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Rowan Maple
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Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
Rowan Maple
Seeing this book, I needed it in hand again. I retrieved it from my shelves and held it, trying to remember it, remember something other than I liked it. Yes, but why? Maybe 1000 Books is important not just for inspiring a To Read List, but a To REread List. TFA is certainly added to that. And that...show more
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
To say that Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a book that captured the zeitgeist of the late 1970s and the 1980s is an understatement. Beginning as a BBC comedy radio series, it would mutate into versions in print, on stage, in comics, and on screens small and big, becoming an ...show more
Watership Down
Richard Adams
One taps Agree instantly, responding as the much younger person who read this a lifetime ago and loved it for the narrative, the story of Hazel and the rabbits.
Now as an older and (ahem) more sophisticated reader and one more sensitive and aware of animals, forests and all those others we share Ear...show more
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Edward Albee
Every so often you should sit yourself down with a few stiff drinks and read this play. It's immersive and irresistible. I almost guarantee you'll be on your feet playing all four roles. It's not often that a play reads well or that reading a play is a satisfying experience (I mean they aren't mean...show more
A Coffin for Dimitrios
Eric Ambler
Must one read this before that last kick at the bucket? Hmmm. If one has an interest in a certain style of novel one should. Ambler has been called the father of spy/espionage novels (though this is not strictly that). If you're interested in the evolution of the genre why not start with a book like...show more
Lucky Jim
Kingsley Amis
A riotous satire of English university life, the engaging and high-spirited Lucky Jim had a huge impact in its time, setting the style for postwar fiction and helping to define the generation of “Angry Young Men” in 1950s Britain. But this Angry Young Man is as funny as they come, and the novel’s se...show more