Oh look, another reading list!

I came across "100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man's Library" and I thought it looked like a good list of books, so I am going to attempt to clear this list too. I just hope that the world doesn't end or the shift in consciousness or whatever the Mayans predicted for 2012 ends up being a load of hog-wash so I can finish my task!

1. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli (Done that one already: http://gavinsbooklog.blogspot.com/2009/01/prince.html)
3. Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
4. 1984 George Orwell
5. The Republic Plato
6. Brothers Karamazof Fyodor Dostoevsky
7. The Catcher In The Rye J.D. Salinger
8. The Wealth Of Nations Adam Smith
9. For Whom The Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway
10. The Picture Of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde (Got that one done already too: http://gavinsbooklog.blogspot.com/2008/08/picture-of-dorian-gray.html)
11. The Grapes Of Wrath John Steinbeck
12. Brave New World Aldous Huxley
13. How To Win Friends And Influence People Dale Carnegie
14. Call Of The Wild Jack London
15. The Rise Of Theodore Roosevelt Edmund Morris
16. Swiss Family Robinson Johan David Wyss
17. Dharma Bums Jack Kerouac
18. The Illiad & Odyssey Homer
19. Catch-22 Joseph Heller
20. Walden Henry David Thoreau
21. Lord Of The Flies William Golding
22. The Master And Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov
23. Bluebeard Kurt Vonnegut
24. Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand
25. The Metamorphis Franz Kafka (I did actually read this in February, but thought it didn't really count as a book as it was a bit short and I read it on my iPhone. Maybe I will read it again come 2013 or so...)
26. Another Roadside Attraction Tom Robbins
27. White Noise Don Delillo
28. Ulysses James Joyce
29. The Young Man's Guide William Alcott
30. Blood Meridan, Or The Evening Redness In The West Cormack McCarthy
31. Seek: Reports From The Edges Of America And Beyond Denis Johnson
32. Crime And Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky
33. Steppenwolf Herman Hesse
34. The Book Of Deeds Of Arms And Chivalry Christine Di Pizan
35. The Art Of Warfare Sun Tzu
36. Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes
37. Into The Wild Jon Krakauer
38. The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri
39. The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien
40. The Rough Riders Theodore Roosevelt
41. East Of Eden John Steinbeck
42. Leviathan Thomas Hobbes
43. The Thin Red Line James Jones
44. Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
45. The Politics Aristotle
46. First Edition of The Boy Scout Handbook (Hmm that may prove difficult to hunt down)
47. Cyrano de Bergerac Edmond Rostand
48. Tropic Of Cancer Henry Miller
49. The Crisis Winston Churchill
50. The Naked And The Dead Norman Mailer
51. Hatchet Gary Paulsen
52. Animal Farm George Orwell
53. Tarzan Of The Apes Edgar Rice Burroughs
54. Beyond Good And Evil Freidrich Nietzsche
55. The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
56. Moby Dick Herman Melville
57. Essential Manner For Men Peter Post
58. Frankenstein Mary Shelley
59. Hamlet William Shakespeare
60. The Boys Of Summer Roger Kahn
61. A Seperate Peace John Knowles
62. A Farewell To Arms Ernest Hemingway
63. The Stranger Albert Camus
64. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe
65. The Pearl John Steinbeck
66. On The Road Jack Kerouac
67. Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson
68. Confederacy Of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
69. Foucault's Pendulum Umberto Eco
70. The Great Railway Bazaar Paul Theroux
71. Fear And Trembing Soren Kierkegaard
72. Undaunted Courage Stephen Ambrose
73. Paradise Lost John Milton
74. Cannery Row John Steinbeck
75. American Boys' Handy Book (This one I may omit)
76. Into Thin Air John Krakauer
77. King Solomon's Mines H. Rider Haggard
78. The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky
79. A River Runs Through It Norman F. Maclean
80. The Island Of Dr Moreau H.G. Wells
81. Malcolm X: The Autobiography
82. Theodore Rex Edmund Morris
83. The Count Of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
84. All Quiet On The Western Front Erich Maria Remarq
85. The Red Badge Of Courage Stephen Crane
86. Lives Of The Noble Greeks And Romans Plutarch
87. The Strenous Life Theodore Roosevelt
88. The Bible
89. Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry
90. The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett
91. The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler
92. To Kill A Mockinbird Harper Lee
93. The Dangerous Book For Boys Conn & Hal Iggulden
94. The Killer Angels Michael Shaara
95. The Autobiography Of Benjamin Franklin
96. The Histories Herodotus
97. From Here To Eternity James Jones
98. The Frontier In American History Frederick Jackson Turner
99. Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert Pirsig
100. Self Reliance Ralph Waldo Emerson

But wait! There's more. The top 50 non-fiction adventure books and the top 50 fiction adventure books will also be targets of mine...

My New Reading List

Once I have torn my way through the immense pile of books that I have which currently remain unread, I aim to make my way through the list of '50 Books For Our Times' that Newsweek put together. So this really is a checklist for me. And incase the article is somehow removed over time, I am going to reproduce it now.

1. The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope
2. The Looming Tower Lawrence Wright
3. Prisoner Of The State Zhao Ziyang
4. The Big Switch Nicholas Carr
5. The Bear William Faulkner
6. Winchell Neal Gabler
7. Random Family Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
8. Night Draws Near Anthony Shadid
9. Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely
10. God: A Biography Jack Miles
11. The Unsettling Of America Wendell Berry
12. A Good Man Is Hard To Find Flannery O'Connor
13. Underground Harukimi Murakami
14. Disrupting Class Clayton Christensen
15. Air Guitar Dave Hickey
16. Leaves Of Grass Walt Whitman
17. The Trouble With Physics Lee Smolin
18. City: Rediscovering The Center William H. Whyte
19. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep Philip K. Dick
20. Benjamin Franklin Edmund S. Morgan
21. The Mississippi Books Mark Twain
22. Among The Thugs Bill Buford
23. Brooklyn Colm TÛibÌn
24. Frankenstein Mary Shelley
25. Bad Mother Ayelet Waldman
26. Guests Of The Ayatollah Mark Bowden
27. Whittaker Chamebers Sam Tanenhaus
28. Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie
29. American Prometheus Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
30. The Lost Daniel Mendelsohn
31. Gilead Marilynne Robinson
32. Pictures At A Revolution Mark Harris
33. KIM Rudyard Kipling
34. Walking With The Wind John Lewis
35. The Line Of Beauty Alan Hollinghurst
36. The Dark Is Rising Susan Cooper
37. Persepolis Marjane Satrapi
38. Underworld Don DeLillo
39. Why Evolution Is True Jerry A. Coyne
40. American Pastoral Philip Roth
41. The Botany Of Desire Michael Pollan
42. The Regeneration Trilogu Pat Barker
43. Senator Joe McCarthy Richard H. Rovere
44. Year Of Wonders Geraldine Brooks
45. The Elegance Of The Hedgehog Muriel Barbery
46. Gone Tomorrow Lee Child
47. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
48. American Journeys Don Watson
49. Cotton Comes To Harlem Chester Himes
50. The New Biographical Dictionary Of Film David Thomson*

*Hmm I can see myself giving this one a miss, to be honest. 1,000+ pages of some guy's opinions on actors etc isn't exactly something I'm jumping to read.

I guess that I will have this list finished by 2012... time will see if I am a good estimator or not!

From Russia With Love

The Soviets have decided to strike a blow to the prestige of MI6 by hatching a plot to kill and embarrass their top agent. We all know who that is. This is in my top 2 of Bond books that I have read so far, as it is full of plot twists and vivid characters, like the head of 'T' section. It also paints a picture of Istanbul that makes me want to visit, and ends on a cliffhanger that makes me want to pick up Dr No immediately to find out what happens.

I think however, a passage from this tale will best explain why this is a novel to be read.

"I had a little Bessarabian hell-cat. I had won her in a fight with some gipsies, here in the hills behind Istanbul. They came after me, but I got her on board the boat. I had to knock her unconcsious first. She was still trying to kill me when we got back to Trezibond, so I got her to my place and took away all her clothes and kept her chained naked under the table. When I ate, I used to throw scraps to her under the table, like a dog. She had to learn who was master. Before that could happen, my mother did an unheard of thing. She visited my place without warning. She came to tell me that my father wanted to see my immediately. She found the girl." - Kerim Darko, head of 'T' section.

Empire

Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals is an extensive overview of both Russian Empires (Tsarist and Soviet) and its three main rivals - British, Hapsburg (Austro-Hungarian branch) and Ottoman. I found this to be very interesting, as aside from studying the fall of the Tsar and beginnings of the Soviet Union at school, I have little knowledge on Russian history, and know nothing at all really concerning Hapsburg and Ottoman.

Empire gives an overview of each empire, and then compares it to the Russian so we may see what similarities and differences exist. The three rivals all offer different examples of Empire, with British being a maritime-financial-economic, Hapsburg a Federation (at least toward the end) and Ottoman a geographic based upon conquest but with local traditions respected and left to theirselves. I found it interesting just to read and learn about the Hapsburgs and Ottomans, and the context to which they were the rivals of Russia.

This is a well-written, informative book, although not surprisingly the subject can be a little on the heavy side sometimes. I could sit down and plough through a chapter, but equally it would occasionally be very draining and make me sleepy. Reading in the heat of summer with humidity probably did not help this! But I feel like I have learnt from reading this, from understanding a little more about the make-up of the former Soviet Republics today to basic information of past empires. I also found it interesting to read (and wondered why this had not been brought up in school all those years ago) that the dismantling of the Hapsburg Empire following the First World War by the victorious Allied Powers was a key reason for the ease of Hitler's subsequent domination of Central Europe as there was no longer a strong force that would resist German domination present.

There were two points made by the author that I found particularly interesting. Those will follow, but before they do, a swift summary: Empire... is a well-written, interesting and concise look at the Russian Empires, and would serve well as an introduction to the subject. Of course it is totally ironic that the things I have found most interesting have nothing to do with Russia...

"At the beginning of the 21st Century, the American 'goldilocks economy' shares the planet with a Japan in deep recession and a Germany struggling to come to terms inter alia with reunification. A mood of euphoria equal to that of the 1920s reigns again on Wall Street. Should it be followed by another 1929 then once again predictions as to which economy will lead mankind in the twenty-first century will be modified." Prophetic words!

"America's rancorously nationalistic public opinion was also seen as inherently aggressive, unstable and expansionist." Some things never change - this was the view of the 19th Century!