The ramblings of a freelance writer, novelist and avid reader.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

I.AM.A.WRITER.


This ego-centric rant is what comes of being holed up in bed sick for a week. I think I may have had too much time to think about me. Which, it turns out, is good, but now you have to read all about it.

I spent a good deal of last month reading Amanda Hocking, the whiz-bang self-publisher from my home state who has just signed a-very-healthy-dollar-amount-book-deal. Her books are entertaining; they need another edit or two and hopefully a book publisher will give her that. She sites on her blog that she wants to write; she doesn’t want to deal in the nitty-gritty business of writing. Kudos to her and anyone else who does self-publish, it scares the bejeezus out of me. I too hate promoting myself; heck, I don’t even always let my facebook page know when I have a new blog post. This is stupid; I should just get over myself and learn from Amanda Hocking, who has done an amazing job promoting herself. She’s not done with self promoting now that she has an agent, editor and publishing house though. In fact, I think she might be in for a little bit of a shock as she will, most likely, be working even harder now to meet deadlines while still promoting herself beyond what the publishing house is willing to do. But I get it Amanda; I too just want to write. Well, I want people to read what I write, and like it, and pay for it and support my writing habit – vicious circle!

I.AM.A.WRITER.

Amanda Hocking is someone I can relate to because her ideas and writing style are not that dissimilar to my own. It’s always a good thing when someone making a lot of money doing what you want to do is only as good as you are; or maybe you are even better. You feel slightly more confident in what you are doing then. Of course after I finished reading Amanda Hocking, I picked up HP 7 again and cried a little. JK, you are just so good at what you do. Amanda Hocking and JK Rowling are really not the same writer. They both write YA but there the similarities end. I’m always amazed at how clean cut and concise JK is. If I ever meet her I want to know how she managed to edit so precisely all the way through to the end with deadlines, movie set visits and publicity junkets. I realize I am already a decent writer when I read authors like Amanda and I strive to be a better writer when I read authors like JK; but never do I think I’m in the wrong profession or that I can really ever be anything besides a writer.

I.AM.A.WRITER.

This week I received an email from the Unemployment Insurance of MN office asking me to fill out a work survey and self assessment. Apparently, if you’ve ever been on unemployment and you did not report the finding of a full-time job, they will keep tabs on you and “help” you try to locate employment; whether they give you money or not. This is a good thing. I know that. This is why I always fill out the surveys and assessments. They, like myself, want me to be a productive member of society. Here’s the problem: The unemployment office doesn’t really take into account who I actually am; to them I’m merely a number or statistic. If/when I’m gainfully employed they can move my number over from the jobless to the job-full. Really, it just means the surveys and assessments try to push me out of my writing box and into any category of employment I can simply do. The silly thing is, I sometimes agree. I spend hours going over these surveys and then looking for and applying for jobs in any field I know I’m qualified for. A few weeks ago I spent 3.5 hours in an interview for a job that was identical to the one I left two years ago simply because they called and I thought I should re-enter the full time work world. I didn’t get the job, thank goodness! What would I have done then?

I.AM.A.WRITER.

I often get frustrated at the part-time job hobby – it’s not a bad job at all, but it’s not who I am. When people ask me what I do, I never think to mention the part-time job hobby unless in reference to researching for a novel. I don’t talk about it on facebook or think about it when I’m not there; I doubt I’ve mentioned it on this blog except in vague passing. And this may be what stops me from getting jobs in interviews. I have to talk about my current employment and in most cases it pertains – or I can make it pertain – to the job I’m interviewing for. I mean it’s not that far off from copywriting; I do all of the same things and bridge all of the same communication boundaries – just for one store instead of an entire corporation of stores. But ask me about my freelancing work, or The Loft, or the novel I’m working on, or this blog (all things at least mentioned on my resume) and I’m sure you can see the light shining in my eyes. All other jobs are just a stepping stone to my writing career. Honestly, if I can’t be a writer than what am I? Nothing.

I.AM.A.WRITER.

Every year since I graduated from high school I talk to one particular friend on my birthday (mid February) and again on his birthday (beginning of March) without fail. These conversations used to be in person or by phone, but life often gets in the way; so for the last decade they’ve been via email. I hope you all have at least one friend like this. I’m borrowing from L.M. Montgomery here, but a real kindred spirit; someone in your life who honestly cares about the trivial information you are willing to part with on a not-so-frequent basis. Time seems not to matter for either of us; we always just pick up wherever it is that we left off the year before. I tend to confess things in these emails that I don’t to anyone else in the world. There are some things you just don’t want to – or need to – burden your nearest and dearest with…heck, on at least 360 days of the year I don’t even want to admit them to myself. Then there are those other days – days I need to spill it and tell someone how inadequate I sometimes feel. It helps that the return emails are similar in their pessimistic awkwardness. Oh, I don’t mean we dump on each other and then we’re both better humans until the next year – we share plenty of dreams and daily life happenings as well; I promise, usually the good does outweigh the bad. This year found us both complaining about work (my friend is a doctor in the middle of his residency and not so much liking the 80 hour work week on top of being a husband and a dad – with a second child on the way!!). I wrote back with some soul-searching comments about trying to make it as a writer when the rest of the world seems to be pushing me into a career in retail or office space. After I sent the email, it really hit home just how much I try to be these two different people. One who feels that looking for full-time employment, because she lost a job during economic-crisis-time, makes her a productive member of society; the other one is excited to have a decent part-time job hobby she doesn’t have to care about and gets to write for a good portion of each day. Why do I continue to tear myself apart like that? I know who I want to be, which one makes me happy and content.

I.AM.A.WRITER.

I mean do you know that since college – about 12 years or so – I’ve weighed between 150 and 250 lbs. And I don’t just mean I started out at one end of those 100 lbs and slowly moved my way towards the other end; I mean I’ve yo-yoed up and down between them. That’s not healthy. Six months ago, so about a year after getting the boot at corporate job TM, I topped out at 227 and instantly had a small nervous breakdown. Once you see 250, you really, really don’t ever want to see it again. Truly, once you see 200, you really don’t ever want to see it again; and I’ve seen 200 about 4 times in the last five years. Every time I’m loosing weight I think, “This will be the last time!” I really hope this IS actually the last time, but here’s what I realized during this week of self discovery. The periods in my life where I’m loosing weight usually coincide with great feats in writing: A new job, a new project, heck even just a complete month of consistency in my writing regimen. So maybe it’s time to admit it to myself and stop trying to do all of this other stuff.

I.AM.A.WRITER.

I believe I’ve blogged plenty about living and studying in London at the end of my undergrad career. Many moments from that time – in part because I kept a decent journal while in London – seem crisp and clean in my memory. One of those moments stands out as a big dot on the Mariah timeline – marking crucial moments that are often not so momentous at the time. In this particular instance, Ruth, a lovely Irish woman who used random air quotes and rode her bicycle all around London town, simply asked me a question. She taught a British Drama course which mostly consisted of reading plays and seeing London Theatre productions that sometimes corresponded but often didn’t. During a lecture one day she stopped to ask us all what we planned on doing with our lives. At the time I was getting ready to graduate, take my LSAT and move far away from MN to attend law school. I mean this was a clear cut path, one I was not going to be deterred from. For some reason I didn’t give the answer already in my head; I said the first thing that came to my mind, “In a perfect world I’d be a playwright”. It didn’t happen overnight. I still graduated, took the LSAT, applied for law schools and got accepted to two of my top choices; but that random comment kept sneaking through my subconscious, laying its seeds of truth. I have no doubt that I could be practicing law in another state right now, making a lot more money than I do at the part-time job hobby – but would I be happy, content or less-stressed? No. Writing is in my blood; it’s who I am.

I.AM.A.WRITER.

You, blog reader, already know this about me. I’ve already hashed through most of this in similar blog posts. You know more than I do apparently, because I keep trying to do something else. I don’t even want to do anything else; I’ve never really wanted to do anything else. Writing is my identity and my purpose. It’s not the only thing I am, but it is how I want to be remembered. We all have such a small amount of time here and I often feel a sense of urgency coming through when I write, like I have to get it all down while I still can. I want you to read what I have to say, my take on the human condition and the stories that inspire me. Wow, does that sound like I have a god complex? I don’t. I don’t think you have to read what I write or like what I write; I just know I have to write it.

I.AM.A.WRITER.

Maybe all writers continue to go through this self-doubt stage. Maybe it’s a constant battle. Maybe the next time I sit down to work on my novel I won’t get up to wash clothes, scrub out the sinks and get caught up on my email correspondence. Maybe I’ll just sit down and write. More than likely I will have good and bad writing days; I will fill more blog posts with my needs and concerns about my lack of writing – or lack of putting down on paper all of the words and thoughts swirling around in my head, desperately trying to find their way out.

Writing isn’t just what I do, it’s who I am. And sometimes I need to remind myself by screaming it out loud…I.AM.A.WRITER!

Friday, April 22, 2011

On Being Ill…with a Few Brief HP Musings


I’m sick with what I’m calling the MN Plague: It’s not quite the flu and not quite a cold and sometimes mimics strep throat or bronchitis – that’s what I have. And also, I threw my back out which means when the bronchitis symptoms arise I have to sit down or brace myself against a wall to stop the excruciating pain. I discovered quite some time ago that I hate writing when I’m sick – I just can’t do it. I can read and I can watch TV, but I usually just sleep a lot …and also eat popsicles and drink tea. The mere fact that I’m writing and posting this means I must be on the mend.

On the mending front, I haven’t wanted to sleep half as much today; but I’m also sad because I’m missing Irondale High School’s Harry Potter Club screening of HP 7.1. Irondale High School’s Harry Potter Club is a firm supporter of my blog, so I hope their event will be amazing! I believe they are also doing a Tri-Wizard Tournament in the spring (we’re in MN, spring is weeks away); hopefully I can be there for that. I’m with you in spirit – as I just put the movie in – and will lie here on the couch with ice on my back (and a very tolerant British husband) to watch it at roughly the same time.

In other related HP news, I met one of my blog followers and repeat commenter on Monday (Hi Anna!) so that was exciting and fun. Anna – and other people going on the Best of the British Isles tour I will help chaperon this summer (in MN that’s exactly 5 days after spring) – two months from today will find us visiting the birthplace of Harry Potter at the Elephant Coffee Shop in Edinburgh! As a writer this amuses me to no end. I can only hope one day people will tour the Barnes & Noble Cafe in the Galleria in Edina for similar reasons. Or make treks to the sunken gardens of Kensington Palace in London; not because it’s rumored Kate & Wills will make the palace their London home but because it is Mariah Whurr’s favorite place in the entire world to muse and write.

Really this entire brief post is to let you all know I haven’t forgotten about book number 7 and my lameness with the entire book/movie club blog. In fact, while I’ve been sick this week, I started reading book number 7 again in an attempt to get back into the swing of things. I propose that I really will…almost certainly…could actually be the truth this time…post an HP 7 blog sometime next week. Please note I did not say Monday – although I will try – because I don’t trust myself that much. Keep your fingers crossed…seriously, like all of them.

Friday, April 1, 2011

The Book List of Bragging Rights


This is not new at all, but I had to add my two cents. There’s a list of 100 books from the BBC going around facebook. I’ve received the list about 6 times now from different friends, all in memo form all referencing the BBC saying the average person will only read 6 of these books in their lifetime. Basically you bold the books you’ve read, count them up and send the memo along to another group of friends.

My latent journalistic powers find a couple of things wrong with this. How did the BBC pick their 100 books and how did they decide who the average person was? And not just, is the average person British or an English speaker. Have these books all been translated into different languages; actually some of the books on the list weren’t written in English to begin with, so translations may be a moot point. But yeah, there’s a lot wrong with the general parameters of this list to begin with.

I’ve perused the list before, but from a reading standpoint I know I’m not average; heck, it’s right there in the title of my blog. This time I decided to play along and dutifully copied the list into a word document and went about bolding the books I’ve read and italicizing the books I’ve started but never finished. And I quickly came upon another problem, this time the list was missing # 23 & #26. Next, I wondered why The Narnia Chronicles and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were both on the list when all of Shakespeare’s works and all of the HP books were both considered just one book. Then I wondered why so many Hardy and Austen books were on the list as separates when some of each of their contemporaries were left off entirely. Finally, I decided I had to go do some research because the questions about the list were quickly outnumbering the books on the list.

A quick google search lead to a not surprising revelation (Is a revelation actually a revelation when it doesn’t surprise you? Maybe it was an ironic revelation?) The list going around facebook did not originate from the BBC at all. Oh, the BBC has a list of 100 books from 2003 that their readers chose. (At some point someone will explain to me how the BBC seems to be TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and whatever other medium it chooses. And I ask this knowing full well I’ve applied for three different jobs with BBC America and they send me recruiting emails fairly constantly. Move over Disney, there’s another media conglomerate trying to take over the world; they appear to be stealthier about it.) This 2003 list is still available on the BBC website (sigh) and is called the Big Read List. In all fairness, the lists are somewhat similar, but still different in a few ways. No where on the BBC list does it say that the average person reads only 6 of the books in their lifetime. On the contrary, this is a list of BBC readers’/watchers’/interfacers’ top/favorite books. Which still leads me to wonder where the only 6 books thing came from?

When I say this is not a new controversy, I’m not kidding. I typed “BBC 6 books” into the google search engine and it shot out 80,600,000 results. I read through/clicked on the first 20 results and all of them were related to this conundrum. It’s like facebook’s best kept-not-so-much secret. I know you all know everything you read on the new-fangled internets thingy shouldn’t be believed, that things like wikipedia aren’t the most reliable of sources, but this BBC thing did make me stop and ponder for a minute. I mean no where in the history of the BBC have they ever said that the average person only reads 6 books on a list and yet, 80,600,000 results link them together forever in the subconscious of our world culture. That is actually some kind of CRAZY!*!&!&#

It turns out people are somewhat passionate about their book lists – and the need to vent about other book lists and the authenticity of things they find online – especially on facebook. And it turns out I’m the same way. Venting about books should be a good thing, right? I mean that is one of the points of my own blog; I’ve said many times I want people to disagree with my opinion and comment with their own. So why did I find myself getting more and more disgruntled while reading the whims of other bibliophiles during this google search? I actually wanted to punch one blogger who said he would never read HP at all and thought the BBC list was more “low-brow”. (Here I would like to point out that HP has made it to both lists, just saying.) Yes, Princess Diaries is on that list, but since I’ve read it I say it’s not “low-brow”…Oh, come on. I write YA, of course I read “low-brow”. Books are a form of entertainment, and sometimes that means you read mindless quick things and sometimes you read more profound thought provoking things. I’m a firm believer in all literature, which kind of goes along with that whole freedom-of-speech-thing and no-book-burning-thing: Codes to live by.

And honestly if you are going to rant about something, then why not the facebook list that makes me out to be a Dickens lover – I’m SO not! I’m a British Literature major, there is a difference. I’ve been forced to study, read and endure through countless paragraphs of boring, serial length Dickens novels (and now, how many of you want to punch me?). I find Herman Melville and Steinbeck almost as boring, but I’m not condoning their right to be on the list. The Grapes of Wrath – although I’ve never been able to read it – reminds me of my junior year of high school. A year I spent in non-honors English because of a falling out with my 10th grade Honors English teacher. While my friends had to read The Grapes of Wrath in one evening, I spent 4 weeks reading Ethan Frome in class (It is 98 pages and less than novella length for those of you who are not familiar with the works of Edith Wharton). It was my own personal torture. I had English with my boyfriend at the time; since I was cheating on him with an exchange student from the opposing high school across town, I felt hideous every time I walked into the classroom and sat down next to him – living through another hour of “reading time” no one needed since we’d all finished the book on the first or second day. Ah, The Grapes of Wrath, my own personal reminder of bad adolescence and teenage angst. Ah, this blog, letting me relive and share with the world my past indiscretions and misdemeanors.

Back on track, at the end of all of my research (or an hour, which you may know from past blog posts is about the extent of my internet research tangents usually) it appears the facebook list comes from an article in The Guardian and also mentions nothing about only 6 of these books being read in a lifetime. In fact, The Guardian list comes from 2,000 people taking part in an online poll at worldbookday.com. The poll asked you to nominate the top 10 books you could not live without. Below I leave you with both lists. NOTE: Another oddity, Dante’s Inferno seemed to sneak into the facebook list at some point replacing Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar at #76. I’m not sure how or when, but it too is interesting if only because I’ve read The Bell Jar but have never read The Inferno so my number changed. I have no answer about the 6 books question. I’m guessing someone on facebook just made it up for some interactive, pass-along quality: Everyone feels good because they’ve read more than 6 books on the list; it’s all for bragging rights. Hey, at least there are now 80,600,001 results on google.

The Guardian/World Book Day/Facebook List (circa 2007):

1. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkein
3. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
11. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Ubervilles, Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22, Joseph Heller
14. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare
15. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
16. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkein
17. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch, George Eliot
21. Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace, Leo Tolstory
25. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
34. Emma, Jane Austen
35. Persuasion, Jane Austen
36. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
37. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne
41. Animal Farm, George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney, John Irving
45. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
47. Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
50. Atonement, Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
52. Dune, Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon
60. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
62. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
66. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
72. Dracula, Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes from a Small Island, Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses, James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath / The Inferno, Dante
77. Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal, Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
80. A Possession, A.S. Byatt
81. Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White
88. The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Album
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection, Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
94. Watership Down, Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet, William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo

(PS - for bragging rights I've read 48 and started 11 others)

The BBC Great Book Read List (circa 2003):

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkein
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane and Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls in Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie