The Booket List

Not a review but the name of a new reading journey.

The next birthday being of biblical significance concentrates the mind on unfinished business, in this case unfinished reading. Hence the new reading journey, the Booket List, to be started at once to give it a chance to finish. That means an overlap with the dawdling Bookpacking journey, which is not a problem as both are virtual and can co-exist.

Unlike the other reading journeys, which encouraged new reading experiences, the Booket List will tread some familiar paths, pushing some to their natural conclusion. Trilogies, longer series, and some full works will be completed. Books whose fame demands that they should have been read by now will get their opportunity. An initial fifteen, in no particular order are:

The Mirror and the Light – Hilary Mantel; completing the Wolf Hall trilogy.

Testament of Friendship – Vera Brittain; companion to Testaments of Youth and Experience.

The Labyrinth of the Spirits – Carlos Ruiz Zafon; completing the Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet.

Exit Music – Ian Rankin; the seventeenth and final novel, seeing DI John Rebus into retirement.

The Duke’s Children – Anthony Trollope; the sixth and final volume of the Palliser novels.

Barnaby Rudge – Charles Dickens; the only unread long work of the master storyteller.

Last Things – C P Snow; outstanding from the Strangers and Brothers series, avidly read in the 1970s.

The Shining – Stephen King; one I never got round to, and a film avoided for that reason.

Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier; have seen this film, but the book is on the shelf.

Emma – Jane Austen; the last of the big four unread (but would still leave Persuasion and Northanger Abbey).

Notes From a Small Island – Bill Bryson; been holding out for a hardback copy but will go paperback if necessary.

Dubliners – James Joyce; been reading it for ten years but still not halfway through!

Emotionally Weird – Kate Atkinson; an early work to catch up on, having read the rest.

Adrian Mole, the Prostrate Years – Sue Townsend; never got round to this last diary.

MaddAddam – Margaret Atwood; concluding part of the trilogy of the same name.