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Goodness knows when I'm going to find time to read, but I'm going to aim for 25 books.

EDIT: Sorry, I'm going to be a pain and update this now with all the books I've read... won't be in the right order though, because I can't remember them all!

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Really enjoyed this, a bit outside my usual genre but very fast-paced and interesting. Cayce Pollard is such a likeable and down-to-earth character, it's impossible not to relate to her. Some of the plot twists seem a little random but altogether the story, for me, was stitched together with surprising beauty and precision.

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I still don't understand Pale Fire. I still don't know what I think about it or how I feel. I don't like postmodernism for the sake of postmodernism but I do like experimentalism, and I can't decide which is greater. I have my own interpretation of events, that is one of Nabokov's great strengths -- it is virtually impossible not to formulate some idea of what the meaning is. I'd like to be able to have that skill, to basically force readers to make up their own minds. I think Kinbote is one of the best examples of the unreliable narrator that I've ever come across. Kinbote's pretentious waffling was irritating, but what I liked was that I'm sure it was supposed to be. I can't pinpoint what I didn't like, except the uncertainty of reading a whole book and not knowing what to make of it. In that sense the novel is about what I as a reader make of it.

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I loved loved loved this book, I really did. Despite having no plot and making no sense, despite how irritating the second-person interjections could have been, I really think it's one of my favourite books that I read this year. I read it on a bus in the snow. Wearing white mittens with grey knitted hearts on them. And that memory is more important than the book itself. Again another book that really highlighted for me what books mean for the readers.

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Didn't really get it. I liked parts of it but it didn't come together as a whole for me. I know it's a classic, but I found the ending very unsatisfying. I didn't find the Fireman to be particularly likeable. But overall, yeah, it's a good book, I see that. 3/5 for it's impact on me.

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I can't believe I have gone 27 years without reading this. I did really like it, but if I'd read it 10 years ago I would have loved it. I did like the kind of aimlessness of it, he is an incredibly likeable character, but I think that I personally am just a little too old now to really respond to it.

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6. Game of Thrones
Had me jumping and squirming and cheering at Martin's writing style, giggling in the corridors and shouting "Winter is Coming!" (I still haven't seen the TV series). Awesome. Really had me hooked from the first sentence.

7. Clash of Kings
Found this dreadfully boring and I only waded through it because I wanted to reach the third books and get stuck into the action north of the Wall. I don't know why it bored me so much but it felt like reading through very monotonous treacle

8. Storm of Swords
Yeah! Much more energetic for me. The first half was great fun and the second was pretty interesting too. I can't remember it in much detail but definitely got a sense of being more connected

9. Feast of Crows
I read the whole thing in two days, but by the end of it... I just stopped caring. The characters just reached a point where they no longer felt alive and 3D, but instead they seemed dull, cardboard creations that absolutely belonged on paper. I had preordered Dance with Dragons, and finished Feast of Crows the day before the release date, but I just... couldn't be bothered with it any more. Maybe it's because I basically binge-read the entire series in less than a month, or maybe not.

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Oh my gosh, this was so sad. This is the saddest book I've ever read. I had to stop reading it so many times because it was just too real and poignant for me. Amazing book though.

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full of interesting social ideas.

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!! I was astonished by Gogol's writing style. I think I found the descriptions a bit too much, but it gave me a lot of ideas about combining realism and absurdity alongside one another.

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One of my lifelong favourites.

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