Looking for books

- John the Baptist (Michael York)

I'm paying attention to Advent, but at the same time looking for something to read, and there's not a lot of fiction about Advent that I'm aware of (have already read Two From Galilee: The Story Of Mary And Joseph) so instead I'm perusing lists ... Best Books Of 2012: The Complete List (NPR) and Best books (The Guardian).

I also came across this 2011 list in The Telegraph, Not the 50 books you must read before you die, which tells you instead what books to skip. Unfortunately, I'd already read a few of them...

2 - Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell - The finest dystopic novel of the 20th century, coining such terms as “doublethink” and “thought crime”, but indirectly responsible for the rise of reality television and the career of Davina McCall.

6 - The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer - Not nearly as bawdy or easy to understand as your English teacher promised (“Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth…”). Plus no cover puff from Stephen Fry, so probably not worth reading.

10 - Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell - Better than the musical, which lasted two months in the West End. But not as good as the film, which honed the line “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

14 - The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka - See above, replacing “Leibnizian optimism” with “Kafkaesque” and “the Louvre” with “the Brandenburg Gate”.

And I'd tried a few more before giving up on them ;) ....

45 - The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown - Useful only as a shorthand to know whom to avoid on the Tube.

46 - Twilight by Stephenie Meyer - See above, especially if they’re grown-ups, who really should not be fixating on vampires.

47 - Harry Potter… by JK Rowling - See above, especially if they’re grown-ups reading a version with an adult cover.

Hope I can find something good to read.