The Reading Project is independently run to provide reviews of books from a variety of genres, as well as engage in long-term projects of personal interest, including a reading of The Federalist Papers, the works of Homer, novels from the Golden Age of Crime and all the Booker Prize winning novels since 1969. Contributions are welcome. More information can be found in our About page.

▼ Recent Reviews
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

2 November 2024

The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden

30 October 2024

The Cornish Coast Murder by John Bude

27 October 2024

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

19 October 2024

James by Percival Everett

22 OCtober 2024

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

8 October 2024

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

8 October 2024

The School Run by Ali Lowe

7 October 2024

The Ravenmaster by Christopher Skaife

29 September 2024

Held by Anne Michaels

24 September 2024

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

20 September 2024

A Closed and Common Orbit

2 September 2024

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

8 September 2024

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

29 August 2024

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

29 August 2024

Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde

14 August 2024

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

8 August 2024

King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard

30 July 2024

▼ Books Currently Being Read
Camino Ghosts by John Grisham
Camino Ghosts
John Grisham
Book 3 in the Camino series . . .
Reviewer: WaywardWoman

Dark Isle off the Florida coast is said to be cursed: drownings, disappearances and hauntings have been the fate of intruders. The people who lived there were once enslaved. Now abandoned, it is the target of greedy developers.

Lovely Jackson is the last survivor and claims to be its legal owner. But there is not a shred of evidence to prove that is true. It's unlikely that the developers will be deterred by the claims of one old woman. They have millions; Lovely only has Steve Mahon, a pro bono environmental lawyer, and Mercer Mann, a floundering novelist, to fight in her corner.

With the court case looming and the bulldozers waiting to roll in, Steve and Mercer are in a race against time to unearth the truth behind Lovely's story and save the legacy of the island.

Reading Progress
19% Complete
Orbital
Orbital
Samantha Harvey
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024 . . .
Reviewer: bikerbuddy

A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?.

Reading Progress
65% Complete
The Widening Stain W. Bolingbroke Johnson
The Widening Stain
W. Bolingbroke Johnson
A classic detective novel from the 1940s . . .
Reviewer: Toriaz

For the staff of the library at the center of The Widening Stain, it's easy enough to dismiss the death of a woman who fell from a rolling ladder as nothing more than an unfortunate accident. It's more difficult, however, to explain away the strangled corpse of a man found inside a locked room, surrounded by rare and obscure erotica. And that's not all—a valuable manuscript has vanished from the stacks, which means that both a killer and a thief are loose in the facility's hallowed halls. It's up to chief cataloger Gilda Gorham to solve the crimes but, unless she's careful, the next death in the library might just be her own...

Reading Progress
25% Complete


▼ Special Reading Projects
The Booker Prize
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

With this project we have a long-term commitment to read and review all Booker Prize winners since 1969.

The Booker Prize winner for 2023 is Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.

‘From that first knock at the door, Prophet Song forces us out of our complacency as we follow the terrifying plight of a woman seeking to protect her family in an Ireland descending into totalitarianism. We felt unsettled from the start, submerged in – and haunted by – the sustained claustrophobia of Lynch’s powerfully constructed world. He flinches from nothing, depicting the reality of state violence and displacement and offering no easy consolations.’

- thebookerprizes.com

The 2023 Shortlist for the Booker Prize also included:

Project Progress
36 of 60 Booker winners reviewed




View the Booker Prize Winners and those we have reviewed by clicking here.
International Booker Prize Icon 2024
The International Booker Prize
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck

The Booker Project also involves a long-term commitment to read and review all International Booker Prize winners since 2016.

The International Booker Prize winner for 2024 is Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck.

‘In luminous prose, Jenny Erpenbeck exposes the complexity of a relationship between a young student and a much older writer, tracking the daily tensions and reversals that mark their intimacy, staying close to the apartments, cafés, and city streets, workplaces and foods of East Berlin. It starts with love and passion, but it’s at least as much about power, art and culture. The self-absorption of the lovers, their descent into a destructive vortex, remains connected to the larger history of East Germany during this period, often meeting history at odd angles.’

- thebookerprizes.com

The 2024 Shortlist for the International Booker Prize also included:

Project Progress
8 of 9 International Booker winners reviewed




In the long term, we hope to review all the Booker Prize winners.
Homer - The Iliad
HEADING: The Iliad The Iliad by Homer

This project is based around a reading of Homer's The Iliad. Book by book, we provide summaries and provide analyse of aspects specific to each. Each book has a dedicated page which includes art inspired by moments from this epic poem.

Long regarded as one of the pinnacles of Western literature, The Iliad tells the story of the Trojan War in its final days, as Achilles, the supreme Grecian warrior, withdraws from the conflict over a disagreement with Agamemnon.

The ancient Greeks regarded this epic poem as a representation of real history, and in the 19th century the Homer enthusiast and amateur archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, excavated what is now believed to be the site of the ancient conflict.

For this special reading project I plan to eventually provide summaries of each of the twenty four books of The Iliad, notes on characters and the Greek Gods, a character map and a general discussion at the end.

Click here to visit the main page for this special reading project.

(Please Note: This is an ongoing project and not all pages are complete)

Project Progress
Book 12 of 24 Books
The Golden Age of Crime Fiction
The Golden Age of Crime

The Golden Age of Crime Project is an ongoing commitment to read and review books from the Golden era of Crime Fiction.

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels, predominantly from the 1920s and 1930s. Well known writers of the Golden Age include Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ronald Knox, Anthony Berkeley and G. K. Chesterton.

But these books have roots in earlier works of detective fiction, and there are still mysteries being written today that would fit in with the ‘feel’ of the Golden Age (Anthony Horowitz is an excellent example of a modern day writer of contemporary ‘Golden Age’ mysteries).

For this special reading project I am reading as widely as possible from this era, but especially books by authors suggested by Martin Edwards' study of the period, The Golden Age of Murder.

Martin Edward's The Golden Age of Murder is an account of the Detection Club, featuring some of the most famous crime writers of the first half of the 20th Century, as well as the background to famous and obscure crime fiction from this era. This book was the initial inspiration for this project. You can read our review of this book here.

Click here to visit the main page for this special reading project.

Project Progress
This project has no fixed completion
▼ Reading Projects Completed
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Count of Monte Cristo
Our second long-term Special Reading Project, now complete!

I read Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo as a long term reading project. The book is long, over 1000 pages of small print and 118 chapters. I decided as I read, since I would not always have time to read it consistently, that I would make a chapter by chapter summary.

The novel begins in the period just before Napoleon's escape from the island of Elba. Edmond Dantes is arrested and imprisoned after he is framed as a Napoleon conspirator. This is the story of his escape, how he finds his fortune and seeks revenge on those who betrayed him.

For those interested in reading the book, or simply curious to find out more, click on the cover of the book or click here. You will have access to the full summary I wrote, character notes on the major characters, a downloadable character map I produced, as well as a quick access to my review of the book and a link to the Gutenberg Project, where you can download the book for free.

The Federalist Papers
Our first long-term Special Reading Project

The Federalist Papers were written in 1787 to 1788 to defend the new American Constitution against its critics. They explained the Constitution and have provided future generations guidance as to how the Founding Fathers intended the Constitution to be interpreted.

The Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and America's fourth president, James Madison, cover issues of America's independence, including the need to ensure against foreign influence, as well as how the new Federal Government would operate. The Federalist Papers also deal with the separation of the powers of each branch of government, as well as government oversight, which includes the power of Congress to impeach. For these reasons, The Federalist Papers are still important documents which have been referred to in debates about the presidency of Donald Trump.

You can now read summaries and commentaries of all 85 Federalist papers here on the Reading Project.

Michael Duffy profiles some great writers of the last few centuries in a series of interviews that never happened based on things the authors actually said!

Bookish Quote of the Day

The pictures below represent places we have travelled or enjoy. In each picture there is someone who is reading. The photos represent the portability of books and the idea that they might be enjoyed almost anywhere. Click on the Google Earth Symbol to view where each photograph was taken.

Legislative Council Chamber, NSW

The Legislative Council is one of two houses of NSW Parliament, the other being the Legislative Assembly

Mount Panorama, Bathurst

Mount Panorama is the site of the annual Touring Car Race, the Bathurst 1000

Marina Bay Sands Hotel from Supertree Grove

The Supertree is part of a group in Marina Bay Sands Gardens, with the iconic Marina Bay Sands Hotel, Singapore, as backdrop

Harry Hartog Bookstore, Penrith

Harry Hartog Bookstore is the newest and largest bookstore in the Penrith region, west of Sydney

Singapore, Flower Dome

The Flower Dome is located in Singapore's Gardens by the Bay

Singapore Botanic Gardens Bandstand

The Bandstand in Singapore Botanic Gardens was erected in 1930 and is now often used for wedding photos.

Swan Lake, Singapore Botanical Gardens

Swan Lake is a small part of Singapore's Botanical Gardens, established in 1859 and honoured as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Old Government House, Parramatta

Residence of ten early governors of New South Wales between 1800 and 1847

Archibald Fountain, Hyde Park, Sydney

Centred in Hyde Park, this Art Deco fountain features scenes from Greek Mythology

Everglades, Leura, Blue Mountains, Australia

A former residence, art gallery, cafe and garden which hosts outdoor theatrical performances


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