I got this over at Damon’s blog.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Underline the books you love.
4. Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5. Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them. (more…)

Having greatly enjoyed Kate Morton’s debut novel, ‘The House at Riverton’, earlier in the year, I was greatly excited a few months back when Babel very kindly bought me a copy of her second; ‘The Forgotten Garden’. It being quite a large book, I didn’t get around to starting it for some weeks, but when I was packing to go to Szombathely it struck me that it would be an ideal book to bring. No one wants to read something too heavy when they are on holiday, and whilst the size of the paperback meant it was actually quite heavy for packing, nevertheless I knew the content would be pretty light. The upside of the size meant I thought it would probably last me all week, although I did take the precaution of packing a few other books in case it turned out to be horrendously bad (more…)

This was a book which Babel lent me, and it took me an incredibly long time to read. I’m not sure why, because I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was bad. Perhaps after how good he had told me it was, I just found it somewhat of an anti-climax. The premise of the book, which is that Hitler won the Second World War and is still in power in the 1960s, is an amazing, mind-blowing idea; the amount of thought which has got into recreating this version of the 1960s which never existed is deeply impressive; but somehow, the actual characters and plot failed to grab me and by the time I got to the end I was left with the feeling that I’d just read a rather mediocre thriller. (more…)

Bored in Stuttgart airport a couple of weeks ago, I decided to have a mooch around one of the duty-free shops, and was pleased to discover it had a small selection of books. My pleasure was actually short lived, as I soon discovered that virtually the entire stand consisted of trashy American novels in translation Just when I was about to give up and find myself a copy of Der Spiegel to read on the flight home instead, I came across a paperback novel by Bernhard Schlink. Having seen it, I had no choice but to buy it (more…)

Written several years ago when the suggestion that he might one day be crowned Mayor of London was something which would have made a good joke on Have I Got News For You, ‘Seventy Two Virgins’ is Boris Johnson’s first attempt at writing fiction. My sister and I are both huge Boris fans and so my mother bought us the book when it was still in hardback a few Christmases ago as a present to share. My sister read it fairly promptly, but for reasons I can’t explain I never quite seemed to get round to it. I devoted months of my life to struggling through weighty German classics like Buddenbrooks and der Zauberberg and somehow I forgot about poor old Boris until last weekend when I finished Rob Roy and was suddenly at a bit of a loose end for exciting reading matter. I went eagerly to the study and began scanning the shelves in an attempt to find where my sister might have put it when she finished with it, but our bookshelves at home are rather overloaded and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t locate it at all In the end I had to call her (thanks be to Skype!) and between us we figured out that it was hiding behind a Russian dictionary and a copy of Doctor Zhivago. (more…)

Last night I finally finished reading ‘Das Glasperlenspiel’ by Hermann Hesse. This enormous 600 page book, which English readers may know in translation as either ‘The Glass Bead Game’ or ‘Magister Ludi’, has taken me a little over two months to get to finish. That said, I have chiefly been reading it only at weekends, and I have deliberately been reading slowly in order to get as much as possible out of the German. (more…)

This afternoon I finished reading a remarkable book called ‘The Music of the Primes’ by Marcus du Sautoy.  It was actually a Christmas present from my boyfriend, and a rather sweet one at that, because I told him he didn’t need to buy me anything else, yet he still did :)  I am very glad he ignored my protestations and went ahead; otherwise I would have missed out on a real treat. (more…)

 Apart from my website obviously, my best birthday present this year was a novel by the Swiss author Martin Suter. An old lady in a Davos bookshop recommended his books to my sister and I about four years ago, and ever since we’ve been avid fans. I enjoy reading Swiss literature in general; it’s subtly different to German literature, and Martin Suter writes in a conversational way which is easy to follow and doesn’t make you wish you were sitting next to a dictionary. (more…)