There have been a few changes here on blog.  We added a button for easy access to the online book retailer Book Depository.  We editors adore this site for its accessibility, fantastic range and prices not to mention free world wide delivery.  You can read more about our update here.  We also made access to our reviewers a bit easier.  This blog is nothing without the wonderful contributions from our many reviewers.  So better access was necessary, particularly moving forward with more books and more reviewers joining us.  For more information please see this post.

We had another wide range of books read this month.  One of our new reviewers Ange P opened the month up with the sea-faring novel Treasure Island.  She must have been in the mood for adventure because she also reviewed the American classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Co-editor Ms Oh Waily was also in a Stars and Stripes frame of mind.  She reviewed the Depression-era tale Of Mice and Men and the coming-of-age tale of four sisters, Little Women.

Science fiction had a good showing also but with two very different approaches.  If you like your sci-fi served with a humorous flavour, check out t’s review of The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.  Or if  a cautionary tale where genius turns to madness sounds your thing, then the review of The Invisible Man by inspirationalreads might be more to your liking.

Troubling female relationships were the theme for two books.  Beth’s review of the disturbing The Piano Teacher told us about a destructive mother-daughter relationship.   The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, read by inspirationalreads is about a teacher who tries to use her influence over her female students to further her own unsavoury ambitions.

April opened with a new reviewer and it closed with another new reviewer.  Kara read and reviewed the feminist classic The Bell Jar, where she compared reading this book at different times in her life and how her reception of the book changed.

As parents, the Editing crew believe a love of reading is one of the best traits we can pass on to our children.  Happily, our offspring are firm bookworms.  1001 books read is easily achieved in one’s lifetime, but being able to tick books off this list as early as possible not only makes the feat of reading the 1001 on this list a bit easier, but also sets the foundation of being able to identify what makes a truly great book.

Below is a list of young-people friendly selections.  Whether you choose to read them aloud with your young folk or suggest them to older children to read on their own, they still get to tick one off that list!

• 19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
• 574. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• 610. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
• 747. Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
• 823. King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
• 825. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
• 831. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
• 848. Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
• 868. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
• 863. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
• 872. The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
• 913. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
• 987. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
• 983. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
• 1001. Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus

Do you have any others that you would recommend for our younger readers from the list?  Or do you think we have included any that are unsuitable?  As always, your input is very valuable.

Happy reading everyone!

Today’s post is brought to you by the ever evolving design of the 1001 Books Before You Die Blog.

As we are coming towards the end of another month of great contributions from our volunteer review crew, it is time to give easier ways to access our reviewers and their reviews.  So, from today you will be able to select an individual reviewer from the new drop down menu at the top of each page.  Just hover over “The Reviewers” page and up comes the list of our lovely contributors.  Select the reviewer of your choice and you will be presented with their past contributions to choose from.

And if that is not quick enough for you, you can take a trip to the footer of each page and select the reviewer of your choice from our Top 10 contributors (by number of reviews).

There is also a plan to smarten up the Reviewers page, but that will be in the next set of upgrades.  So that is something to look forward to in the next little while.

Oh, and before I go, may I drop a small hint that the end of month review this month is going to be well worth making a visit to the blog.  In the meantime, happy reading everyone.

Hello from the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die editorial team.

This is just a short message to let you all know about a small change we have made to the blog.
For those of you who visit the blog regularly you may have noticed that we have a couple of buttons in the sidebar under the recent comments you may have made.  For those reading in a feed reader, how about coming and visiting us to take a look?
The rather lonely figure of the Kiwi Mummy Blogs button has recently been joined by a link to the online book retailer, Book Depository.

We thought it was important to let you know that we have decided to become an affiliate for this retailer.  Just to be clear, we’re not a money-making enterprise, just a couple of book-loving Kiwi Mums who like to hear what other people think of their reading.  So nothing will be changing with respect to the content and format of the reviews.
We do, however, have something in the works that we hope you will like and Book Depository will be playing a part in that.
My lovely co-editor will reveal all about that before the end of this month, so keep your eyes open for another administration email.

In the meantime, if you already use Book Depository’s service (like I do), you might want to take advantage of the further 10% discount they are currently offering and while you do help us out with the costs involved in paying for a dot com address and a yet-to-be-announced event by clicking through from our small banner.

Never heard of Book Depository?  If you don’t like paying for shipping and are willing to wait a bit, then they are a great option if you use online retailers*.

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* Please note:

This is my (Ms Oh Waily) personal opinion and experience to date.  For New Zealanders, you can often buy books at approximately half the price of local “bricks and mortar” stores, and find books that may take as long as 6 weeks to “place a special order for” but will arrive within 2 weeks or so if in available at Book Depository.  Can you tell I’m a convert?  One hard to find book was all it took to convince me that this was the way of my future book purchases.  I would just like to share the love of a happy customer.

9   books reviewed in March.
37  books reviewed in total.
964 books to go.

Another month gone and we are now a quarter of the way through the year.  Here in the Southern hemisphere we are heading into our colder months.  So instead of sitting out on the back porch or lounging at the beach getting our daily fix of vitamin D with a good book, we will be snuggling near a heater or fire, with our hot beverage of choice getting lost with some of our favourite authors.  Ahhhh, both blissful scenarios indeed.

We had four new reviewers contribute this month.  Sweetp reviewed both Middlesex, an intriguing tale of a hermaphrodite and the Sci-fi classic The War of the Worlds.  Hayley reviewed Oscar Wilde’s eerie The Picture of Dorian Gray, where a young man discovers that a painting of him ages and allows him to stay young.  Ange, of Tall, Short and Tiny gave us the review of Possesion, a time-crossing mystery with some romance thrown in.  And Beth from Beth’s List Love   gave us the last review of the month; Fateless, the story of a Jewish teen during World War 2.

Our co-editor Ms. Oh Waily has been very busy this month.  She gave us three reviews for three very different books;  the post-apocalyptic The Day of the Triffids, the satirical A Confederacy of Dunces with the main character she describes as “medievalist, crazy man” and our first foray into Russian literature with Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich.  And finally, inspirationalreads was impressed by the short tale of a french silkworm merchant’s travels to Japan in Silk.

This months list suggestions has been inspired by Beth’s List Love, who has undertaken an Around the World reading challenge; 52 books from or based in 52 different countries.  We have broken it up into the different continents and found some from the list for each.

Africa

• The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver (Congo)
• Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee (South Africa)
• Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (Kenya)
• Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe)
• Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
• Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
• Islands – Dan Sleigh (South Africa)
• July’s People – Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)

The Americas

• Disapearance – David Dabydeen (Guyana)
• The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa (Peru)
• Unless – Carol Shields (Canada)
• Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges (Argentina)
• Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia)
• The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende (Chile)
•  Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado (Brazil)
• The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho (Brazil)
• Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin (Cuba)
• Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel (Mexico)
• Jazz – Toni Morrison (USA)
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain (USA)

Asia

• Wild Swans – Jung Chang (China)
• Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke (Japan)
• Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami (Japan)
• The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima (Japan)
• Memoirs of a Geisha – William Golden (Japan)
• The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima (Japan)
• The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy (India)
• Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande (India)
• A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth (India)
•  Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie (India)
• Land – Park Kyong-ni (South Korea)

Australasia/Oceania

• The Colour – Rose Tremain (New Zealand)
• Faces in the Water – Janet Frame (New Zealand)
• The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand)
• Voss – Patrick White (Australia)
• The Living and the Dead – Patrick White (Australia)
• Under the Skin – Michel Faber (Australia)

Europe

• Broken April – Ismail Kadare (Albania)
• Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard (Austria)
• The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus (Belgium)
• As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakulic (Croatia)
• Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg (Denmark)
• The Summer Book – Tove Jansson (Finland)
• Platform – Michael Houellebecq (France)
•  Fateless – Imre Kertész (Hungary)
• Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton (Greece)
• If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino (Italy)
• Hunger – Knut Hamsun (Norway)
• The Double – José Saramago (Portugal)
• The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg (Sweden)
• Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Switzerland)
• The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector (Ukraine)
• The Monk – M.G. Lewis (England)
• Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh (Scotland)
• The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon (Ireland)

Again, if you feel we have left out a book of particular note, please let us know.  We would love to see more entries for Australasia/Oceania (being Kiwis ourselves) and some from smaller countries as well.

Looking forward to seeing what reviews April brings us.  Happy reading!

This week we are heading on an international literary voyage.

Our first port of call is New Orleans, Louisiana.  On Monday, John Kennedy Toole will be taking us on a whirlwind, crazy tour of the city’s eccentric population circa 1960.
A Confederacy of Dunces is our second Pulitzer Prize winning work to be reviewed and its rather sad road to publication is a story in itself.
Join Ignatius J. Reilly, medievalist and general layabout on a whacky adventure in working for a living.  You will be left in stitches.

Then on Wednesday we will have our bookish inspired Quote of the Week.

Finally on Friday we will be taking a trip from France to Japan as we follow the life of the silk merchant, Hervé Joncour.  Silk by Alessandro Baricco will be taking us on an historical visit to the 19th century silk industry, and through the life altering experiences that Hervé has as a result of his visits to Japan.
A short, but well formed novella, according to our reviewer.

Now if you are a little quirky, like at least one editor here at 1001 Books, you may have the odd reading tic.  The particular foible I have in mind is reading every book by an author you can get your hands on.  Even with all of the published books available to choose from, written by innumerable individuals, the 1001 Books To Read Before You Die list still manages to provide you with ready reading.

Here is a very small sample of authors with multiple entries.  Take another look at the list, there are plenty more to choose from.

Kazuo Ishiguro has 5 entries.

1. Never Let Me Go
110. The Unconsoled
190. Remains of the Day
230. An Artist of the Floating World
274. A Pale View of Hills

Ian McEwan has 8 entries.

2. Saturday
42. Atonement
81. Amsterdam
95. Enduring Love
162. Black Dogs
216. The Child in Time
283. The Comfort of Strangers
302. The Cement Garden

J.M.Coetzee has 10 entries.

4. Slow Man
21. Elizabeth Costello
34. Youth
77. Disgrace
124. The Master of Petersburg
232. Foe
266. The Life and Times of Michael K
287. Waiting for the Barbarians
309. In the Heart of the Country
337. Dusklands

Happy reading everyone.