Caitlin through the Looking Glass
I’m having one of those manic weeks and simply haven’t had time to blog, even though I have stacks to write about. I’ll be back soon, I promise!
Incidentally, it’s only two weeks to go until we come home to Australia for our Christmas holiday – yippee!
I have read some of the books on the list already. Some of them (eg. White Noise by Don DeLillo or Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier), I have read recently and I will not re-read them. Others (eg. On the Road by Jack Kerouac or The Lord of the Rings trilogy), I might choose to revisit. I might also do some substitutions for books I’ve already read (eg. I have read Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey but not Jack Maggs).
Already read
1 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
2 The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
3 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
4 Beloved Toni Morrison
5 1984 George Orwell
6 Catch-22 Joseph Heller
7 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
8 Animal Farm George Orwell
9 On the Road Jack Kerouac
10 White Noise Don DeLillo
11 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
12 The Lord of the Rings Trilogy JRR Tolkien
13 The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood
14 Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey
15 The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula Le Guin
16 The Magic Pudding Norman Lindsay
17 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier
18 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe C.S.Lewis
19 Anne of Green Gables L.M.Montgomery
20 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
21 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Graeme
22 The Chrysalids John Wyndham
23 Amsterdam Ian McEwan
24 The Pursuit of Love Nancy Mitford
25 In the Skin of a Lion Michael Ondaatje
Never read
1 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
2 The Color Purple Alice Walker
3 Ulysses James Joyce
4 The Lord of the Flies William Golding
5 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
6 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
7 Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
8 Brave New World Aldous Huxley
9 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner
10 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway
11 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
12 Song of Solomon Toni Morrison
13 The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene
14 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Ken Kesey
15 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
16 Ironweed William Kennedy
17 The Call of the Wild Jack London
18 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
19 A Passage to India E.M. Forster
20 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton
21 The Fountainhead Ayn Rand
22 The Jungle Upton Sinclair
23 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
24 My Antonia Willa Cather
25 Howard’s End E.M. Forster
26 Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie
27 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
28 Sophie’s Choice William Styron
29 In Cold Blood Truman Capote
30 Naked Lunch William S. Burroughs
31 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
32 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett
33 Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
34 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller
35 Kim Rudyard Kipling
36 The Remains of the Day Kazou Ishiguro
37 A House for Mr. Biswas V.S. Naipaul
38 The Ginger Man P.D. Donleavy
39 The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck
40 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer
41 Gravity’s Rainbow Thomas Pynchon
42 I, Claudius Robert Graves
43 Voss Patrick White
44 The Outsiders S.E.Hinton
45 The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler
46 A Town Like Alice Neville Shute
47 Couples John Updike
49 Money Martin Amis
50 Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis
51 Possession A.S.Byatt
52 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
53 Waiting for the Barbarians J.M.Coetzee
54 Schindler’s Ark Thomas Keneally
55 The Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
56 Native Son Richard Wright
57 Sons and Lovers D.H. Lawrence
58 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
59 Ragtime E.L. Docorow
60 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham
61 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith
62 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
63 From Here to Eternity James Jones
64 Main Street Sinclair Lewis
65 The Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler
66 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler
67 Henderson the Rain King Saul Bellow
68 Appointment in Samarra John O’Hara
69 The Wapshot Chronicles John Cheever
70 The Day of the Locust Nathanael West
71 The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles
72 The World According to Garp John Irving
73 The French Lieutenant’s Woman John Fowles
74 Waterland Graham Swift
75 Go Tell it on the Mountain James Baldwin
Media Week covers the commercial side of media, writing for media agencies (a type of advertising agency that plans where to put the ads and buys them) and media owners. As deputy news editor, I cover a wide range of stories but I have a specific reporting focus on the outdoor sector (billboards and the like). I was pretty pleased this week with an exclusive story on billboard owner Maiden Outdoor refusing to pay rent to their small billboard owners, which ran in the magazine on Tuesday. It’s been picked up by The Guardian in their print edition this morning (also running online here). They’ve even done the honourable thing and quoted Media Week, which is quite unusual.
I have a good relationship with Maiden and it seems to be unaffected by this so far. The story has not been mentioned and they’re still following through on their promise for an exclusive story for next week. I understand why they are doing this – the billboard sector is in the doldrums, they’ve reported a loss on their results and they need to cut costs. But this is the third year they’ve done this and as usual it’s the little guy who gets squeezed. The big corporate landlords such as Network Rail and Lend Lease have not been targeted – we’re talking Mr Smith’s chippy and Mr Patel’s news agency. It’s within their rights to insist on payment but they can then have their contract terminated and with the market how it is, they’re unlikely to get much joy with Clear Channel or JCDecaux or any of the others either.(One inside source told me “if we could get away with it, we would probably do that too, but our contracts are a bit tighter”). I just think it’s very sad.
I have a new project to read the one hundred greatest books of the twentieth century (thank you to Betsi for the inspiration). Please see my new blog dedicated to this purpose, Century of Books.
On my recent trip to the US, I made a new friend and was inspired by her project to read the top one hundred books of the twentieth century.
I have taken her original list and modified it according to my own tastes and ideas, along with some reference to other published lists and also the BookCrossing community. Some of the books I have read, some I have always intended to read and others, quite frankly, I know very little about. But for one reason or another these are the books that made the cut.
I followed a few rules in compiling this list. Firstly, one hundred books only and each author gets no more than two books each. Secondly, the books must be originally written in English – translated works belong in a different list. Thirdly, the list contains only fiction novels (no short stories, memoirs or biographies). Finally, all books must be published between 1900 and 1999.
Within those parameters, I tried to avoid it being a list solely of dead white males, as many of the published lists tend to be. I wanted to include authors from all over the English-speaking world, women and minorities, genre writers and ensure a selection from the early, middle and late decades of the century. However, the primary factor was merit, in so far as I can judge it without having read all the books in question.
So here’s the list. It’s a work in progress and I’d be glad to hear your feedback. It’s not in any particular order.
1 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
2 The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
3 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
4 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
5 The Color Purple Alice Walker
6 Ulysses James Joyce
7 Beloved Toni Morrison
8 The Lord of the Flies William Golding
9 1984 George Orwell
10 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
11 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
12 Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
13 Catch-22 Joseph Heller
14 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
15 Brave New World Aldous Huxley
16 Animal Farm George Orwell
17 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner
18 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway
19 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
20 Song of Solomon Toni Morrison
21 The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene
22 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Ken Kesey
23 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
24 Ironweed William Kennedy
25 On the Road Jack Kerouac
26 The Call of the Wild Jack London
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
28 A Passage to India E.M. Forster
29 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton
30 The Fountainhead Ayn Rand
31 The Jungle Upton Sinclair
32 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
33 My Antonia Willa Cather
34 Howard’s End E.M. Forster
35 Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie
36 The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing [added 14/3/06 to replace The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway]
37 Sophie’s Choice William Styron
38 In Cold Blood Truman Capote
39 Naked Lunch William S. Burroughs
40 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
41 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett
42 Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
43 White Noise Don DeLillo
44 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller
45 Kim Rudyard Kipling
46 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
47 A House for Mr. Biswas V.S. Naipaul
48 The Ginger Man P.D. Donleavy
49 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
50 The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck
51 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer
52 Gravity’s Rainbow Thomas Pynchon
53 I, Claudius Robert Graves
54 The Lord of the Rings Trilogy JRR Tolkien
55 The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood
56 Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey
57 The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula Le Guin
58 The Magic Pudding Norman Lindsay
59 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier
60 Voss Patrick White
61 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe C.S.Lewis
62 Anne of Green Gables L.M.Montgomery
63 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
64 The Outsiders S.E.Hinton
65 The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler
66 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Graeme
67 A Town Like Alice Neville Shute
68 The Chrysalids John Wyndham
69 Amsterdam Ian McEwan
70 The Pursuit of Love Nancy Mitford
71 Couples John Updike
72 The Bell Iris Murdoch
73 Money Martin Amis
74 Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis
75 Possession A.S.Byatt
76 In the Skin of a Lion Michael Ondaatje
77 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
78 Waiting for the Barbarians J.M.Coetzee
79 Schindler’s Ark Thomas Keneally
80 The Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
81 Native Son Richard Wright
82 Sons and Lovers D.H. Lawrence
83 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
84 Ragtime E.L. Docorow
85 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham
86 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith
87 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
88 From Here to Eternity James Jones
89 Main Street Sinclair Lewis
90 The Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler
91 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler
92 Henderson the Rain King Saul Bellow
93 Appointment in Samarra John O’Hara
94 The Wapshot Chronicles John Cheever
95 The Day of the Locust Nathanael West
96 The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles
97 The World According to Garp John Irving
98 The French Lieutenant’s Woman John Fowles
99 Waterland Graham Swift
100 Go Tell it on the Mountain James Baldwin
One of the many tragedies of the Iraq war was the looting of the Baghdad Museum, regarded as one of the best in the world. It’s not often that you get to read some good news from that part of the world but this article offered some real hope. An American army colonel, Matthew Bogdanos, who also happens to be a Greek-American classics scholar, has devoted the past two years tracking down the lost treasures of the museum from the bazaars of Baghdad to the board rooms of Boston. What a hero.
Much as I love Paris and Prague, I do love living in London as well. We’re having a cold snap at the moment – it doesn’t get much above zero most days and we’ve finally had to turn the heating on – but we’re enjoying blue skies and winter sunshine. I much prefer this sort of cold but clear weather rather than continual rain. It’s all about frosty mornings, exhaling steam, red-gold leaves on the trees and muddy, emerald green lawns. The main down side is that it gets dark far too early and it’s depressing to think that won’t change for another four months or so.
This weekend has been jam-packed of all things I like best about London. On Friday night, my boyfriend and I met Matt and Leah for curry and a few beers in Brick Lane. On Saturday morning, I met Dominique at Portobello Road for a coffee and a rummage in the antique market. After I left Dom, I walked over to Kensington and went to the Royal College of Art to look at the exhibition of secret postcards. (More on that in a while). I walked right through Hyde Park, admiring the autumnal leaves, before meeting up with my boyfriend for dinner and a movie. Today we slept in, made scrambled eggs and read the paper, and then I went to Hyde Park for a rollerblading lesson. Perfect weekend!
The RCA secret postcard sale is a fundraising event they hold every year with more than 2000 original artworks on postcard-size cards, which are all on sale for £35 (they go on sale this Friday). There are established artists like Tracey Emin and David Hockney but also up-and-coming artists and a lot of students. The twist is that you don’t know who the artist is until after you’ve bought it. A lot of collectors take it very seriously – there was a queue of tents outside already and the attendant said they’d been there for a week. I would like to go and try to buy a couple of postcards but I have to work on Friday so it may be slim pickings by Saturday.
The rollerblading lesson was good too as I haven’t been for a few months, now that I can’t go after work (it’s too dark) and I want to get back into it. It was lovely in the park and not too busy or too quiet. We also had the entertainment of seeing a very sleek and well-fed – and exceedingly tame – fox strut up and down Serpentine Road. Usually the only wildlife in the park are squirrels and pigeons.
Oh and the movie we saw was Factotum, which was really pretty good. It was showing at the Curzon Soho, which is in the West End but a little bit indie and not too expensive. It has a nice bar and cafe and a BookCrossing shelf! Now that it’s getting dark and cold, we have been going to the movies more often and have also seen Wallace and Gromit, Corpse Bride, and Broken Flowers recently.
Further to my earlier blog entry about how drinking coffee is good for you, here is a new one. According to this report in The Guardian, decaffeinated coffee is bad for your heart because it raises levels of “bad” cholesterol.
I was sitting at my desk yesterday, working on an analysis piece on digital advertising panels and preparing for a quiet evening at home. It was about 5.45pm and there were just three of us left in the office when the phone rang for my colleague Kevin. I heard him say, “no, sorry I have to go home to my wife and baby, but let me just check if anyone else is interested”. He then turned around and said, “does anyone want to go to a club in Camden to see this little-known indie artist called Madonna?” I started bouncing up and down excitedly, so he transferred the call to me.
It turned out to be AOL who had ONE spare ticket to go to Madonna’s album launch at Club Koko in Camden. They had the tickets because they were streaming the event live on broadband, the same as they did for Live 8. The tickets were not for sale – there were only 1000 or so people in the club, mostly competition winners from BBC Radio 1 and VIPs. Apparently people also camped out in the freezing cold when they released some extra tickets.
I had time to go home and throw a new outfit on and then headed out to meet my hosts and the other journalists at Mornington Crescent Tube, which is between Euston and Camden. Club Koko is on a pretty non-descript corner just near the Tube but last night it was decked out with disco balls and huge Madonna images projected onto the walls. It looked really glam and I was all set to take a photo when I discovered that the camera battery was home charging. D’oh! (It’s just as well too as they nearly confiscated the camera inside until I showed them the empty battery case. There were loads of other people with digital cameras though).
It’s a fantastic looking club inside. Aesthetically it’s more like a theatre with art deco finishings around the stage and two balconies but it’s definitely a music club as there are no seats except in the bar areas and, in fact, I believe it’s normally a rock venue. Last night it had a giant mirror ball, which released silver sparkles onto the crowd at the end of the night. We were in the VIP section, which meant lots of free drinks and fun playing celebrity bingo (Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys, Will Young, Stella McCartney, Bob Geldof… but the only person I saw was Chris Evans). It did mean that we were up on the balconies and by the time the gig started it was too difficult to get back downstairs but we found a good position at the top of the stairs so I had a good view.
Madonna came on on time at 10pm and played for five songs – four new ones starting with the new single Hung Up and ending with Everybody, which she performed at the same club (then known as the Camden Palace) 22 years ago in her first gig in London before she hit the big time. She came on dressed on purple leather and sporting Farrah Fawcett-style hair black sunglasses but quickly stripped down. At one stage someone threw an item of clothing on stage and she threw it back, retorting, “take that back, I take shit off, I don’t put shit on”.
Telling the crowd, “it’s so fucking good to be back”, she gave her trademark raunchy dance performance and really got the crowd going. She also apparently performed every song live – seemingly a response to Elton John’s scathing comments last year about how “anyone who lip-synchs in public on stage when you pay £75 to see them should be shot.” Just before Everybody, she announced she was feeling “unfit – I don’t like falling off horses” and this would be her last song. We were all hoping for an encore but no such luck.
All in all, a very memorable night. Given that Madonna usually performs in football stadia, it was a real privilege to see her somewhere so intimate and funky. It’s only the second time I’ve seen her (the first was at Live 
but she is a fantastic performer. It’s also really cool that she launched the album in London when she could have done it anywhere or even not had an event.
Read more about it in: The Times
The Guardian
The Daily Telegrah
The Independent
Watch it on demand from AOL.
My travel and food blogBad Behavior has blocked 230 access attempts in the last 7 days.
