Relaxed Constraints

by George Beck

Book Reviews

Currently Reading

  • The Age of Turbulence Alan Greenspan
  • Ten Birds That Changed the World Stephen Moss
★★★☆☆
Finance

A reflection on what makes hedge funds both extraordinarily lucrative and exceptionally difficult.

★★★★☆
Finance

Hard to understand the scale of the systemic fraud and corruption involving so many separate parties.

★★☆☆☆
Novella

I feel as if this story only becomes interesting when you think about it's interpretation, if read for enjoyment or entertainment it seems rather protracted.

★★★★☆
Novella

"One eye was gluey-blind, the other sparkled with dark deeds."

Reading List

I want to work through the literary works on this list: Top 99 Works of Literature

10 / 99 read

# Title Author Year Read
1 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857
2 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1878
3 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1865–1869
4 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967
5 Ulysses James Joyce 1922
6 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913–1927
7 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 1605–1615
9 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell 1949
10 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866
11 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 ✓
12 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880
13 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 ✓
14 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813
15 Moby Dick Herman Melville 1851
16 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985
17 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 ✓
18 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987
19 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 ✓
20 The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien 1954–1955
21 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 ✓
22 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981
23 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847
24 Dracula Bram Stoker 1897
25 Middlemarch George Eliot 1872
26 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865
27 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939
28 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 ✓
29 The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger 1951
30 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980
31 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925
32 Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759–1767
33 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929
34 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1902
35 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726
36 The Count of Monte-Cristo Alexandre Dumas 1844–1846
37 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952
38 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1831
39 The Portrait of a Lady Henry James 1881
40 The Outsider Albert Camus 1942
41 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924
42 The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka 1916 ✓
43 Les Misérables Victor-Marie Hugo 1862
44 The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu c.1020
45 Animal Farm George Orwell 1945 ✓
46 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1891
47 Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925
48 The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle 1902
49 The War of the Worlds H.G. Wells 1898
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932
51 Life of Pi Yann Martel 2002
52 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez 1985
53 Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys 1966
54 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916
55 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943
56 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1861 ✓
57 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert 1869
58 Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936
59 Blindness José Saramago 1995
60 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier 1938
61 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett 1930
62 The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing 1959
63 Emma Jane Austen 1815
64 The Talented Mr. Ripley Patricia Highsmith 1967
65 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967
66 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940
67 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962
68 Absalom! Absalom! William Faulkner 1936
69 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry 1947
70 Perfume Patrick Süskind 1985
71 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1929
72 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774
73 Candide Voltaire 1759
74 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 1920
75 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957
76 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927
77 The Leopard Giusseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958
78 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1954 ✓
79 And Then There Were None Agatha Christie 1927
80 The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler 1939
81 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 1930
82 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969
83 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994–1995
84 Independent People Halldór Laxness 1934–1935
85 Dune Frank Herbert 1965
86 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930–1943
87 Hunger Knut Hamsun 1899
88 Bleak House Charles Dickens 1853
89 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951
90 Disgrace J.M. Coetzee 1999
91 Neuromancer William Gibson 1984
92 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark 1961
93 The Spy Who Came in from the Cold John Le Carré 1963
94 Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 1719
95 The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien 1937
96 Atonement Ian McEwan 2001
97 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957
98 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro 2005
99 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas 1844