sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

Some Great Reads

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With two weeks of school holidays meaning more time at home, I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and today I’ve added fourteen new reviews to Aussiereviews. As always, there’s a range of books, from picture books through to some chilling crime fiction, but the book I want to highlight is Marty’s Shadow, by John Heffernan. This young adult read is one of those books where you think you can see what’s coming, but are surprised (even shocked) by the twists and turns. Murphlet 3 caught me sitting at the table sobbing when I finished the book. I felt emotionally wrung out but at the same time satisfied – I believed in this story and cared deeply about what happened, a sure sign of an excellent piece of writing.

You can read my review of Marty’s Shadow here.

One of the wonderful thigns about being a book reviewer is that I get to read such a wide range of books, from books like Marty’s Shadow, to laugh out loud books like picture book Whacko the Chook and absorbing literary fiction like The Butterfly Man.

Lucky me.

100 Books

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I came across a blog I’d never visited before, and on it a meme regarding the 100 greatest books of all time as voted by the general public (I didn’t dig far enough to find out who this general public were – ie where the original survey as and what form it took, which would influence who voted). The idea is to read the list and identify which you’ve read and/or own. I consider myself widely read so was surprised by the number I hadn’t even heard of, but then when I added up I’d read 48 of the 100 which is nearly 50 percent, so figured that wasn’t a bad number. Instead of just identifying those I’d read, I also added a category for those I’d read more than once, though this list is a little skewed by my years of studying literature at school and university and my subsequent years a high school English teacher.

Anyway, here’s my list and you can see the blog entry which inspired me at Bubandpie’s blog, here.

Books I’ve Read More Than Once
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
34. 1984 (Orwell)37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)

Books I’ve Read Once
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
45. The Bible 46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Books I’ve Never Read But Might One Day
1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)4
7. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)

Books I’ve Heard of But Don’t Plan on Reading
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)

Books I’ve Never Heard Of
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
42. Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
76. Tigana (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)

One of the things you’re supposed to do with memes is tag someone else to complete the meme in their blog, but I don’t like to dob people in. If you are interested, have a go and leave a comment here to let me know to check it out.

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