Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Worth Talking About?

I'm always looking for new books to read so I was interested to see that an organization that is sponsoring World Book Day, March 5, 2009, has published a list of the fifty books most worth talking about. The purpose is to get people to talk about books.

According to the website, they "asked publishers large and small to submit books they thought deserved to reach a wider readership – most specifically those that would make good subjects for discussion, those that don’t merely entertain, but give greater food for thought."

Talking about books is good. And I figured that if there were fifty books I would have read at least a few of them already. But I don't recognize any of them. Here's the list (courtesy of the Telegraph). Has anyone read any of these books?
Imagine This, by Sade Adenirai, (SW Books)
Catch a Fish from the Sea (Using the Internet), by Nasreen Akhtar, (Greenbirds Publishing)
The Blood of Flowers, by Anita Amirrezvani, (Headline Review)
A Golden Age, by Tahmima Anam, (John Murray)
Joe The Only Boy in the World, by Michael Blastland, (Profile)
Away, by Amy Bloom, (Granta)
The Opposite of Love, by Julie Bluxbaum, (Bantam)
The Song Before It Is Sung, by Justin Cartwright, (Bloomsbury)
Broken, by Daniel Clay, (Harper Perennial)
Random Deaths and Custard, by Catrin Dafydd, (Gomer)
The Solitude of Emperors, by David Davidar, (Orion)
Maynard and Jennica, by Rudolph Denson, (Harper Perennial)
Fup, by Jim Dodge, (Canongate)
Zoology, by Ben Dolnick, (Harper Perennial)
The Vitamin Murders, by James Fergusson, (Portobello)
The Glassblower of Murano, by Marina Fiorato, (Burning House)
Ancestor House, by Aminatta Forna, (Bloomsbury)
Love Falls, by Esther Freud, (Bloomsbury)
Atmospheric Disturbances, by Rivka Galchen, (Harper Perennial)
Tao: On the Road and On the Run in Outlaw China, by Aya Goda, (Portobello)
Now You See Him, by Eli Gottlieb, (Serpent's Tail)
Wild, by Jay Griffiths, (Hamish Hamilton)
The Condition, by Jennifer Haigh, (Harper)
The Fantastic Book of Everyone's Secrets, by Sophie Hannah, (Sort of Books)
The Archivist's Story, by Travis Holland, (Bloomsbury)
The Mistress's Daughter, by A.M. Homes, (Granta)
Blood Tender, by Rachel Ingrams, (Tindal Street)
When We Were Romans, by Mathew Kneale, (Picador)
The Children of Freedom, by Marc Levy, (Harper)
Bad Traffic, by Simon Lewis, (Sort of Books)
Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction, by Alison MacLeod, (Hamish Hamilton)
Remedy, by Anne Marsella, (Portobello)
The Family That Couldn't Sleep, by D.T. Max, (Portobello)
The Bloomsday Dead, by Adrian McKinty, (Serpent's Tail)
Feather Man, by Rhyll McMaster, (Marion Boyars)
Queuing for Beginners, by Joe Moran, (Profile)
Season of the Witch, by Natasha Mostert, (Bantam)
Twenty Eight: Stories of AIDS in Africa, by Stephanie Nolen, (Portobello)
Serious Things, by Gregory Norminton, (Sceptre)
Chinese Whispers, by Hsiao-Hung Pai, (Figtree)
Train to Trieste, by Domnica Radulescu, (Doubleday)
Gold, by Dan Rhodes, (Canongate)
The Good Plain Cook, by Bethan Roberts, (Serpent's Tail)
Vicky Had One Eye Open, by Darryl Samaraweera, (Burning House)
The Forger, by Cioma Schönhaus, (Granta)
Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart, (Granta)
Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth?, by Andrew Sims & Joe Smith, (Constable & Robinson)
I Think There's Something Wrong With Me, by Nigel Smith, (Black Swan)
Rainbow's End, by Lauren St.John, (Hamish Hamilton)
The Abyssinian Proof, by Jenny White, (Orion)

You can learn more about them here.

October Reading

I found myself very impatient in my reading this month and it was in general unsatisfactory.  This may partly be because I was traveling for...