with one of Sweden’s most powerful families in the first novel of the bestselling Millennium trilogy. Photograph: Allstar/Sony Pictures Releasing/Sportsphoto Ltd 98 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (2005), translated by Steven T Murray (2008) And that’s not even considering all the new titles that come in every day.Īt first, this realization was paralyzing.Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara in the 2011 film adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
(We stock a LOT of books.) If I dropped everything else in my life and spent every waking moment reading, I still couldn’t get through each individual title currently on the shelves at my workplace before I died of old age. Over years at Russell Books, it has slowly dawned on me that not only will I never be able to read ALL THE BOOKS, I won’t even have time to read all the books that we stock. Nothing drives home the impossibility of this dream more than working in a big used bookstore. At the end of my life, if someone asks me whether I accomplished all my goals, I’m going to have to haul out my TBR list, and I’m sure the answer will be “no”! That quixotic idea that someday, somehow, we will read every possible book on our lists. It’s a familiar dream: to read ALL the books.
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