Ulysses Reading Challenge Update

In June I announced that I was joining Dovegreyreader and many others in the Team Ulysses Challenge, which we hope will see us complete James Joyce's classic by next Bloomsday (June 16th). I was slow of the mark to begin with but caught up a few days later by reading a number of 2-page installments from DailyLit and have made steady progress since then. I have now read over one hundred pages of the novel and if I keep it up at the same pace then I should reach the summit earlier than anticipated.

As if that wasn't a challenge enough I decided to do the same with Proust's In Search of Lost Time v. 1: Swann's Way, which I had been intending to read anyway this year before Ulysses came along.

If you're reading Ulysses too then how are you getting along? I'm finding that the routine helps and that, as yet, I don't have to motivate myself or boost morale but read my installments as if it was second nature (well, to read is natural to me...) I'm not having too much difficulty understanding it although I severely doubt that I am picking up on it all. I'm reading it straight from cover to cover and without any secondary material although it's too early to tell whether that will change; for the moment I am still more or less wading in the water, not sure whether I'll sink or swim.

Persephone Reading Week Challenge

As previously mentioned by both myself and Verity of The B Files, we are planning to indulge in a Persephone Books reading week commencing August 24th. After an enthusiastic response we decided to formalise our intent into a Persephone Reading Challenge. We would love for you to join us for a week of reading, blogging, and celebrating the wonderful, grey books. The challenge rules are relaxed and informal: on the week we have chosen enjoy Persephone Books, one Persephone or ten, I don't think it matters as long as you enjoy yourself and the independent publishing house who publish forgotten or neglected books (mainly by women). If you are only able to manage to read one of their books that week then that's great and if you don't have any Persephone books, or perhaps have never heard of them, then come read our blogs that week and discover some truly lovely books or, better yet, indulge in a copy now so you fully experience the challenge. We will be making a number of Persephone-orientated posts, not just reviews, and will host prize draws for books and related items to add to your Persephone collection or to start it off!

We have been in contact with Nicola Beauman, founder of Persephone, who is "touched and flattered" by our show of support and has kindly offered to provide us with some (slightly damaged) Persephone books for prizes. Please participate and help us raise the profile of an exquisite, distinctive, and extraordinary imprint.

Are you looking forward to Persephone Reading Week? Do you have any plans for it or are you going to select from your Persephones at random? Is there anything particular you would like us to feature on our blogs that week or do you have an idea for your own post that will coincide?

Feel free to use the banner I created using one of my own books for any posts in relation to this challenge (no Persephones were harmed in the making).

Recent Arrivals

Some very nice people at Vintage Books (Random House) sent me copies of their forthcoming Vintage Bookers, to be published next month. Aren't they pretty? The copies of Possession and How Late it Was, How Late are the older editions due to availability but I'm not complaining as this will make my Man Booker project all the easier. First up is Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee (I can return my library copy - hurray!) and then after that I'm not sure...

Teaser Tuesdays

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"We spent three nights together at Sweet Corner, but he hadn't said a single word about the wife who gazed at us from the painting. Then, on the fourth night, I'd woken up a little before dawn, because the pastry chef was clumping around, firing his bread ovens. I'd rolled over and found Ozren wide awake, staring at the painting."

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks p.34

Brooklyn

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín is an intensely understated and even simple novel, which is not a disparagement; if anything it is testimony to how great it is to read a novel with no frills at times, stripped back to the writing and evoking of emotions. It is about Eilis Lacey who leaves her mother and sister (her father is dead and her brothers have gone to England for work) and her hometown of Enniscorthy for a job and a new way of life in 1950s Brooklyn.

This is not a new story, but a story as old almost as America. The Irish diaspora in the United States and elsewhere is a well-known tale. My own great-grandparents emigrated to America, to Chicago, in the late 1920s. In the early 1950s when "Eilis Lacey is one among many of her generation who cannot find work at home" my grandparents -separately- both left Ireland in search of work in Glasgow. I didn't fully appreciate the magnitude of this until reading the emotions of Eilis -and her brothers- described and I empathised, as almost sixty years later I have done likewise by moving to London in search of a career. People leaving their loved ones is not a new story at all.

I say "leaving their loved ones" not "for work" but as a general phrase because two years after Eilis has settled in Brooklyn -after the homesickness subsided- and is happy in her work and her studies and has a boyfriend, Tony, an Italian boy from Brooklyn, tragedy and familial obligation call her back to Ireland. Again Eilis is having to leave her loved ones for further shores and it's good to be home but it comes with confusion and conflict as new opportunties -previously unavailable- present themselves. Inevitability ensues.

This book resonated with me. I understand the pressures of having left home and family behind, of being committed to someone and somewhere else, of the conflict and the pressure of family obligation... Tóibín took a well-worn story and made it new, made it relevant. Even if you cannot identify with the specifics and the "terrible choice between personal freedom and duty" you will be caught up in the straightforward story of a young girl growing up.

What's Another List?

After reading Karen at BookBath's post on Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout today, a novel that is on my summer reading list, I thought it was time to share a relevant ongoing personal reading challenge that I am attempting. Along with reading the Man Booker winners (and in the longterm also the nominees) and working my way through the Guardian's 1000 Novels, I am also planning to read all the winning novels of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (known as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel prior to 1948). This is the ongoing reading challenge that I have read the least for so far but I'm planning on chalking up a few in the coming months, starting with the most recent winner, Olive Kitteridge, and followed up by the winner from the previous year, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and then Interpreter of Maladies and The Color Purple, both of which I have been wanting to read for what seems like forever. March by Geraldine Brooks has also caught my eye a few times recently.

Striked through are novels read; in red are the ones I own but are unread.

2009 Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

2008 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

2007 The Road by Cormac McCarthy

2006 March by Geraldine Brooks
2005 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

2004 The Known World by Edward P. Jones

2003 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

2002 Empire Falls by Richard Russo

2001 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

2000 Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham

1998 American Pastoral by Philip Roth

1997 Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser

1996 Independence Day by Richard Ford

1995 The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
1994 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
1993 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler

1992 A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
1991 Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

1990 The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
1989 Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
1988 Beloved by Toni Morrison
1987 A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor

1986 Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

1985 Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie

1984 Ironweed by William Kennedy
1983 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
1982 Rabbit is Rich by John Updike

1981 A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

1980 The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

1979 The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever

1978 Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson

1977 -

1976 Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

1975 The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

1974 -

1973 The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (read and reviewed here 03/08/09.)

1972 Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

1971 -

1970 Collected Stories by Jean Stafford

1969 House Made of Dawn by M. Scott Momaday

1968 The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

1967 The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

1966 Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter

1965 The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau

1964 -

1963 The Reivers by William Faulkner

1962 The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'connor
1961 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

1960 Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

1959 The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor

1958 A Death in the Family by James Agee

1957 -

1956 Andersonville by Mackinlay Kantor

1955 A Fable by William Faulkner

1954 -
1953 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

1952 The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

1951 The Town by Conrad Richter

1950 The Way West by A.B. Guthrie

1949 Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens

1948 Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener

1947 All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

1946 -

1945 A Bell for Adano by John Hersey

1944 Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin

1943 Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair

1942 In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow

1941 -

1940 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

1939 The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

1938 The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand
1937 Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

1936 Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis

1935 Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson

1934 Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller

1933 The Store by T.S. Stribling

1932 The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

1931 Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes

1930 Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge

1929 Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin

1928 The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

1927 Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield

1926 Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis

1925 So Big by Edna Ferber

1924 The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson

1923 One of Ours by Willa Cather

1922 Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington

1921 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

1920 -

1919 The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

1918 His Family by Ernest Poole

Having read only 7/83 of these novels, I'm thinking that this may take me some time! If I manage to read the five novels mentioned above the list, then I will be delighted. My Guardian 1000 and Man Booker projects take precedence, especially as the Man Booker is more achievable with only thirty or so novels still to read.

Moreover, I haven't even heard of some of these novels and think that prior to the 1940s, at least, they may be quite difficult to obtain. I consider myself to have read quite a lot of American Literature but I feel myself quite lacking in relation to this list. I imagine that some of these are far more well-known on the other side of the pond than they are here. Have you read any winners from this list that I haven't? What books would you recommend?

Fifteen books

Fifteen is the number of years since I first read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and knew that it would always be one of my favourite books. My mum bought me a copy when we were visiting family in Donegal, Ireland, after I had watched -and fallen in love with- the Alfred Hitchcock adaptation.

Fifteen is the age I was when I first read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, coinciding with the famous 1996 BBC adaptation.

Fifteen is the number of months since I read my first Persephone novel, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and a love affair was born.

Fifteen is the number of Persephone books that I currently own (in Persephone editions).

Fifteen is the number of different bookshelves that my favourite books can be found upon.

Fifteen is the number of months that elapsed between reading my first Angela Carter novel, Nights at the Circus, at Undergraduate level and beginning to write a thesis on her work, as a postgraduate.

Fifteen is how many books I have collectively still to read belonging to two of my favourite writers, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison (I am rationing them out).

Fifteen is the number of books required for a recent book meme.

Instead of the first fifteen books I can think of, I am providing you with my fifteen favourite novels. As a relatively new blogger, most of you will be unaware of my all-time favourite books, so I thought it would be an idea to share them with you. Most of them will be known to you, if not personally then at least in title or author alone, and some will be less familiar but all are books worth reading. For my own sanity in whittling the list down to fifteen, I am restricting it to novels only (exlcuding favourite plays and the short story volume, The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter) and I am also leaving off beloved Children's classics as they warrant a list of their own and will be most likely covered on future Inner Child Saturdays.

1. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier - despite the fact that I love Virago and I have no qualms buying duplicate copies of books (if it's a beloved book), I will not upgrade this much-loved, battered copy of Rebecca. Besides, despite coveting the other du Maurier Viragoes, I don't actually like their copy of Rebecca (the one linked to). The best haunting, sensational, engaging book with a famous nameless narrator and one of the most famous of anti-heroines who never actually appears in the novel, as she is dead, but is powerfully evoked by those left behind.

2. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith - this is the book that I brought along with me to the first meeting of the book group that Simon at Savidge Reads created. The ice-breaker theme of this meeting was favourites but I guessed (rightly) that Simon would bring Rebecca so I brought my second favourite, the much adored and enchanting I Capture the Castle. It has one of the best opening lines, "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink" and is about a girl who wants to be a writer, living in a dilapidated castle with her eccentric family, who discovers love whilst growing up.

3. Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter - my first and foremost favourite book by Angela Carter. This novel defies description, although Nymeth did amazingly well doing so recently. There are so many layers to this novel, so much to discover and to marvel at, so much to love. It also contains one of the most memorable of characters, Fevvers, who is by far my favourite character in a novel.

4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - you know the story. This one is dear to my heart.

5. Wise Children by Angela Carter - a wonderfully witty and bawdy romp of twins, Nora and Dora Chance, whose theatrical lives are tied up with another theatrical family, the Hazards (Hazards and Chances, the word play is rife in this novel). Fellow Shakespearean fans will love this. This was Carter's last novel and it is an amazingly clever and comic one.

6. Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - by far my favourite Marquez novel. I love his mastery of language and in Chronicle of a Death Foretold it is particularly lush.

7. Beloved by Toni Morrison - I mentioned Beloved recently in this post and all I will add is that it is an amazing book and one you should read.

8. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie - a masterpiece and a deserved Booker of Bookers and Best of Booker winner. This is an epic novel and similar to Angela Carter (they were friends) in that there is so much left to discover upon re-reading.

9. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer - it isn't often that you find a novel that is near-perfect and also original but this is one them. Words cannot express how much I love this book.

10. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - I think that this novel should be required reading.

11. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - it's Lolita, enough reasoning given.

12. American Gods by Neil Gaiman - this list would not be accurate if I omitted Neil Gaiman; it's bad enough that Terry Pratchett's Guards arc from The Discworld has slipped down to #16 (I can't narrow it down to just one of the Guards books anyway so it would be an unfair inclusion). American Gods is breathtaking in its scope; it is an odyssey. I urge you to relinquish any preconceptions of Neil Gaiman that you may have and read this as he is a storytelling master.

13. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides - I have loved this novel for a decade and will happily re-read it over and over on Sunday afternoons. It's usually controversial to say that I far prefer it to Middlesex, which I found disappointing.

14. Time's Arrow or the Nature of the Offence by Martin Amis - this is an incredible book told from the perspective of Todd T. Friendly, former Nazi officer, who tells his the story of his life backwards. This is not a passive read but one where the reader has to actively reverse events to see them in their cruel light, hence becoming complicit in Todd T. Friendly's actions. I've read a fair amount of Holocaust literature and this one stands out.

15. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters - her magnum opus. I love Victorian suspense fiction and this modern take surpasses the classics.

So there you have it, my favourites and me all wrapped up in a bow. It was an incredibly difficult and time-consuming list to make as there are so many books that I love. The ones which very nearly made the cut include Lady Rose & Mrs Memmary by Ruby Ferguson; 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff; Fall on Your Knees by Ann Marie MacDonald; The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark; The Awakening by Kate Chopin; Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys; The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; Emma by Jane Austen; Geek Love by Katherine Dunn; A Fine Balance by Rohintron Mistry... and there will be books that I am sacreligiously forgetting.