Title | Author | Rating | Type | Comment |
A God in Ruins | Kate Atkinson | B | Fiction | Click for comment |
Life and Fate | Vasily Grossman | A | Russian Historical novel |
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Everything Flows | Vasily Grossman | A | Russian Historical novel |
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Shadow of the Wind |
Carlos Ruiz Zafon |
D | Fiction | Click for comment |
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo |
Stieg Larsson | D | Fiction | Click for comment |
Pattern Recognition | William Gibson | A- | Fiction | Click for comment |
Spook Country | William Gibson | B+ | Fiction | Click for comment |
The Big Sky | A. B. Guthrie | B | Fiction | Click for comment |
The Way West | A. B. Guthrie | B | Fiction | Click for comment |
Truck, A Love Story | Michael Perry | B | Fiction | Click for comment |
Europe Central | William T. Vollmann |
B- | Fiction | Click for comment |
Don Quixote | Miguel de Cervantes |
D | Fiction | Click for comment |
War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy | C | Historical Fiction |
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Flashman and the Redskins | George McDonald Fraser |
B+ | Historical Fiction | Click for comment |
Flash for Freedom | George McDonald Fraser |
B+ | Historical Fiction | Click for comment |
Riddley Walker | Russell Hoban | B | Post-Apocalyptic Fiction |
Amazingly original and imaginative. Very difficult reading because of the evolved (or devolved) language in which the main character narrates. David Mitchell must have gotten his idea for part of Cloud Atlas from this book. |
Flashman on the March | George McDonald Fraser | B+ | Historical Fiction | Another colorful, funny, sexy, and generally wonderfully entertaining way of learning about an interesting historical event, this time the British expedition, with a large force, to Abbysinia (Ethiopia) to free a bunch of English hostages from a crazy savage king. Fraser is a master of description, and he is also a scholarly historian. |
The Emperor's General | James Webb | B+ | Historical Fiction |
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A Winter's Tale | Mark Helprin | B | Fiction | Wonderful writing and imagery. A story that reminded me of Tolkein, because of the many magical elements in it. The book feels very deep and is very poetic. It's flawed by the author's tenuous grasp on reality. I think he lost control at the end. I don't understand why I enjoyed the book, but I did. |
The Time Traveler's Wife | Audrey Niffenegger |
B+ | Fiction | Click for comment |
The Kite Runner | Khaled Hosseini | B- | Fiction | Click for comment |
Broken Prey | John Sandford | C+ | Fiction/ Murder Mystery |
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That Uncertain Feeling | Kingsley Amis | A | Fiction | Click for comment |
Days and Nights | Konstantine Simonov | B | Fiction | A novel by a Russian set in the defense of Stalingrad, published in 1945. Almost non-political, which is remarkable for the time. Simonov was born in 1915. He was a Russian war correspondent and covered almost all of Russia's fronts during WW II. |
Cloud Atlas | David Mitchell | A | Fiction | Click for comment |
Ghostwritten | David Mitchell | B | Fiction | Click for comment |
The Cloud Atlas | Liam Callanan | B- | Fiction | Another good book with almost the same title as Mitchell's. This one takes place in WW II, mostly in Alaska, in the context of the little-known Japanese operation to send thousands of bombs and incendiary devices to the US under unmanned balloons. The story also concerns the relationship of Catholicism and Alaskan shamanism, and it has some interesting characters and relationships. I read it non-stop. |
Cryptonomicon | Neal Stephenson |
A | Historical fiction | An amazingly vivid and varied book set both in WW II and the present and with codes and code-breaking and related extraction of information from seemingly random data as its principal theme. Great writing, good characters, humor, and action. |
Quicksilver The Confusion The System of the World |
Neal Stephenson | A | Historical fiction | Click for comment |
Master and Commander | Patrick O'Brian | A | Historical fiction | Click for comment |
All the Names | Jose Saramago | A | Fiction | Click for comment |
Embers | Sandor Marai | A | Fiction | Click for comment |
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time | Mark Haddon | B | Fiction | Click for comment |
The Man in My Basement | Walter Mosley | B | Fiction | Click for comment |
Barchester Towers The Warden |
Anthony Trollope | A | Fiction | The Warden is the sequel to Barchester Towers, and they are the first Trollope books I read voluntarily, i.e., with enjoyment, and they are still my favorites of the Trollope novels I've read. They are funny, full of insight, and surprisingly suspenceful. |
Barbarossa - The Russian-German Conflict 1941-1945 | Alan Clark | A | History | Click for comment |