1001 Books To Read Before You Die

My brother is profoundly Autistic. It is very common for family members of autistic people to display autistic tendencies. I believe this is why this book so appealed to me. It gave me a categorical list of 'good' book, ensuring that my precious reading time was not occupied with the kind of drivel that my last post concerned.

When I first came across it I was working in a bookshop, which was fantastic but often threw up problems of what to read next. I've always had eclectic taste, and when you work with thousands of books everyday you list of 'to-be read' books just gets longer and longer. No matter how much time you dedicated to reading it was impossible to read the whole shop, and you could be fantastically well read but there would always be a customer who would look disappointed when you told them you hadn't read the book they were interested in. I read books like Twilight (I know I know) because it was fantastically popular and made my job easier. Yet more and more books were published every week, and it threw my little semi-autistic brain into chaos.

The need to alphabetise everything- just one of the many side effects of bookselling

But this book brought me hope. It gave me a reason to read and a reason to discard any book I chose. It made me pick up books I'd never thought twice about, because Mr. Boxall said I really, really should. It also shone a light on those classics I had carelessly neglected to read and, as it lists books chronologically by publication date, showed me the time periods I was lacking in as well.

 I won't lie, it hasn't always been my friend. This book has made me read some absolute stinkers. 'Heart of Darkness' was like pulling teeth, 'Rob Roy' like pulling teeth with a really annoying Scottish accent. It also comes with the complications of editions. There are currently four different versions of this book, all with slightly different lists. As I own the book I go off the 2006 list, but this is far from the best list as it is heavily biased in favour of certain authors (Coetzee and Dickens) and is very English centred. This can lead to frustrating episodes of buying a book and then realising it is a- not on the 2006 list or b- not on any of the lists. It has to be said that Arukiyomi's fabulous spreadsheet helps massively with this and is highly recommended.

However this book is responsible for introducing me to some of the best books I have ever read. Like seriously. I don't know why I didn't read 'Wuthering Heights' when I was 13 like everybody else, but I'm truly gutted I didn't and extremely thankful to 1001 for introducing me to it. Same goes for 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.

Currently I'm working my way through my 111th book on the list 'The Nice and the Good', which is also my Reading Group book for May. When I've finally waded my way through it I'll tell you all what I think!

Lancaster Reading Group: The Interpretation of Murder- Jed Rubenfeld

It's fair to say I wouldn't have touched this book with a 10 foot barge pole if it hadn't of been the title selected for my reading group last month. It has the icky 'Richard and Judy'/ in every charity shop for 50p/ generic man walking on a sepia cover-ness about it to really turn me off. To add further insult to injury a copy of said masterpiece had been languishing on my shelf for at least 2 years before me finally deciding to cull it and send it to the charity shop a few weeks ago. Also I hate Freud.

My major issue with books like this is the blatant name-dropping in order to sell books. The author (or perhaps more likely their publisher) tries to sell the book by making the reader feel more intellectual than they actually are. I believe the thought process runs something like "I always wanted to study psychology... ugh those psychology textbooks are big and boring looking... ZOMFG! HERE IS A FICTION BOOK ABOUT FREUD, I CAN GET CLEVER WITHOUT HAVING TO TRY LOLZ". This is particularly painful in this book as Freud is really a fairly minor character, who mostly sits in his hotel room being smug and wetting himself.

And speaking of trying to be clever, isn't Mr. Rubenfeld the smarty-pants? What the author doesn't know about New York, Psychology and Architecture isn't worth knowing, and apparently the reader needs to be told ALL OF IT. These snippets of information, while generally quite interesting, feel forced into the story. This makes the author come across as smug and patronising, which is never a good thing.

Anyway THE STORY is your fairly typical whodunit, and it is the need to know who did the rather raunchy and attention grabbing murder in the first few pages of the novel that kept me reading. Of course the actual answer to that question is VERY convoluted and complicated and wrapped up in sex and psychology and femme fatals and secret passageways and OH NO I'VE GONE CROSS EYED. Honestly by the end I still wasn't sure who had done it, or even if it had been 'done' at all!

All that said it wasn't that bad. I read it. I didn't vom. It was meh.

2 out of 5 stars, for the sheer fact that I didn't guess who did it within 50 pages.