#66 In the Rooms, by Tom Shone (Windmill Books)

This might not be the most celebrated or well-known novel I’ve read this year (it was an impulse pick-up at the library), but it was certainly among the most enjoyable, for a number of reasons.

A lot of In the Rooms (a phrase used to describe help meetings of alcoholics or drug users) dovetails nicely with this challenge – not that I’m an alcoholic or anything. Its main character is a literary agent, Patrick Miller, who has moved to New York and comes across a legendary reclusive author and finds the only way he can approach him is at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. So he has to pretend he’s an alcoholic.

I deliberately didn’t add the phrase ‘with hilarious consequences’ to the end of that last sentence, but there are some very funny moments, mostly involving the characters he encounters at the meetings, as Miller finds himself slipping further and further into his deception and is unable to extricate himself from the lies he has told.

It’s a merry little tale. But where it chimes with this blog is in the book’s underlying close look at the relationship between authors and alcohol, and whether the likes of Raymond Carver, Elmore Leonard and Charles Bukowski wrote better drunk or sober.

Add in some insight into the workings of publishers, writers and literary agents, and guest appearances by the likes of Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney, and it has the feel of real ‘writers’ book. I really enjoyed it.

So, rating time:

#66 In the Rooms, by Tom Shone (Windmill Books) - 8/10

Next up: Wodehouse at the Wicket, edited by Murray Hedgecock (Hutchinson)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating

#40 The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (Vintage)

It may have been his only novel, but The Picture of Dorian Gray is, as Irvine Welsh writes in an introduction to the copy I read, only rivalled by The Importance of Being Earnest in Wildean fame. I have to admit I finished the novel slightly disappointed, however.

The concept is wonderful. Dorian Gray has such youthful beauty, when he sees this through the eyes of a painter for whom he has posed, he prays that he will be granted eternal youth and that his image in the painting will age - and show the physical consequences of his life's decisions - instead of his own visage.

Gray's descent into decadence, prompted in part by a frivolous friend who has no idea of the ramifications of his devil-may-care attitude and its effect on Gray, is deftly handled. The murder of the painter is as shocking as it should be. Gray's deceit, his need to hide away the painting but keep checking whether there have been any changes, his narcissism, his self-indulgent behaviour balanced against his guilt and fear that some of those he has wronged may seek revenge, is powerful. And the end, which comes quite suddenly, is a neat resolution.

Wilde wrote Dorian Gray five years before he was sent to Reading Gaol for 'gross indecency' and the language Wilde uses throughout, particularly when describing Gray, is very homoerotic (although there aren't actually any homosexual acts). Having recently been reading some Bret Easton Ellis, I also noted some common themes, with Wilde keen to reference items a la mode, as Ellis does in his novels, notably American Psycho.

Much to appreciate then, but, for wont of a better word, there was plenty of waffle as well (and I know that's almost a blasphemous statement when directed at Wilde). Tremendously witty in parts, the to and fro of discussion between Lord Henry Wotton and artist Basil Hallward and Gray in particular can be hard to follow and is occasionally obtuse. Much of it seems like badinage for badinage's sake, and while some comments hit the right note, others are discordant. I enjoyed it, but not as much as I thought I would.

So, rating time:

#40 The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (Vintage) - 7/10

Next up: The Beautiful Game, by Claire Challis and Fabulous (Headline Review)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating

#34 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain (Penguin Books)

The fact that I'm currently reading another novel by Cormac McCarthy, hot on the heels of books by Bret Easton Ellis and Mark Twain, might indicate the destination for my current holiday - I've got a bit of an American theme going on.

Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is often overlooked in favour of its sequel, the celebrated classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and that's exactly why I've returned to the former. I read Huckleberry Finn many years ago, but omitted its forerunner, the tale of Tom Sawyer.

Tom Sawyer is often referred to as more of a children's book than Huckleberry Finn, and the 'adventures', a series of mischievous scrapes and escapades involving the protagonist and his chums, which invariably end in trouble - and Sawyer receiving some form of discipline - certainly appealed to this reader's boyish side.

I can't help feeling that the above is damning Tom Sawyer with faint praise, however, because it's a far weightier book than some give Twain credit for. For all the pranks and episodes, including the famous whitewashed fence story, you're never far away from a feeling of lost childhood innocence, and the awareness that inequities in your youth will be repeated tenfold as an adult.

Twain even refers to this in his preface: "Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account."

With murder, slavery, starvation and the dangers of alcohol never too far away, there is a much more serious side to the book, and even taking into account the fact that Twain was writing in 1876, I find it difficult to believe that Stephenie Meyer or JK Rowling would use as many long 'adult' words in their own books primarily targeted at younger readers, but which have garnered a large adult readership.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is one of the most enjoyable books I've read so far this year, and was much needed after a run of novels in the past month or so which, while perfectly fine, have never really scaled the heights.

So, rating time:

#34 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain (Penguin Books) - 8/10

Next up: All The Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy (Pan Books)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating

#33 The Informers, by Bret Easton Ellis (Random House)

I'll start with a recommendation: if you haven't read American Pyscho, by Bret Easton Ellis, don't come back until you have done so.

My More Literary Work Colleague, mentioned last month when I was plumbing the depths of depression (in terms of books at least), rates Easton Ellis as her favourite contemporary novelist, and on the basis of American Pyscho - a tour de force of such detailed violence and clinical prose, unlike any other book I've ever read - it's hard to argue.

In addition to the author, American Pyscho shares with The Informers the distinction that both books have become feature films, but although the similarities don't end there, the comparison in quality does.

I haven't seen The Informers, the film, but the novel is so vague and lacking in idendity, I have no idea how it was possible. Books are frequently described as 'unfilmable', but I think I would struggle to find one that fits such a description more perfectly.

I should explain. While The Informers is a collection of short stories, they are interconnected. Each chapter has a different first person narrator - it can take five pages or more to work out exactly who each new narrator is, who may appear as a secondary character in other chapter. Each chapter is told from a first person's point of view and charts their vapid life in and around California - a litany of sex, adultery, drugs and dinner engagements.

The chapters are connected to some degree, but because everything is so vague, deliberately so, it's never quite clear who is who (surnames are used sparingingly, for example). This all combines to produce a book that washes over the reader the way the characters themselves exist - for they cannot really be said to be 'living'.

And while you can appreciate the clever way Easton Ellis has produced this effect of meaninglessness, it doesn't really result in a book you can enjoy reading. And that's even before you get to the vampire chapter which suddenly appears near the end...

So, rating time:

#33 The Informers, by Bret Easton Ellis (Random House) - 6/10

Next up: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain (Penguin Books)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating