Ok, a lot of the titles that are special to me have already been listed, so these are the ones that I would add (listed in no particular order - I love them all equally):

1. Gilded Needles - Michael McDowell

This book blew my socks off. I'm not a horror reader but McDowell has changed my entire outlook on that genre and I consider Gilded Needles to be his best work for me.

2. The Day of the Jackal - Frederick Forsyth

The short explanation for this pick is that it set a standard for me about what a thriller should be. I seriously love this book. It has action but also makes one think. Note - The Bourne Identity did cross my mind as a potential contender but it would be like like bringing a knife to a gun fight. LoL. 

3. The Tennant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Bronte

This is the book that tipped Jane Eyre of its pedestal for me. Anne was a badass.

4. Howards End - E.M. Forster

This is a conventional choice. I get it. It's a book that is on many lists already. However, this is Forster's best work and it is a shame that it is on any "Best of List" because that kind of hype usually backfires. At least it does for me. It's one book that also should never be forced on high school students because this book is deeply personal and no one should be forced to discuss how this book makes sense to them. I don't know. 

So, yes, this is a "classic" by a dead white guy, I am not going to hold that against the book. 

5. A Single Man - Christopher Isherwood

Where compilers of Best of Lists like to include Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf, I'd usually like to substitute their entries with Isherwood. Yup. I know. Dead White Guy. But still one of the best books I've read. There is especially one part where I always think that the Bell Jar can bugger off - For me "I am. I am. I am." has nothing on "Waking up begins with saying am and now."

6. The Daughter of Time - Josephine Tey

I love this book for so many reasons: it literally has no plot and yet Tey managed to turn this into a suspenseful murder mystery, showing that actual history is thrilling. Tey challenged the accepted view of historical fact and basically had the guts to challenge Shakespeare and every school history book being taught at the time of writing. Moreover, she made me look at historical paintings in a more enlightened way. I love Tey - as you are sick of hearing by now, I'm sure - and this one started that that journey.

7. Forbidden Journey - Ella K. Maillart

I am listing this because this is the seminal book of Maillart's that established her firmly as my favourite badass travel writer and explorer. She's usually overshadowed by her two-time travel companion (and brother of Bond creator) Peter Fleming, whose books are really shallow and short-sighted in comparison to Maillart's. She's one author that may not have the stylistic skills of her peers, but she's one that has more things to say than most of the travel writers I have read.

8. The Comedians - Graham Greene

Yup. Greene. I cannot leave Greene off a list and I still consider The Comedians his best book. There is no wallowing in Catholic guilt in this one like there is in what is usually listed as his best work. This one faces and exposes the inhumanities of a violent regime gripping Haiti at the time Greene wrote this and pokes it with a very pointy stick. 

9. Artful - Ali Smith

Ok. Smith. Artful is not a novel. It's a lecture that is presented as a part-fictional narrative. What is important to me about this one is that it encapsulates how language works and how an author can make language work in a multitude of ways. If I were to compare this another work about a different art - John Berger's Ways of Seeing had a similar effect on me. (But he is usually listed on a Best Of list somewhere and I wanted to pick a book about language and literature.)

10. Embers - Sandor Marai

Maybe an odd choice but this is a book that I read decades ago and it is still with me. It is one of the books that set a standard for other books to follow with respect to creating atmosphere because even thinking about Embers I can smell the wood burning in the fireplace and the pine trees outside. 

So, one of the things I noted with some regret while compiling this list is that there aren't many titles on here that originated in languages other than English. There are a lot of authors I adore who did not write in English but the ones I would have picked usually also appear in the Best of Lists - which I take as a sign that I need to make more of an effort to read diversely. 

Of those I would have picked, these are my top 5 (again in no particular order):

- Hermann Hesse: Steppenwolf & Unterm Rad (tr. Beneath the Wheel)

- Klaus Mann: Treffpunkt im Unendlichen (no idea if this was translated into English)

- Kurt Tucholsky: any of the satirical works

- Jules Verne: Journey to the Centre of the World

- Alexandre Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo

Scrive Manganelli nella nota finale: “Se Isherwood scrivesse musica, la sua predilezione ha qualcosa di infantile andrebbe ai fiati: romanzi per oboe, clarinetto, per corno di bassetto. Il corno di bassetto è aereo di quella ariosità serale e boschiva che s’accompagna ad una solitudine insieme pittoresca e irreparabile; un precario sorriso custodisce una delicata risonanza, l’allucinazione dell’eco, una sonorità pensosa, e insieme elegante; la sonorità delicata di una angoscia ostinata ma inafferrabile; l’imprecisa, cattivante angoscia dell’esistenza.”

Londra, anni Trenta. 
Chatsworth sogna di realizzare una Tosca scritta da Maugham, con Greta Garbo come protagonista, invece è alle prese con La violetta del Prater. A dirigerlo è il regista ebreo-tedesco Friedrich Bergmann, sceneggiatore il giovane e promettente scrittore Christopher Isherwood. 
Si lavora in un clima di esaltazione, di entusiasmo, ma in Europa incombe la catastrofe. A Berlino è in corso il processo per l’incendio del Reichstag; in Austria gli scontri con le masse operaie sono aspri, seguono arresti, condanne, uccisioni. Gli inglesi non vogliono credere. Non ancora. Meglio illudersi che non accadrà. Meglio non pensare allo scoppio di una guerra europea. Meglio vivere nell’inconsistenza della finzione.
“Questo rispettabile ombrello è la bacchetta magica con la quale l’inglese cercherà di fare scomparire Hitler. Quando poi Hitler rifiuterà di scomparire, allora l’inglese aprirà il suo ombrello e dirà: “Dopo tutto, che può farmi un po’ di pioggia?”. Ma la pioggia sarà una pioggia di bombe e di sangue. L’ombrello non è a prova di bomba”.
Solo Bergmann pare inquieto. Sente la guerra avvicinarsi. L’Austria, dove ha lasciato moglie e figlia, non è più sicura. 
E mentre fra le macchine dell’illusione volteggia la leggerezza, si scivola, dolcemente, verso il baratro della follia nazista. 

La favola bella è pretesto per riflettere. Perché certa “leggerezza” tanto leggera non è.
“Che cosa ti spinge a vivere? Perché non ti ammazzi? Perché si riesce a sopportare tutto? Che cosa te lo fa sopportare?
Potevo rispondere a una domanda del genere? No. Sì. Forse… Supponevo, vagamente, che fosse per una sorta di equilibrio, un complesso di tensioni. Si fa la cosa che viene dopo nell’elenco. Un pasto da consumare. Il capitolo undici da scrivere. Il telefono che suona. Si esce in taxi, diretti in un posto qualunque. Il proprio lavoro. I divertimenti. La gente. I libri. Le cose che si possono comperare nei negozi. C’è sempre qualche cosa di nuovo. Deve esserci. Diversamente, l’equilibrio verrebbe interrotto, la tensione spezzata.”

“La morte, bramata, temuta. Il sonno, tanto desiderato. Il terrore del sopraggiungere del sonno. La morte. La guerra. La vasta città addormentata, destinata alle bombe. Il rombo degli aeroplani incursori. Le batterie contraeree. Le urla. Le case sbriciolate. La morte universale. La mia morte. La morte del mondo visto, conosciuto, assaporato, tangibile. La morte col suo esercito di paure. Non le paure che tutti conoscono, le paure cui si fa pubblicità, ma quelle più terribili: le paure segrete dell’infanzia. Paura del tuffo dal trampolino, del cane del fattore e del cavallino del parroco, paura degli armadi, dei corridoi scuri, paura di spaccarsi un’unghia con un taglierino. E, al culmine, la più indicibilmente temibile, la paura prima: quella di aver paura.
[…]
Forse avrei potuto volgermi a Bergmann e chiedergli: «Chi sei? E io, chi sono? Che cosa facciamo qui?». Ma gli attori non possono rivolgersi domande simili durante lo spettacolo.”

I am just FLYING through books this year! I can't believe I've already finished my fourth book of the year. Granted, 3 of the 4 were pretty short so I have to take that into account, and should probably start reading some longer titles. Anyhow...

A Single Man was a stunning novel. Absolutely beautiful. I'm in love with the writing style and the way it almost reads like an inner monologue of George, despite being in 3rd person. 

The narrative is simple, following a typical day in the life of our protagonist, George, an English professor at a college in Los Angeles in the 1960s. His lover, Jim, has recently died and deals with the aftermath of that, as well as him interacting with his friend Charlotte and a student, Kenny. 

I vaguely remember watching the movie several years ago, but I don't remember enough of it to know how it compares to the novel. I'm certain the movie amped up the relationship between George and Kenny more than the book does, but I can't be certain. 

The ending is heartbreaking. The writing was subtle but beautiful, and Isherwood doesn't let a single word go to waste. I think this is probably my definition of the perfect novel. This is definitely being added to my list of favorites. HIGHLY recommend. 

July 31st:

Bank account: $215

Many thanks to Obsidian Blue and Moonlight reader for hosting this game. It was so much fun! Both playing and watching everyone else's updates - a special shout out to Magnetic Monkey and Penni, who have been quite the entertaining duo.

My personal goal for this game was to tackle my TBR shelves, both physical and electronic, and try and read as many books that I already own as I could. 

In that, I think it has been a resounding success. I managed to read 

40 books. Which added up to an amazing 12205 pages! And I loved many of them. Even ones that were outside of my normal reading comfort zone - Hello Sci-fi! and time travel. 

In fact, I managed to re-connect with one of my favourite childhood authors - Jules Verne. Not that Verne is a children's author. I just happen to have had my first encounter with Verne when I was a child. Now I want to read more of his works. They are just amazing!

Overall, not all of the books I have read over the game have been impressive. There have been 3 DNFs, and all the books together averaged a 3.36 rating.

However, there were some honourable mentions which I have linked above.

The Thorn Birds, Howards End, and Journey to the Centre of the Earth were re-reads, so the most surprising or best discoveries of the last three months have been Making History by Stephen Fry and The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulff.

Again, many thanks to OB and MR and to all the other BLikers who have taken part or cheered from the sidelines. You all rock!

Below (after the page break) are all my game updates.

Waking up begins with saying am and now.

That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognised I, and therefrom deduced I am, I am now. Here comes next, and is at least negatively reassuring; because here, this morning, is where it had expected to find itself; what’s called at home. But now isn’t simply now. Now is also a cold reminder; one whole day later than yesterday, one year later than last year.

Every now is labelled with its date, rendering all past nows obsolete, until – later or sooner – perhaps – no, not perhaps – quite certainly: It will come.

For its brevity, this book is packed with ideas and story. It's such a fine example of an author making every word count.

Making things count is also on the mind of George, our MC, who is trying to come to grips with life after the death of his partner, Jim. Right from the start of the book, he is looking for a way to emerge from his loss and live again as a single man. But in a setting where he cannot be openly himself, where he even feels like his best friend does not understand him, it is difficult for him to express himself and to be acknowledged. Instead, he feels invisible.

‘You’re going to walk home like that? Are you crazy? They’d call the cops!’

Kenny shrugs his shoulders good-humouredly.

‘Nobody would have seen us. We’re invisible – didn’t you know?’

Invisibility is a theme in that run through the book from George's bathroom window a few pages from the start to the invisible inner workings of his heart at the end of the book.  

It's an invisibility that is heartbreaking: George's expression of shock and grief at learning of Jim's death gets mistaken for ambivalence, and even when he breaks down at his friend Charlotte's it happens under the cloak of darkness. No one sees him. No one sees Jim. 

Christopher Isherwood is one of the writers that I would like to read more of. I had mostly thought of him as the creator of Sally Bowles and the Berlin novels that inform so much of our pop culture view of the 1920s, but this 1960s novel of his makes me really want to revisit the Berlin novels from the point of looking at his writing. I really loved how much he could make happen in a such a concise way.

But is all of George altogether present here? Up the coast a few miles north, in a lava reef under the cliffs, there are a lot of rock pools. You can visit them when the tide is out. Each pool is separate and different, and you can, if you are fanciful, give them names – such as George, Charlotte, Kenny, Mrs Strunk. Just as George and the others are thought of, for convenience, as individual entities, so you may think of a rock pool as an entity; though, of course, it is not.

The waters of its consciousness – so to speak – are swarming with hunted anxieties, grim-jawed greeds, dartingly vivid intuitions, old crusty-shelled rock-gripping obstinacies, deep-down sparkling undiscovered secrets, ominous protean organisms motioning mysteriously, perhaps warningly, toward the surface light. How can such a variety of creatures coexist at all? Because they have to. The rocks of the pool hold their world together. And, throughout the day of the ebb tide, they know no other.