Reading Project

Untouchable

Mulk Raj Anand

A story of India's caste system . . .

Bakha, an attractive, proud, and strong young man, is also an Untouchable, the lowest of the low in India’s caste system. A sweeper and a toilet-cleaner, he must warn others on the street of his status so that he will not pollute them with his presence. In this urgent 1935 re-creation of one day in the life of an outcast, a violent encounter leads Bakha to question his fate—and to find an answer in the unlikeliest of places.

Reading Progress

50% Complete

A Brief History of Seven Killings

Marlon James

Winner of the Booker Prize 2015 . . .

Reviewer: bikerbuddy

On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert to ease political tensions in Kingston, seven unnamed gunmen stormed the singer's house, machine guns blazing. The attack wounded Marley, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others. Little was officially released about the gunmen, but rumors abounded regarding the assassins' fates. A Brief History of Seven Killings is James' fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time in Jamaica's history and beyond.

Reading Progress

Finished Reading - Review Pending

The Booker Prize

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

The Booker Prize winner for 2024 is Orbital by Samantha Harvey.

‘Samantha Harvey’s compact yet beautifully expansive novel invites us to observe Earth’s splendour from the drifting perspective of six astronauts aboard the International Space Station as they navigate bereavement, loneliness and mission fatigue. Moving from the claustrophobia of their cabins to the infinitude of space, from their wide-ranging memories to their careful attention to their tasks, from searching metaphysical inquiry to the spectacle of the natural world, Orbital offers us a love letter to our planet as well as a deeply moving acknowledgement of the individual and collective value of every human life.’

- thebookerprizes.com

The 2024 Shortlist for the Booker Prize also included:

Held Anne Michaels (Canadian)
Creation Lake Rachel Kushner (American)
James Percival Everett (American)
The Safekeep Yael van der Wouden (Dutch)
Stone Yard Devotional Charlotte Wood (Australian)

Project Progress

37 of 61 Booker winners reviewed

View the Booker Prize Winners and those we have reviewed by clicking here.

The International Booker Prize

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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:

Not a River by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott from Spanish
Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated by Sora Kim-RussellYoung and Jae Josephine Bae from Korean
What I'd Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey from Dutch
Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz from Portuguese
The Details by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson from Swedish

Project Progress

8 of 9 International Booker winners reviewed

In the long term, we hope to review all the Booker Prize winners.

Homer and The Epic Cycle

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This project is based around a reading of Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey as well as sources that help us reconstruct the lost poems of The Epic Cycle, books related to the myths of the Trojan War, now lost to us. These books told stories well-known to us but not included in Homer’s surviving poems: the Judgement of Paris; the Trojan Horse; the death of Achilles and other stories.

For each of these lost books we will provide our own summary and commentary using retellings, sources based on the lost poems and scholarship, as well as look at art inspired by the stories. For Homer’s poems we will provide summaries and provide analyse of aspects specific to each book in the epic poems. Each book has a dedicated page which includes art inspired by moments from these epic poems.

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 Odyssey is the story of Odysseus’ long trek home after the war ends.

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

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

(Please Note: This is an ongoing project and most pages are incomplete)

The Iliad Progress

Book 20 of 24 Books

The Odyssey Progress

Book 0 of 24 Books

The Epic Cycle Progress

Book 0 of 24 Books

The Golden Age of Crime Fiction

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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

The Count of Monte Cristo

Our second long-term Special Reading Project, now complete!

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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

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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!

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.