2025.Book45 - Empire of Ivory (Novik)

 Back on the basement bike, so I picked this up again. Very good as usual. Interested to see where the next story goes, cliffhanger-wise.

2025.Book44 - In God We Trust (Shepherd)

 Memoir of an American small town boy. Has a tall tales vibe. Casual slurs don't age well but that was the time.

2025.Book43 - The Shadow of What Was Lost (Islington)

 Door stopper epic fantasy. So much plot. Too much of everything but enjoyable page to page

2025.Book42 - The Incandescent (Tesh)

School novel about teachers. Social-class-aware. A lot of telling, not enough showing. Plot gives a great opportunity to explore self-delusion that author didn't take.

2025.Book41 - Katabasis (Kuang)

Enjoyable and good characters.

2025.Book40 - The Game (Dryden)

 Very good. Somewhat melancholy, not triumphant. Insightful.

2025.Book39 - The Shattering Peace (Scalzi)

 Very good. Entertaining, enjoyable characters.

2025.Book38 - Housekeeping (Robinson)

 Excellent. The plot happens so fast you can miss it, but the book's about reactions and observations.

2025.Book37 - Stormy Weather (Hiaasen)

 Fairly entertaining: a bit "one thing after another"

2025.Book36 - The Liminal Zone (Ito)

 First one of his I've read. It's OK, not much of a graphic novel person I guess.

2025.Book35 - Gender Queer (Kobabe)

 Pretty interesting memoir. Dysmorphia plus some cultural involvement. 

2025.Book34 - The Overnight Kidnapper (Camilleri)

 Pretty good. Standard Montalbano.

2025.Book33 - The Sword of Shannara (Brooks)

 Re-read forty years later. Not very good, a lot like LotR. And now there are a lot of books like this. Maybe more interesting at the time. (Golden age of sci-fi is 13)

2025.Book32 - The Plot (Korelitz)

 Horror but you don't know it. For a writer-focused book, some infelicities of language. Just OK.

2025.Book31 - Inventing the Renaissance (Palmer)

 Very interesting. Sometimes bogs down in dates. 

• spiritual organization recapitulating political organization. 
• Virtue Politics

2025.Book30 - The Tiger and The Wolf (Tchaikovsky)

 Pretty good, too long and samey. Metaphors for mental illness?

2025.Book29 - The Prodigal God (Keller)

 Pretty weak. Trying to cram his theology into Jesus' story. 

 Couple of howlers: "no one had ever taught anything like this before" (except the prophets), and bringing in Cain & Abel to move responsibility from the father to the elder brother (explaining God's inaction).  

2025.Book28 - The President (Simenon)

 Pretty good; a little plot, not too much

2025.Book27 - Hotel Splendide (Bemelmans)

 Pretty boring. Slightly interesting story at the end

2025.Book26 - The Will of the Many (Islington)

 Excellent epic fantasy. Good characters, tons of plot, interesting world

2025.Book25 - Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Stendahl)

 Very good. Love vs integrity, guilt and the introspective conscience as Augustinian and Lutheran innovations.

2025.Book24 - The Incident Report (Baillie)

 TPL or "Public Libraries of Toronto"? Nice and oblique. Honestly not sure how the Rigoletto plot concluded; red herring or critical? Librarians as front-line social workers.

2025.Book23 - Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dinniman)

 More game transcript than novel; last quarter got better. Don't feel any need to continue the series.

2025.Book22 - It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track (Penman)

Music criticism without music; sociology instead. (Writes off actual music as "algebra" in the Parker section).

2025.Book21 - A Voice in the Night (Camilleri)

 Good parallel plots.

2025.Book20 - Shadow and Claw (Wolfe)

 Very good re-read.

2025.Book19 - Terms of Endearment (McMurtry)

 Good fun, entertaining. Sad ending.

2025.Book18 - My Dining Hell (Rayner)

 Very good. It's true; bad experiences are funnier than good ones.

2025.Book17 - A Pyramid of Mud (Camilleri)

 Excellent. Leaning on humour a bit more, I think.

2025.Book16 - Orbital (Harvey)

 Very good, poetic, scientific. Not quite as beautifully written as I expected, but what's being communicated was.

2025.Book15 - Nest of Vipers (Camilleri)

 Solid mystery, good to jump back often.

2025.Book14 - Good Material (Alderton)

 Low quality Hornby-core. One funny part ("I can't look at the sea any more!")

2025.Book13 - Days of Shattered Faith (Tchaikovsky)

 Another excellent installment. Good characters. End of the trilogy?

2025.Book12 - The Bright Sword (Grossman)

 Excellent psychologically-modern Arthurian epic. Adventure, comedy, tragedy.

2025.Book11 - The House of Open Wounds (Tchaikovsky)

 Excellent follow-up. Much more fun - the stakes are still high and things are still awful, but the good guys win more often.

2025.Book10 - Streets of Laredo (McMurtry)

 More good western epic. Some horror elements, kind of slid in sideways. Sequel problem of "oh yeah this other thing happened in the first book I didn't tell you about - Mox Mox". McMurtry's not scared to kill his characters off-page.

2025.Book9 - Black Powder War (Novik)

 Another good one in the series.

2025.Book8 - Lonesome Dove (McMurtry)

 Really good western epic.

2025.Book7 - City of Last Chances (Tchaikovsky)

 Very good. Drama and action in an occupied city in a complicated world.

2025.Book6 - The Invisible Library (Cogman)

 Pretty good; a bit amateurish in characterization and internal monologue but maybe the rest of the series is better.

2025.Book5 - The Nickel Boys (Whitehead)

 Really good. A mostly sad story.

2025.Book4 - The Case of the Philosophers' Ring

 Kind of goofy; Holmes meets Cambridge philosphers

2025.Book3 - Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind (McGhee)

 Pretty good; trying to be all metaphoric and relevant, but not really successfully. And what's with the drive-by DFW reference?

2025.Book2 - The Jade Throne (Novik)

 Good sequel: lots of violence.

2025.Book1 - His Majesty's Dragon (Novik)

 Fun, master & commander with dragons.

2024.Book50 - A Beam of Light (Camilleri)

 Another good one.