2014.Book9 - Without a Summer (Kowal)

Very good.

2014.Book 8 - Glamour in Glass (Kowal)

Very good.

2014.Book7 - A Dog's Heart (Bulgakov)

Kind of goofy weirdness. Probably makes more sense in its context.

2014.Book6 - Territory (Bull)

Very good, weird, western.

2014.Book5 - Cartwheel (DuBois)

Very good. Felt like the plot was getting in the way of the characters. Excellent characters.

2014.Book4 - The Blue Blazes (Wendig)

Very good paranormal noir. Lots of violence and bad language.

2014.Book3 - The Girl With All the Gifts (Carey)

Off-the-charts awesome. Intense, emotional, page-turning.

2014.Book2 - Something More Than Night (Tregillis)

Very good. Noir supernatural SF. Very cool.

2014.Book1 - Map of the Sky (Palma)

Excellent stuff. Even better than the first book.

2013.Book42 - Best of Gene Wolfe (Wolfe)

Good short stories.

2013.Book41 - Shades of Milk and Honey (Robinette Kowal)

Very good, Austen plus magic.

2013.Book40 - Lucky Jim (Amis)

Wow, this is really good. Jim's very unlikeable to begin with, but by the end he won me over.

2013.Book39 - The Incrementalists (Brust/White)

Really disappointing. I expected a story about people trying to make the world better, and got fantasy infighting.

2013.Book38 - A Map of Time (Palma)

Good adventure/SF.

2013.Book37 - Sandman Slim (Kadrey)

Pretty good supernatural noir.

2013.Book36 - Starfish (Watts)

Excellent and grim.

2013.Book35 - The Republic of Thieves (Lynch)

Very good, long-awaited.

2013.Book34 - Libriomancer (Hines)

Very good SF/F.

2013.Book33 - A Partial History of Lost Causes (Dubois)

Excellent novel about death.

2013.Book32 - Courting Greta (Hootman)

OK romance? novel.

2013.Book31 - The Stench of Honolulu (Handy)

OK comedy.

2013.Book30 - The Hydrogen Sonata (Banks)

Good hard SF.

2013.Book29 The Shining Girls (Beukes)

Pretty good time-travel thriller.

2013.Book28 - The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Jemisin)

Pretty good fantasy.

2013.Book27 - Nietzsche (Kaufmann)

Very interesting philosphical commentary.

2013.Book26 - The Age Atomic (Christopher)

OK. Noir/robots.

2013.Book25 - Shambling Guide (Lafferty)

OK. Fantasy/horror.

2013.Book24 - The Wordy Shipmates (Vowell)

Pretty good religious/american history.

2013.Book23 - Necessary Evil (Tregillis)

Excellent conclusion to the trilogy. Just awesome to re-do the first book through time travel. And the effect on characters, especially Gretel.

2013.Book22 - Influence (Cialdini)

Very good pop psych.

2013.Book21 - Blue Like Jazz (Miller)

Mostly terrible. A little good stuff about love.

2013.Book 20 - Sum (Eagleman)

Very cool inventions on afterlives, with the point being to get us to think about our actual lives.

2013.Book19 - The Power of Why (Lang)

Pretty good self-help/business book. Too much "and this secret is why this company succeeded and this company failed" just-so stories, and kind of a lack of awareness of workers' reality. Like, why should I work hard and be creating to increase corporate profits. On the other hand, the call to curiosity as a path to a happier life is pretty accurate.

2013.Book18 - London Falling (Cornell)

Really excellent fantasy noir police procedural

2013.Book17 - Griftopia (Taibbi)

Excellent political/financial reporting

2013.Book16 - The Sea-Wolf (London)

Very good nautical adventure

2013.Book15 - Fade to Black

Noir Omelas

2013.Book14 - The Born Queen (Keyes)

Pretty good epic fantasy. Doesn't really pay off the promise built up through the series. Maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention?

2013.Book13 - The Blood Knight (Keyes)

more good epic fantasy

2013.Book12 - Bitter Seeds (Tregillis)

Excellent alternate history novel of WWII. Really really good.

2013.Book11 - The Charnel Prince (Keyes)

Very good epic fantasy (second of four)

2013.Book10 - Atheist's Guide to Reality (Rosenberg)

Very good. All bullets crunched between powerful teeth.

2013.Book9 - Racing Through the Dark (Millar)

Pretty good autobiography of a life in pro cycling - doping and then not. Landis' book is worse, Hamilton's is better.

2013.Book8 - The Briar King (Keyes)

Very good epic fantasy.

2013.Book7 - Moneyball (Lewis)

Excellent story of the Oakland A's. "He was right, and the world was wrong"

2013.Book6 - On Religion (Caputo)

Pretty good stuff.

2013.Book5 - The Big Short (Lewis)

Excellent story of the 2008 financial crisis, sub-prime mortgages, bonds, CDOs, and CDSs.

2012.Book4 - Red Seas Under Red Skies (Lynch)

Excellent swashbuckling adventure.

2013.Book3 - Debt (Graeber)

Excellent.

2013.Book2 - Finch (Vandermeer)

Surprisingly good noir-ish fantasy, given my low expectations from his other stuff.

2013.Book1 - Killing Floor (Child)

Good thriller.

2012.Book61 - The Alchemist (Coelho)

Pretty good

2012.Book60 - Of Blood and Honey (Leicht)

Very intense supernatural thriller. The problems of Northern Ireland in the 70s, coupled with being a werewolf.

2012.Book59 - Crazy Love (Chan)

Really weak.

2012.Book58 - Lies of Locke Lamora (Lynch)

Excellent sort-of fantasy.

2012.Book57 - Highly Inappropriate (Coupland)

Pretty funny.

2012.Book56 - Close Enough (Paul)

Quite weak. He's better at despair and misery than attempting hope.

2012.Book55 - Resurrection from the Underground (Girard)

Excellent literary/philosophical. Desacralizing the father.

2012.Book54 - From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (Faust)

Excellent superhero (parody?) self-help.

2012.Book53 - Just Ride (Petersen)

Very good bike book.

2012.Book52 - Zero History (Gibson)

Pretty good fashion espionage. It's a sub-plot to a larger book. Not sure if it's great or kind of a farce.

2012.Book51 - Demythologizing Heidegger (Caputo)

Very good philosophy. It's easier to be sympathetic to deconstructions when you read (their version) of Heidegger.

2012.Book50 - How to Read Kierkegaard (Caputo)

Pretty good intro.

2012.Book49 - What's So Funny? (Westlake)

Pretty good mystery. Not actually funny.

2012.Book48 - The Secret Race (Hamilton)

Really good story of professional cycling and doping

2012.Book47 - Darkness Visible (Styron)

Very interesting first-person account of depression.

2012.Book46 - Last Argument of Kings (Abercrombie)

Unrelentingly bleak war fantasy.

2012.Book45 - Before They Are Hanged (Abercrombie)

Good noir fantasy.

2012.Book44 - The Enlightened Cyclist (Weiss)

Pretty good bike culture fun. Ride with good will.

2012.Book43 - Redshirts (Scalzi)

Very good SF, not exactly satire. The codas make it.

2012.Book42 - Taft (Patchett)

Pretty good novel. Patchett's other stuff is set in weird situations, but this one's pretty normal.

2012.Book41 - Codex (Grossman)

Pretty good strange adventure.

2012.Book40 - Against the World, Against Life (Houellebecq)

Interesting essay on Lovecraft

2012.Book39 - The Map and the Territory (Houellebecq)

Excellent novel. Houellebecq is amazing.

2012.Book38 - The Great Derangement (Taibbi)

Excellent political/sociological reporting. Amazing.

2012.Book37 - The Quantum Thief (Rajaniemi)

Very good fairly hard SF.

2012.Book36 - The Magician King (Grossman)

More excellent fantasy. Even better than the first.

2012.Book35 - The Magicians (Grossman)

Excellent fantasy. Highly recommended.

2012.Book34 - Red Plenty (Spufford)

Pretty good semi-fictional economic history.

2012.Book33 - The Oligarchs (Hoffmann)

Interesting history of the people who took over when economic restrictions were lifted in the former Soviet Union. Hoffmann goes out of his way to demonize those who came before and after the oligarchs, who can only look good in comparison, if that.

2012.Book32 - Empire of the Mind (Axworthy)

Pretty interesting history of Iran/Persia. An amazing, war-torn part of the world. Who knew Khan and Tamburlaine were such genocidaires?

2012.Book31 - Who Killed Canadian History (Granatstein)

Pretty good lament for history education in Canada.

2012.Book30 - Chavs (Jones)

Excellent economic sociology about the oppression and demonization of the working class in Britain.

2012.Book29 - In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (Mate)

Excellent.

2012.Book28 - Tough Shit (Smith)

Pretty bad auto-bio. Sometimes entertaining, not funny, ultimately self-indulgent.

2012.Book27 - The Hunger Games (Collins)

Pretty good YA fic.

2012.Book26 - Small Favor (Butcher)

Very good Dresden. Reading the series backwards isn't a great idea, though.

2012.Book25 - Unseen Academicals (Pratchett)

Very good discworld.

2012.Book24 - Insurrection (Rollins)

Excellent pyro.

2012.Book23 - Broken Words (Dudley)

Pretty good political/religious analysis. But why try so hard to play that game?

2012.Book22 - Embassytown (Mievielle)

OK SF. Mieville has pretty good ideas, but not characters. His older stuff was more spectacular (The Scar), so it wasn't as noticeable.

2012.Book21 - Religion Explained (Boyer)

Excellent anthropology/sociology

2012.Book20 - Are We Still Rolling (Brown)

Fairly interesting account of a recording engineer's professional life. Turned me onto Little Feat, so worthwhile.

2012.Book19 - The Wise Man's Fear (Rothfuss)

More excellent epic fantasy.

2012.Book18 - Every Twelve Second (Pachirat)

Very good academic non-fiction.

2012.Book17 - Staring at the Sun (Yalom)

Excellent psychology. Affirming life through considering death.

2012.Book16 - Makers (Doctorow)

Pretty good near-future business fiction.

2012.Book15 - Assassins of the Turquoise Palace (Hakakian)

Very good non-fiction. Hooray for the German justice system.

2012.Book14 - The Name of the Wind (Rothfuss)

Excellent straight-up fantasy.

2012.Book13 - True Grit (Portis)

Excellent comic? western.