Reviews by Year

A list of book reviews over the years:

2010:

1. The Blood is the Life:  Ranting about “Dracula” by Bram Stoker
2. Vernon God Little  – DBC Pierre
3. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie – Alan Bradley
4. The Uncommon Reader – Alan Bennett
5. The Enchantress of Florence – Salman Rushdie
6. Po-on:  The Rosales Saga, Book 1 – F. Sionil Jose
7. The Magicians – Lev Grossman
8. The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
9. The Messenger – Markus Zusak
10. Signed, Sealed, Delivered:  A continuation of my review of “The Messenger” – Markus Zusak
11. Les Miserables – The Adventure Begins – Victor Hugo
12. Fantine:  A continuation of the “Les Miserables” review – Victor Hugo
13. Segue:  An update about reading “The Hunger Games” Trilogy – Suzanne Collins
14. To Kill a Mockingjay:  A review of “Mockingjay” – Suzanne Collins
15. A Murder Most Foul:  Graphic Novel “Murder Mysteries” – Neil Gaiman
16. A Tale of Two Novels:  A combined review of “Les Miserables” and “Let the Right One In” – Victor Hugo and John Ajvide Lindqvist
17. Last Reads of 2010:  A combined review of “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini and “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” by Salman Rushdie.

2011:

1. Good Omens – Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett
2. Rashomon – Ryunosuke Akutagawa
3. In a Grove – Ryunosuke Akutagawa
4. The Geography of Bliss – Eric Weiss
5. The Gathering – Anne Enright
6. Room – Emma Donoghue
7. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
8. Un Lun Dun – China Mieville
9. Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
10. Waiter Rant – Steve Dublanica
11. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
12. When You Play the Game of Thrones… – A review of A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
13. A Clash of Kings – George R.R. Martin – 2nd book in A Song of Ice and Fire Series.
14. The Psychopath Test:  A Story of Madness – Jon Ronson
15. A Storm of Swords – George R.R. Martin – 3rd book in A Song of Ice and Fire Series.
16. Guidebooks:  To Read or Not to Read – A review of Frommer’s France 2008.
17. The Interpretation of Murder – Jed Rubenfeld
18. A Feast For Crows – George R.R. Martin – 4th book in A Song of Ice and Fire Series.
19. The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
20. Three Tales by Italo Calvino:  The Cloven Viscount – Book 1 of the Our Ancestors Trilogy by Italo Calvino.
21. Skippy Dies – Paul Murray
22. At The Stroke of Midnight – Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

2012:

1. 2666 – Roberto Bolano
2. A Dance with Dragons – George R.R. Martin.  Book 5 of A Song of Ice and Fire
3. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
4. Making Sense of The Sense of an Ending – The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
5. A Brief Wondrous Tale by Junot Diaz – The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
6. Amster-damn! – Amsterdam by Ian Mcewan
7. Daytripper – Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba
8. The Devil in the Details – A review of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
9. The Imperfectionists – Tom Rachman
10. In The Woods – Tana French
11. Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
12. The Sweet Life in Paris – David Lebovitz
13. The Book of Lost Things – John Connolly
14. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – David Mitchell
15. Black Swan Green – David Mitchell
16. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers – Mary Roach
17. Bring Up The Bodies – Hilary Mantel
18. The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss
19. Ready Player One – Ernest Cline
20. The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson
21. Cloud Atlas at a Glance – A flowchart to describe David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.
22. Arrakis – Dune – Desert Planet – Frank Herbert
23. A Flight of Angels – Holly Black, et. al.
24. 1Q84 (Part I, II, III) – Haruki Murakami

2013:

1. Gone Girl (In Sixty Seconds) – Gillian Flynn
2. Death Comes to Pemberley – P.D. James
3. Don’t Speak About Red Sorghum – Red Sorghum by Mo Yan
4. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
5. Revenge – Yoko Ogawa
6. Sitting at the Cat’s Table – A review of The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje
7. I Spy…:Two Tales of Espionage and Conspiracy – A review of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre
8. A Perfect Spy – John Le Carre
9. The Tiger’s Wife – Tea Obreht
10. Dan’s Inferno – A review of Dan Brown’s Inferno.
11. Graphic Novel re-read:  The Dream Hunters – Part of The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman
12. The Once and Future King – T.H. White
13. Ocean Deep – A review of The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
14. Killers with a Conscience – A review of The Sisters Brothers – Patrick DeWitt
15. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
16. Ian McEwan’s Got a Sweet Tooth – A review of Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan.
17. Lost Horizon – The Origins of Shangri-La – A review of Lost Horizon by James Hilton.
18. What’s in a Name…? – A review of The Cuckoo’s Calling by J.K. Rowling
19. Scholars vs. Geeks in Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore – A review of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.
20. Guilty Pleasures:  The Yard by Alex Grecian
21. Bébé Blues – A review of  Bringing Up Bébé : One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman.
22. More Guilty Pleasures:  The Black Country by Alex Grecian 
23. The Orphan Master’s Son – Adam Johnson
24. Vish Puri:  Confidentiality is His Watchword – A review of Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Missing Servant.
25. Brain Rules for Baby – John Medina
26. Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Dream – A review of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman: Overture.
27. The Garden of Evening Mists – Tan Twan Eng
28. The 2013 Man Booker Prize Winner:  The Luminaries – A review of The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton.
29. John Saturnall’s Feast – by Lawrence Norfolk
30. How to Read J.J. Abrams’ S. – A review of JJ Abrams’ / Doug Dorst’s S.

2014:

1. The Golem and the Jinni – Helene Wecker
2. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena – Anthony Marra
3. Two by Haruki Murakami – Reviews of After Dark and South of the Border West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami.
4. Silent House – Orhan Pamuk
5. The Encyclopedia of Early Earth – Isabel Greenberg
6. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
7. Hector and the Search for Happiness – Francois Lelord
8. Adios Señor:  Two by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Reviews of Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
9. A Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
10. The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt
11. The Dinner – Herman Koch
12. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
13. The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
14. Lexicon – Max Barry
15. The Salinger Contract – Adam Langer
16. The Shape of Water – Andrea Camilleri
17. Tales of Moonlight and Rain – Ueda Akinari / Anthony Chambers
18. Snow Country – Yasunari Kawabata
19. The Devil’s Workshop – Alex Grecian
20. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage – Haruki Murakami
21. House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
22. The Children Act – Ian McEwan
23. Horrorstor – Grady Hendrix
24. And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
25. The Lies of Locke Lamora – Scott Lynch (The Gentleman Bastard Series #1)
26. The Good Earth – Pearl S. Buck
27. Missing Person – Patrick Modiano
28. Red Seas Under Red Skies – Scott Lynch (The Gentleman Bastard Series #2)
29. The Republic of Thieves – Scott Lynch (The Gentleman Bastard Series #3)
30. Gentlemen Bastards – A summary of the three books in the Gentleman Bastard Series by Scott Lynch
31. In Evil Hour – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
32. The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
33. The Sleeper and the Spindle – Neil Gaiman
34. The Narrow Road to the Deep North – Richard Flanagan
35. The Strange Library – Haruki Murakami

2015:

1. The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing – Tarquin Hall
2. Small Memories:  A Memoir – Jose Saramago
3. The Hundred Foot Journey – Richard Morais
4. Detective Story – Imre Kertesz
5. Pure – Andrew Miller
6. Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down – Rosecrans Baldwin
7. Death and the Flower – Koji Suzuki
8. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion – Yukio Mishima
9. Middlemarch – George Eliot
10. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House – Kate Summerscale
11. Death with Interruptions – Jose Saramago
12. Far From the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
13. The Pilgrimage – Paulo Coelho
14. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – Haruki Murakami
15. The Cave – Jose Saramago
16. Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
17. Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
18. Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee
19. Wind/Pinball – Haruki Murakami’s first two novels; Hear the wind Sing, and Pinball, 1973.
20. Smaller and Smaller Circles – F.H. Batacan
21. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
22. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
23. The Tokyo Zodiac Murders – Soji Shimada
24. A Novel Cure:  An A-Z of Literary Remedies – Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin

2016:

1.  A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
2. Undermajordomo Minor – Patrick DeWitt
3. The Woman in the Dunes – Kobo Abe
4. Uprooted – Naomi Novik
5. The High Mountains of Portugal – Yann Martel
6. The Ghost Bride – Yangsze Choo
7. The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern
8. The Club Dumas – Arturo Perez-Reverte
9. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
10. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
11. When We Were Orphans – Kazuo Ishiguro
12. Hemingway in Love and War – Henry S. Villard and James Nagel (non-fiction)
13. The Mysterious Affair at Styles – Agatha Christie
14. Revelation – C.J. Sansom (Shardlake Series #4)
15. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
16. The Illusionists – Rosie Thomas
17. Dissolution – C.J. Sansom (Shardlake Series #1)
18. His Bloody Project – Graeme Macrae Burnet
19. Sorcerer to the Crown – Zen Cho

2017:

1.  The Light Between Oceans – M.L. Stedman (novel read in 2016)
2. A Darker Shade of Magic – V.E. Schwab (Shades of Magic #1)
3. A Gathering of Shadows – V.E. Schwab (Shades of Magic #2)
4. The Sellout – Paul Beatty
5. A Conjuring of Light – V.E. Schwab (Shades of Magic #3)
6. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
7. On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
8. A Midsummer’s Equation – Keigo Higashino
9. Literature in Anime – A review of William N. Porter’s A Hundred Verses of Old Japan.
10. The Vegetarian – Han Kang
11. The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
12. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
13. The Riders – Tim Winton
14. The Broken Earth Trilogy (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky) – N.K. Jemisin

2018:

1.  A Discovery of Witches (All Souls Trilogy #1) – Deborah Harkness
2. Down and Out in Paris and London – George Orwell (nonfiction)
3. Portrait of a Murderer – Anne Meredith (ARC)
4. Dear Mr. M – Herman Koch
5. Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders
6. Magpie Murders – Anthony Horowitz
7. Annihilation (Southern Reach Trilogy #1) – Jeff VanderMeer
8. Annihilation:  A Movie Review – A movie review of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation
9. Ready Player One, Revisited – a re-posting of Ready Player One review from 2012
10. Authority (Southern Reach Trilogy #2) – Jeff VanderMeer
11. Acceptance (Southern Reach Trilogy #3) – Jeff VanderMeer
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. A Pair of Blue Eyes – Thomas Hardy
14. The House of Silk – Anthony Horowitz

2019:

1. The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #1) – Cixin Liu
2. The Wandering Earth – Cixin Liu
3. The Prisoner of Heaven – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
4. The Alienist – Caleb Carr
5. Monday Starts on Saturday (and this year August starts in July) – Review of Monday Starts on Saturday by Arkady and Boris Stugatsky
6. My Sister, the Serial Killer – Oyinkan Braithwaite

2020:

1. The Sentence is Death – Anthony Horowitz
2. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid
3. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead – Olga Tokarczuk
4. The Box Man – Kobo Abe
5. The Princess Bride – William Goldman
6. Hotel du Lac – Anita Bookner
7. The Mirror and the Light – Hilary Mantel
8. The Nine Cloud Dream – Kim Man Jung
9. Boy, Snow, Bird – Helen Oyeyemi
10. Less – Andrew Sean Greer
11. Howl’s Moving Castle – Diana Wynne Jones

2021:

1. A Rose by any Other Name – The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
2. The Wheel of Time: Book 1 – The Eye of the World – Robert Jordan
3. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line – Deepa Anappara
4. The Wheel of Time: Book 2 – The Great Hunt – Robert Jordan
5. Hurricane Season – Fernanda Melchor
6. Therese Raquin – Emile Zola
7. Before the Coffee gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawacuchi