Fifteen Really Good Books

I started out making a list of my five favourite books. Couldn't decide, even after leaving out plays to make my life easier. So I increased it to ten. Still couldn't decide. Then I made it fifteen... And, faced with possibility of fifteen turning into twenty, I abandoned the idea of enumerating my favourite books and listed instead fifteen Really Good Books (henceforth RGBs).

Oh, and all these opinions are mine alone.

They are (in alphabetical order):

Animal Farm (1945)

Author: George Orwell

Best Thing(s) about the Book: Its just-plausible-enough-to-be-eerie atmosphere, Boxer and Muriel.

Impact on Modern Culture: Beast would not have occasioned his guards half as much merriment if he had been sitting in his cell reading 1984 in that X-Men episode.

Most Memorable Line: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Dr. Seuss's A-B-C (1963)

Author: Theodor Geisel

Best Thing(s) about the Book: You learn the alphabet and you find out what a fiffer-feffer feff looks like.

Impact on Modern Culture: Well, eventually kids have to learn that A can stand for more exciting things than "Apple".

Most Memorable Line: "Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo."

Gone with the Wind (1936)

Author: Margaret Mitchell

Best Thing(s) about the Book: Its Really Good Heroine.

Impact on Modern Culture: It gives actresses an option other than "Lady Macbeth" when they are asked to name their dream role.

Most Memorable Line: "My dear, I don't give a damn."

The Iliad (circa 800 BC)

Author: Homer (we hope; and if the wrong man has been getting the credit for twenty-eight centuries it might be a bit too late to do anything about it)

Best Thing(s) about the Book: Kleos, Hector and the Fury of Achilles.

Impact on Modern Culture: The Ban-Poetic-License Brigade would be out of work if they didn't have to spend their time proving that there really couldn't have been that many Greek soldiers at Troy.

Most Memorable Line: (In Chapman's translation) "Infinite is that I offer you,/Myself conferring it, expos'd alone to all your odds,/Only imploring right of arms. Achilles, fear the gods."

Inferno (1308 - 1321)

Author: Dante Alighieri

Best Thing(s) about the Book: That Circle of Ice. Somehow it is far more terrifying than all the previous rings combined.

Impact on Modern Culture: "The lowest circle of hell is reserved for traitors and mutineers," said Captain Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. I don't know if he was in fact refering to Dante, but all indicators are that he is surprisingly erudite.

Most Memorable Line: (In Longfellow's translation) "Cruel indeed art thou, if yet thou grieve not,/Thinking of what my heart foreboded me,/And weep'st thou not, what art thou wont to weep at?"

The Lord of the Rings (1954)

Author: JRR Tolkien

Best Thing(s) about the Book: That nice mythic down-spiral that just manages not to be depressing.

Impact on Modern Culture: The twentieth century had its full quota of Elves and epic journeys and everyone in New Zealand got to have their name mentioned on stage at the Kodak Theatre.

Most Memorable Line: "And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise."

Making Money (2007)

Author: Terry Pratchett

Best Thing(s) about the Book: Lord Vetinari

Impact on Modern Culture: It turns banking into a profession that does not always employ geeks.

Most Memorable Line: "'That is almost ten tons of gold,' said Bent reproachfully. 'It does not have to look big.'"

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)

Author: Agatha Christie

Best Thing(s) about the Book: Poirot's trials with those vegetable marrows. Seriously. That is such a brilliantly incongruous image.

Impact on Modern Culture: People (or at least Pierre Bayard) wrote books about whether or not Agatha Christie was accurate in her identification of the culprit. And it's not even a hundred years old yet.

Most Memorable Line: "I hesitated with my hand on the door handle, looking back and wondering if there was anything I had left undone."

The Pickwick Papers (1837)

Author: Charles Dickens

Best Thing(s) about the Book: It gives you the pleasure of Dickens without the starving orphans.

Impact on Modern Culture: It has a syndrome named after it - what more could a book ask for? (And, on a more serious note, this was probably the first real attempt anyone made at selling secular book-related merchandise. I doubt they realized that they were setting out on a road that would eventually have "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" as one if its main stops.)

Most Memorable Line: "Lawyers hold that there are two kinds of particularly bad witnesses - a reluctant witness, and a too-willing witness; it was Mr. Winkle's fate to figure in both characters."

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

Author: Oscar Wilde

Best Thing(s) about the Book: Unquestionably, indubitably, Dorian himself.

Impact on Modern Culture: They had someone delightfully, amorally evil for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and without being reduced to introducing Mephistopheles (which would have been cheating). Although, to be honest, Stuart Townsend is not quite what I imagined when I read the book.

Most Memorable Line: "We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless."

Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Author: Jane Austen

Best Thing(s) about the Book: Mr. Bennet. That's the kind of man who would have been a sore trial to his wife and a delight to everyone else.

Impact on Modern Culture: Austen gives us the original rebellious tomboy (who, of course, settles down eventually).

Most Memorable Line: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Author: P.G. Wodehouse

Best Thing(s) about the Book: Mr. Spink-Bottle addressing the scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School.

Impact on Modern Culture: Anybody who volunteers to do a book-reading to any audience anywhere in the world has a nice safe fall-back option just in case everything else gets booed.

Most Memorable Line: I don't think it would be strictly legal to quote the entire book, so I'm just going to skip this part.

The Three Musketeers (1844)

Author: Alexandré Dumas

Best Thing(s) about the Book: The original swashbuckler.

Impact on Modern Culture: Anyone who claims not to have heard phrases from the book used, and abused, and then some, is either exceptionally fortunate or exceptionally tolerant.

Most Memorable Line: I hate to have to say this, but, "All for one, one for all." You can't blame Dumas for the fact that it has been done to death.

Vanity Fair (1848)

Author: William Makepeace Thackeray

Best Thing(s) about the Book: Becky Sharpe. Well, it's very difficult to like her, but you have to admit that without her it wouldn't have been much of a story.

Impact on Modern Culture: People who want to make movies or write books in which you don't really like anybody and honestly don't care if nobody has a happy ending now have the perfect excuse: they can look injured and say, "But critics didn't mind when Thackeray did it."

Most Memorable Line: "Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?"

Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)

Author: A.A. Milne

Best Thing(s) about the Book: Pooh Bear and his hunny.

Impact on Modern Culture: Without a doubt, Bertie Wooster's comments on Christopher Robin going hoppity-hop-hop.

Most Memorable Line: "PLES RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD. PLEZ CNOK IF AN RNSR IS NOT REQID." (All right, I'm not which of the books that one's from, but a line that makes you remember the spelling mistakes has to be a good line.)

The Antiquity You Miss

I'd never have thought there could be an argument, even a foolish, fallacious, just-to-be-the-devil's-advocate argument, against plunging oneself wholly and unabashedly into classical Greek literature. But there is a danger, and even in lauding those incomparable poets and playwrights you spring the trap.

Homer's Hellas is no part of the Balkan peninsula, not even geographically. How can you apply a word normally seen in the firm black print of the modern cartographer to the orderly wildness of his ancient world? How can you possibly call Achilles or Perseus or Helen "Balkan"? And yet there is a Balkan peninsula, one whose stories you will never know if you have not ventured further north than Illyria (and that only in company with the exiled Alexander).

And so, even when the crags of Illyria are described, although you have a vague idea of jagged mountains dark against the night sky, it is still Artemis in her chariot in that sky, because it is still Homer's world. And the Oracle of Dione takes on something of the quality of the Pythian shrine at Delphi: the slightly amused, slightly mocking, ultimately benevolent nature of the god.

North of that? You do not know; you imagine a few nebulous uninhabited mountains and then you are happily feeling the cold breath of Boreas and watching the Viking longboats, regretting only that so few of their ancient writings are extant.

But if you are forced, just for a moment, to abandon the sophists and go south of Poland instead of north of Greece, it is different. The crags, free of the association with Arcadian meadows, are more threatening, the moon is the symbol of things darker and more dangerous than a virgin goddess, and Dione is suddenly Dione as she was when the world was under Kronos. War is the bloody struggle that accompanied the spread of the Ottoman Empire, more terrifying in its savagery than the epic heroism that was the fall of Troy.

Does this make you want to abandon Euripides and Sophocles? Not in the least. But it does give you an odd chill, because sometimes the inventiveness of human beings is far more terrible than the wrath of gods. It does make you wonder what might have been.

Voting in Mumbai

Normally I wouldn't post about things like this - poets and politics, and all that, and what happened to Ovid is a matter of public record. (He annoyed Augustus - or, I suppose, annoyed Livia - and was exiled, a dismal fate for one whose work depended on access to the libraries of Rome.)

However, having been exceedingly funny at the expense of the Election Commission when interesting things happened with my voter registration form, it's only fair to give them a tip-of-the-hat when they get things right.

April 30 was assuredly a thing they got right.

I will admit than when I first heard that the electoral rolls in the polling booths would be on paper, I was appalled. I think my reaction was something like, "Books? You mean actual books? But there are millions of people in the city! It'll be like having to sort through hundreds of phone books. I'll be in line for ever." I finished with a sort of despairing wail.

It wasn't as bad as all that - in fact, it wasn't bad at all.

I planned to leave home at eight-thirty, actually left at ten to nine, and was pointed in the right direction by helpful policemen. When I got to the polling station, there was a man sitting at a table outside. He had four books. Four very slim books. If they had been stacked one on top of another, an ant standing on a pencil would probably have been able to see over the pile.

He was helping some people find their names, but, once he had established that I was literate, he didn't make me wait while he finished with them. He gave me a book with the injunction to locate my own name (which took ten minutes or so, but that was entirely my fault, since the first time around I forgot to check the last page for the supplementary list).

Then I went in. State name to chap with list, chap repeats name to confirm, chap examines driving license, ink spot on finger. The Electronic Voting Machine was concealed from view by an upturned carton with the bottom and one side cut off, which, when you get down to it, is every bit as effective as reinforced concrete walls (provided, of course, that there is no danger of a strong wind). The EVM was easy to use - locate name of candidate, press button - and that was it.

I was back home, to my own astonishment, at nine-fifteen.

Sure, it would have rated far higher on the coolness scale to have had biorhythm sensors identifying people as they went in and voice-activated voting machines recording their choices. But until someone finds a cheap way to manufacture several hundred thousand of those, the system works pretty well.

A New Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 14

Others abide our question. Thou art free.

Thou art the all we seek; more skill is thine.

How may we praise thy name? The all of thee

We know is praise, in honour more divine.

No words could tell, save only thine alone,

Nor verse, unless the offspring of thy mind,

The height and depth of glory thou hast known;

And ne'er in course of years from thence declin'd.

Live on as thou hast livèd: never now,

Shalt thou, by passing hours to ill betray'd,

Lose, in the smallest part, the grace which thou

Now hast. Thy seasons' splendour cannot fade.

So long, thy stage may say, as Men can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sorry, Matthew Arnold... I could not resist. It was too strong a temptation.

I never imagined myself saying this, but thank God it is over. One thing these two weeks have taught me - it must have taken more than mortal skill to write 154 sonnets.

Ah, and happy birthday, Will!

A New Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 13

Uncounted men have chased thee; fair thou smilest,

Full bright the stars upon thy waters shine.

From shrouding mists thou callest and beguilest:

What art thou that this sorcery is thine?

Alone, untried, into that dark unknowing,

Where cold the tempests' furies mask the sun:

Who went before and knew not in his going

That none undid what thou in rage hadst done?

Who went before, and honour'd not thy splendour?

Who heard the sea-gull's cry and turn'd away?

Though in thy gentle loving softly tender,

Thou art as wrathful as thou e'er art fey.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

None, once enthrall'd, shall walk apart from thee.

The female rhyme was only meant to be for the first quatrain, but then it simply refused to go away.

A New Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 12

Wilst thou in cold unfeeling cloak thy grace,

Thy beauty never bar'd to mortal gaze?

What shall 't avail thee if no single trace

Of thy perfection liveth on in phrase?

Not Time's hard sickle may thy splendour steal,

Nor from thy cheek e'er rob the damask'd rose;

Yet may the years in some small part conceal

Thy fair enchantment 'neath their outward shows.

Indulge thy poet, sweet, who would but write

A hundredth part of what thy beauty owest;

Thus may the world still hold thee in its sight

When in eternal lines to time thou growest.

What would the world forfeit, could it not see,

Held in these lines, the wonder that is thee?

That's three quatrains down! And the only thing that kept me from giving up after the fifth one was (if I may be politically incorrect):

There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

-Terry Pratchett

A New Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 11

Begin, O poet, with this single line,

And let thy metre fall and swiftly rise:

Mayhap, twixt verse and verse, the high design

Of Gods shall be revealèd to thine eyes.

Shouldst thou unknown, unhonour'd, sing and die,

Bereav'd in death of what thy life hath wrought,-

Still hast thou raised thy music to the sky,

Still hast thou writ, and seen: still hast thou sought.

Should thy bright years by fortune be betrayed,

Thou shalt not in not knowing be unknown:

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

What hand and mind have made outlasteth stone.

Write on, then, poet: write, and rest at ease.

None e'er found sorrow in his poesies.

A New Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 10

Most fair, most true, wilst even thou forsake

Thy path? Then never grace to living Men

Was giv'n of that high bounty to partake

That heroes know. What here remaineth then?

Let not their counsel turn thee who, afraid,

Would let "We dare not" wait upon "we would":-

None was by aught save turning back betray'd

Who in the face of storms unflinching stood.

Thy days shall not of glory cede one spark,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

In silent safety harbour not thy bark:

But follow, and, in chasing, know thou knowest.

Beyond the circling sea a brighter shore

Doth wait, where never foot hath trod before.

I suppose this is what comes of trying to write sonnets in the small hours. I simply could not resist winking at that much-maligned cat.

A New Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 9

Farewell! No more, through all my weary days,

Shall I upon thy beauty cast mine eye;

Though I may still address to thee my praise,

No more shalt thou in merry jest reply.

E'en now, thou gone, upon my longing ear

Thy laughter and thy whispers seem to fall;

Thou, best belov'd, shalt daily grow more dear;

All splendour else may with the seasons pall,

But thy eternal summer shall not fade:

Time cannot touch thee in thy hallow'd rest.

All else his sickle's malice may invade,

But thou hast fell'd him in his fell arrest.

Though ta'en from me, e'en in defeat art thou

The victor yet: he cannot harm thee now.

A New Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 8

I lov'd thee once; no lyres sang in Hell,

No bridges spann'd the expanse of the sea,

None dar'd, none fought, none brav'd the rolling swell

With brighter flame than what I bore for thee.

Some honour most the beauty that is fled,

Rememb'ring e'er the gleaming gaze now dimm'd;

Some seek a semblance of their ardour, dead,

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd.

Thou hast not chang'd in beauty; in thine eyes,

Still do the fairest stars of heaven shine.

Had they in slightest part regain'd the skies,

My heart had ever hunger'd after thine.

Thou art the same: then fault it is in me

To value less the grace I daily see.

A New Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 7

Most potent and most mighty! Who can bear

To touch thy laurel? With what feeble gleam

Shall lesser stars the paths of godhead dare?

And wilst thou e'en ignoble pride beteem?

Thou drivest through the circle of the signs,

And swift the seasons wreak their wonted ill;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

Yet liveth on unchangèd, by thy will.

Nor to thy wreath, nor to thy golden lyre,

We lay, in base presumption, mortal claim:

If to thy lofty heights we e'er aspire,

We seek no more than honour to thy name.

We seek thee, not for glory, not for pelf;

Thou, mocking, sayest: Mortal, know thyself.

Halfway through - and this has been the hardest of the lot so far! Who would have thought that, "And every fair from fair sometime declines," would prove so troublesome?

A New Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 6

More valour and more grace the poet's art

Hath giv'n to thee, more courage, than was thine;

Thou hadst but mortal longings in thy heart:

Thou wast a Man. He fashion'd thee divine.

Betimes the hero stumbles on his path,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd.

Belike of earthy temper was thy wrath,

Nor with the raging fires of godhead brimm'd.

Yet thou hast dream'd, and dar'd, and thou hast done,

And why are mortal hands accounted low?

Who once has gaz'd upon the noonday sun,

Hath solace in the hearth he us'd to know.

If thou couldst not to mortal blood confess,

Thy deeds were equal, and thy spirit less.

A New Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 5

Had I but known our moments would be brief,

That deathless joy will soonest end in woe,

Mayhap it had some fraction eas'd my grief

To say, my love, I never lov'd thee so.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And thou art yet more ardent than that blaze;

Hadst thou been made a sprite of gentler climes,

I might have dared to love thee all my days.

But thou art glory as thou art a scourge:

Too low to curse, too high for mortal praise;-

Thou art the paean and thou art the dirge,

And who shall dare to meet thy fulgent gaze?

Had I but known,- I would have lov'd thee still:

Mine is my heart, but thou hast own'd my will.

Also (as a respite from the endless iambs):

I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write.

-P.G. Wodehouse

He certainly had a way with it.

A New Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 4

Here once the monarch trod in regal pride;

Here once the hero sought his hallow'd fate;

But nothing past its season doth abide,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Upon these silent shores no sun shall rise

In glory like to what the past hath known;

None to the starry vault shall raise his eyes

And see his gilded pennants proudly flown.

What second dawn shall come? What poet's air

Shall tell of deeds of greatness bravely done?

What empty page those brighter lays shall bear

Of crowns and sceptres lost, of kingdoms won?

No laurels now, save this, alone, we owe:

The earth is still. May 't not be ever so.

A New Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 3

There is more life in twilight than in day,

More heat in Autumn's blush than Summer's bloom:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May;

September's breezes bear the fruits' perfume.

Regret not that the seasons fleet, nor sigh,

Nor weep upon the grave of summer's light;

What shall 't avail thee if thou dost deny

The crownèd splendour of the winter night?

Upon that barren beauty cast thine eyes,

Which, like the jasmine 'neath the sickle moon,

Is fairest seen by starlight; nor disprize

A bright December for a fickle June.

Then, as the year shall urge the seasons past,

Each month for gladness shall outweigh the last.

A New Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 2

Thou art no Sylph of air and fire wrought;

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

For thee there are no epic battles fought:

Thou hast a kinder and a gentler fate.

Regret not that thou hast no gallant knight,

Nor sigh for duels told for aye in song;-

Thou shalt not go unsung into the night.

Though beauty fleets, thy beauty shall be long.

Thou shalt not plunge a House in death and blood,

Nor see thy nation torn in battle's rage;

No thousand ships shall ride the Spartan flood

To write thy story on a darksome page.

Thou art no fair to harrow and destroy:

Thou art the fair of wisdom and of joy.

A New Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 1

Fourteen days. Fourteen lines. Fourteen sonnets. (And, I hope, Shakespeare's pardon for making merry with his work in this fashion. I promise to play with only XVIII.)

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day,

Or to the fairest morn of balmy spring?

Or, churlish out of season, shall I say

Thine not the beauty whereof I must sing?

Could I but say, and own it not a lie,

Could I but honour other names than thine,-

But what avail me though I shall deny?

Thine is my verse; naught save my will is mine.

The bloom is fading from the summer's face,

And hoar shall sweep the laurels from her brow,

But thou - no years shall mar thy sweetest grace;

Thou, kept in this, canst never alter now.

Though fading springs and passing suns shall seek,

None now shall steal the splendour from thy cheek.

On the Subject of Grammar

I intend to be unreasonable. Utterly, irrefutably and unapologetically unreasonable. Because, really, the only way to deal with the threat being posed to the sanctity of language is to meet it head-on.

As far as it goes, preserving the sanctity of language need not refer to the kind of obscure pedantic quibbling that would only interest Henry Fowler and Samuel Johnson. One can pass over conjunctions that begin sentences and prepositions that cavort at their ends (and pronouns which fill in for Mephistopheles), and if one's will is firm enough one can do so without wailing and gnashing of teeth. 

However, when a chap intends to say that he stood his old school friend dinner, and says instead that he indulged in cannibalism - which, in addition to being an uncouth practice that is frowned upon in civilized society, is a criminal offence that would draw the stiffest of punishments anywhere in the world - one begins to have strong doubts about the future of the human race.

The worst of it, really, is that people do not care. Tell them that "lesser books" are books whose quality is being called into question, point out that "high time" is either the time just before tempers are lost or time as measured by a giraffe on stilts, and they will look at you as though wondering how you managed to evade the mental-health authorities all this while. What is worse, they will then say, in the tone one uses to calm a hyperactive toddler, "It is all right. Really. How does it matter?"

Partly to blame, of course, is the proliferation of the Internet. I do not deny that it is a useful tool, but I can also not deny that some time ago I saw a website alleging - in cold blood; not referring to it as only one of the many legends surrounding the animal and assuredly not joking - that Bucephalas was a unicorn.

They had proof and everything.

If I had a rupee - and not a bright shiny one-rupee coin but a cheap forgery made of glued-together paper and silver paint - for every time someone has shown me a website maintained by "Cool Guy 01" or "JKSP in College" and used it to back their claim that "red" is a noun or the past tense of "beat" is "beated", I could put all the money  in the bank and live comfortably on the interest for the rest of my life.

You can excuse people for not knowing the difference between "your" and "you're" (by blaming it partly on SMS for encouraging them to write "ur" either way and partly on their primary school English teachers for failing signally in their duty to the next generation), but it is difficult to condone their stubbornly continuing not to know, and for no reason other than sheer perverseness. 

For some reason, people seem to think that not knowing science or mathematics is worse than not knowing grammar. This has always puzzled me; it seems incredible that being unable to state Boyle's Law would be frowned upon by a society that routinely permits supermarkets to get away with "5 Items Or Less".

Don't get me wrong. I'd be the last one to oppose the pursuit of knowledge in any form, and if a chap wants to know what colour the inside of an electron is then good luck to him. My only objection is to people using a desire to be engineers or scientists as an excuse not to learn good grammar, as though knowing where to put an apostrophe would somehow debar you from joining the Mathematics Club.

If only one could ask for donations of money and time to the Appropriate Apostrophe Society or the Proper Preposition League without subsequently being forced into expensive and unnecessary sessions with a qualified therapist.

Scrabble

I love the game, honestly. Frequently of an evening you will find me engaged in an exciting and hotly-contested game of Scrabble against the computer. (The excitement is mainly provided by my determination to lose by fewer than 200 points one day.) But sometimes - for instance, when the computer places "MAZHBI" strategically on the board and makes more points with one move than I am likely to make in an entire game - I just have to give up.

Incidentally, I don't know what MAZHBI means, just as I do not know what GJU means, or CAJEPUTS, or SUQ, or any of the scores of other incomprehensible and frequently unpronounceable tile combinations that the computer has used to turn the scoreboard into something resembling a Big and Small diagram in a kindergarten classroom.

The unfairness of it all is that there is no way I can win against the brute force of the machine. By the time I have fiddled with my tiles for a couple of minutes and figured out that RETAILS is an anagram of SALTIER, the computer has evaluated about thirty thousand moves, calculated the probability that I will be able to hook onto any of them, and worked out at least five different ways to make 241 points. There is simply no way to estimate my probability of winning because science hasn't invented numbers small enough.

It really makes you long for the good old days of Scrabble according to the Pocket Oxford Dictionary, when you could feel thrilled if you made 20 points with one move. 

Diamond Jubilee

The paper tells me that Murder on the Orient Express is celebrating its Diamond Jubilee this year, but Wikipedia insists that such is not the case. Of course you have to keep the million-typewriters principle in mind, but Wiki's dates, at least, are likely to be correct.

It also has a list of novels whose sixtieth anniversary is this year. Most I haven't read. (Although The Queen of Zamba is now on my to-read list... Who could resist "an attempt to reconstruct [Edgar Rice Burroughs'] concept logically, without what [de Camp] regarded as Burroughs' biological and technological absurdities"?)

Of the handful I have read, these are my top picks:

5. Mr. Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi (RK Narayan): It must be confessed that I remember next to nothing about the plot, but I do remember Narayan's delightful prose. The glimpses of a forgotten world and the insight into rural India are irrelevant when compared to his deft touch and engaging storytelling. Equally engaging, if in a markedly different way, is...

4. Murder Most Royal (Jean Plaidy): Books about Henry VIII are always interesting, at the very least; the man can be accused of many things, but not of having been boring. Royal intrigues, scheming courtiers, doomed queens... What more do you need? Perhaps...

3. Crooked House (Agatha Christie): If it had been Orient Express, it would have been right at the top of the list, but Crooked House, while far more interesting than such (I regret to use the word in conjunction with Christie, but there is no other) disasters as The Big Four and Endless Night, is not of quite the same calibre as her best work... so much so that despite being virulently opposed to depressing books, I have to give the next spot to...

2. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell): I resisted reading this for years after I read Animal Farm, but it's one of those things that you eventually have to do. Normally I'd never recommend a book that makes you shiver every time you think of motion-capture cameras at traffic lights, but the very fact that it does make you shiver is a sign of Orwell's genius. This would be at Number One, were it not for...

1. The Mating Season (PG Wodehouse): Practically nothing could be a better read for a winter's day - or for that matter a summer's day, or any other kind of day - than Jeeves-and-Bertie chaos, with aunts, impostors, and Madeline Bassett's theories on what happens when a fairy sneezes (and, as a bonus, her views on Mervyn Keene, Clubman).

Incidentally, this is also (possibly) the four-hundredth anniversary year of Cymbeline (or Pericles, or perhaps both). Scholars may disagree.

Happy reading!