Reading 2013

Reading, while one of my favourite pastimes, was rather lacking in 2013.

I love reading a good book into the early hours of the morning, when the birds start to sing and the sky is brightening. I also hate it at the same time because I know I will have to be up in a couple of hours and boy, will be grumpy.

It was hard to read while at University, if I read a book for enjoyment I felt guilty for not reading my set texts, which were usually dire. University was also filled with essays, parties, Ultimate, and late night films with friends, so reading was more of an after thought. However, once my course had finished, but while my housemates and friends were revising, I blasted through the Song of Ice and Fire series in a month. My reading lagged again until my holiday in Tenerife, I just couldn't find any interesting books. I tried reading some more fantasy to get me in the mood for writing my novel, but I would get distracted with my own ideas. Then, I got a job and late night reading was not an option any more. However, after Christmas and the pile of books I received, I have got back into the flow of reading, and the Christmas Holidays meant I could read until the birds sang, though with this ghastly weather I'd be surprised if the birds have anything to sing about.


This year I managed to read 48 books, way off my goal of 100 but I'll take my losses. My favourite book of 2013 had to be Cloud Atlas, and if you haven't read it already, I would highly recommend it.

I only checked seven books off my reading list this year, sadly.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke 
2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin, Mark Twain 
3. The Adventures of Thomas Sawyer, Mark Twain 
4. Aesop’s Fables, Aesopus 
5. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll 
6. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
7. Angels & Demons, Dan Brown 
8. Animal Farm, George Orwell 
9. Atonement, Ian McEwan 
10. The Beach, Alex Garland 
11. The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter 
12. The BFG, Roald Dahl 
13. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley 
14. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding 
15. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres 
16. Carrie, Stephen King 
17. Casino Royale, Ian Fleming 
18. Catch 22, Joseph Heller 
19. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger 
20. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl 
21. Choke, Chuck Palahniuk 
22. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess 
23. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell 
24. The Color Purple, Alice Walker 
25. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky 
26. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon
27. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
28. Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham 
29. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick 
30. Dracula, Bram Stoker 
31. Emma, Jane Austen 
32. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje 
33. Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy 
34. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter. S. Thompson 
35. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk 
36. Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier 
37. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson 
38. Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell 
39. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck 
40. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens 
41. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald 
42. Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift 
43. Haunted, Chuck Palahniuk 
44. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams 
45. The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien 
46. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 
47. Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo 
48. The Hunger Games Trilogy, Suzanne Collins
49. I, Robot, Isaac Asimov 
50. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice 
51. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte 
52. Journey to The Centre Of The Earth, Jules Verne 
53. Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling 
54. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami 
55. A Kestrel for a Knave, Barry Hines 
56. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence 
57. Life of Pi, Yann Martel 
58. A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett 
59. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott 
60. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 
61. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov 
62. Lord of the Flies, William Golding 
63. Lord of the Rings Trilogy, J. R. R. Tolkien 
64. The lovely Bones, Alice Sebold 
65. Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden 
66. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck 
67. Middlesex, Jeffery Eugenides 
68. Misery, Stephen King 
69. Moby Dick, Herman Melville 
70. My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult 
71. The Never Ending Story, Michael Ende 
72. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro 
73. Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter 
74. Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell 
75. The Notebook, Nick Sparks 
76. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens 
77. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey 
78. Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood 
79. Perfume, Patrick Suskind 
80. Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie 
81. The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde 
82. The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunya 
83. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain 
84. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen 
85. Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro 
86. The Reader, Bernard Schlink 
87. A Room with A View, E. M. Forester 
88. Schindler’s Ark, Thomas Keneally 
89. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett 
90. Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen 
91. The Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snicket
92. The Shining, Stephen King 
93. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson 
94. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens 
95. The Talented Mr Ripley, Patricia Highsmith 
96. Temeraire Series, Naomi Novik
97. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy 
98. The Time Machine, H.G. Wells 
99. The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger 
100. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, Lewis Carroll 
101. To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee 
102. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf 
103. A Town Like Alice, Neville Shute 
104. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh 
105. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson 
106. Ulysses, James Joyce 
107. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray 
108. Vertigo, W. G. Sebald 
109. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy 
110. The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells 
111. Whistling for the Elephants, Sandi Toksvig 
112. The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga 
113. Wise Children, Angela Carter 
114. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte 
115. The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman 

I didn't read as many books on my Reading List as I would have liked, but I finally read Perfume, which I have been dying to read since I saw the film yonks ago, and it is as every bit as good.

I've still got lots of books to go, and mainly classics. I am hoping as my new job involves recording audiobooks of the classics I will make a substantial dent this year.