2018.Book36 - Commonwealth (Patchett)

Very good. The metafictional part seemed lame at first but better on reflection.

2018.Book35 - The Stone Angel (Laurence)

"My wilderness was pride, and the demon that led me there was fear". Very good.

2018.Book34 - Monday the Rabbi Took Off (Kemelman)

Getting a little less good

2018.Book33 - Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home (Kemelman)

Pretty good mystery

2018.Book32 - Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry (Kemelman)

Pretty good mystery

2018.Book31 - Friday the Rabbi Slept Late (Kemelman)

Pretty good myster

2018.Book30 - The Kite Runner (Hosseini)

Pretty good but kind of cheesy.

2018.Book29 - Freeze Frame Revolution (Watts)

Really good SF.

2018.Book28 - Us Conductors (Michaels)

Pretty dull, then a little better in the last third. How did this win a prize?!

2018.Book27 - The Underground Railroad (Whitehead)

Very good. The gimmick was unnecessary.

2018.Book26 - No Coins, Please (Korman)

Classic humour. Liked it as much now as when I first read it.

2018.Book25 - The Agony and The Ecstasy (Stone)

Entertaining Michelangelo biography.

2018.Book24 - The Merry Spinster (Ortberg)

Fairly weak. A couple of funny parts.

2018.Book23 - Armed in Her Fashion (Heartfield)

This should have been so good. Medieval fantasy in a Bosch setting. Could have been quite horrifying, but author pulled her punches, I guess, or was going for something else.

2018.Book22 - My Discovery of England (Leacock)

Some funny parts; seeing London as compared to Peterborough. Definitely of its time in the sexist and classist senses.

2018.Book21 - Gnomon (Harkaway)

Very good. Got lost a bit.

2018.Book20 - Beartown (Backman)

Pretty terrible, but somehow I finished it.

2018.Book19 - Endangered Species (Wolfe)

Good short stories.

2018.Book18 - Love is the Law (Mamatas)

Great idea, pretty good execution.

2018.Book17 - We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (Irby)

Occasionally funny essays. Everybody's already told all so the impact is small. Like the pet clinic stuff.

2018.Book16 - The Devil in Silver (LaValle)

It's not often that I read a really terrible book. Just so bad. I loved "Ballad of Black Tom" so I thought this would be more of that; not at all.

2018.Book15 - Of This Earth (Wiebe)

Pretty interesting MB memoir

2018.Book14 - The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All (Barron)

Very good Lovecraftian horror collection.

2018.Book13 - Gender Hurts (Jeffreys)

Very good. Lots to think about.

2018.Book12 - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Very strange, but very good.

2018.Book11 - Unsettling Canada (Manuel)

An unexpected alliance, a foreign power.

2018.Book10 - The River of Consciousness (Sacks)

Some interesting parts.

2018.Book9 - Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Thien)

Wow, so boring. By the end I just didn't care at all.

2018.Book8 - The Thing Itself (Roberts)

Pretty cool attempt to ground horror SF in Kantian "ontology". Reminds me of Wilson (?) building Lovecraftian monsters in VR. But the idea at the end of this being some kind of apologetic? Very weak and I want to say typically British.

2018.Book7 - Blackout (Hepola)

Pretty good memoir

2018.Book6 - Exploring Diabetes with Owls (Sedaris)

Occasionally funny.

2018.Book5 - The Little Friend (Tartt)

Pretty good.

2018.Book4 - The Goldfinch (Tartt)

Excellent. Just wow.

2018.Book3 - The Will to Battle (Palmer)

Another very good one.

2018.Book2 - Collected Tarts (Southey)

Good-natured humour

2018.Book1 - In the Black (Jolly)

Very good, interesting autobiography

2017.Book41 - The Bees (Paull)

Pretty good

2017.Book40 - I Don't Want to Talk About It (Real)

Very good.

2017.Book39 - Heaven's Crooked Finger (Early)

Pretty good. A bit uneven, but it kept me turning the pages.

2017.Book38 - Borne (VanderMeer)

Pretty cool.

2017.Book37 - Perelandra (Lewis)

About one-third good. When he's not fighting his current-day battles, it's enjoyable.

2017.Book36 - The Stone in the Skull (Bear)

Just OK. Might have been better if I'd read the previous trilogy?

2017.Book35 - Revenge of the Vinyl Cafe (McLean)

Pretty funny stuff.

2017.Book34 - Hammers on Bone (Khaw)

OK attempt at noir/Lovecraft.

2017.Book33 - Crash Override (Quinn)

Pretty good; such a sad situation

2017.Book32 - The Ballad of Black Tom (LaValle)

Really good; totally fixed Lovecraft.

2017.Book31 - Raven Strategem (Lee)

Pretty cool.

2017.Book30 - October (Mieville)

Kind of dry, but some interesting stuff.

2017.Book29 - Perfidia (Ellroy)

Pretty much standard Ellroy.

2017.Book28 - The Unholy Consult (Bakker)

Incredible. So good. Huge payoffs from years of books. Wow.

2017.Book27 - The Refrigerator Monologues (Valente)

Good stuff. Feel like I should read it again to get all the connections.

2017.Book26 - Up Ghost River (Metatawabin)

Sad story of a kid who went to an abusive boarding school, then was raped by a community leader and succumbed to alcoholism. Eventually got out.

2017.Book25 - The Fifth Season (Jemisin)

Really good.

2017.Book24 - The Black Company (Cook)

Pretty good.

2017.Book23 - Golden Hill (Spufford)

Pretty good. Interesting characters. Twist at the end didn't have much effect.

2017.Book22 - The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (Chambers)

Pretty good. Very episodic, like a TV series. Problems raised and resolved too quickly.

2017.Book21 - The Boy on the Bridge (Carey)

Very good military/scientific thriller.

2017.Book20 - Walkaway (Doctorow)

Good politics, clumsy novel.

2017.Book19 - Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company

Sometimes interesting.

2017.Book18 - The Collapsing Empire (Scalzi)

Excellent. Fun and fast-moving.

2017.Book17 - Three Act Tragedy (Christie)

Nice.

2017.Book16 - The Stars are Legion (Hurley)

This was good. A little line near the end put the whole bio-horror stuff in a new light.

2017.Book15 - White Tears (Kunzru)

Good stuff. Liked the parts about music.

2017.Book14 - Fifteen Dogs (Alexis)

Not good. Approaching this from an SF perspective, find it hard to get interested in intelligence without tool-making.

2017.Book13 - Seven Surrenders (Palmer)

Very good. Excellent when plot happens. Biggest drawback is I find Madame D'Arouet's source of power basically implausible.

2017.Book12 - vN (Ashby)

Cool ideas; a little jumpy.

2017.Book11 - Universal Harvester (Darnielle)

Pretty good. Kinda weird; think it's one thing, but it's another.

2017.Book10 - Fathers/Prophets (Eggers)

Very cool.

2017.Book9 - Who Killed Sherlock Holmes (Cornell)

Another excellent Shadow Police novel. I forgot too much of the previous one!

2017.Book8 - My Brilliant Friend (Ferrante)

Very good.

2017.Book7 - The Revenant (Punke)

Very good. Western.

2017.Book6 - The Brothers K (Duncan)

Excellent. So many feels.

2017.Book5 - Americanah (Adiche)

First half or so was excellent. Got a little boring after that.

2017.Book4 - A Game for All the Family (Hannah)

Pretty good. Not a great ending, but an enjoyable trip.

2017.Book 3 - Ninefox Gambit (Yoon Ha Lee)

Excellent. Really weird, lots of action. Reminds of Too Like the Lightning with its strange future.

2017.Book2 - The Divine Magician (Rollins)

Very interesting. Not there yet.

2017.Book1 - The Monogram Murders (Hannah)

Very good buildup. Payoff was just OK.

2016.Book52 - The Liberation (Tregillis)

Pretty good conclusion to a good series

2016.Book51 - Station Eleven (Mandel)

Just OK. Going for a Bel Canto thing? Unconvincing post-apocalypse.

2016.Book50 - Empire of the Summer Moon (Gwynne)

Really interesting. Lots of bad guys.

2016.Book49 - The Warmth of Other Suns (Wilkerson)

Excellent.

2016.Book48 - Oryx & Crake (Atwood)

Average SF.

2016.Book47 - Remains of the Day (Ishiguro)

Very good. What is the value of that life?

2016.Book46 - Jerusalem (Moore)

Immense and epic. Gets good after the first 350 pages or so. Feel like he could have removed or trimmed most of that first part.

2016.Book45 - Walk this Way

Aerosmith bio. Interesting how they cleaned up in three senses.

2016.Book44 - Stories of Your Life (Chiang)

Kind of underwhelming. Lots of hype, so just OK seems poor.

2016.Book43 - The Great Ordeal (Bakker)

Unbelievably good. So epic. Every storyline. Wow.

2016.Book42 - Welcome to Night Value (Fink, Cranor)

A let down. What's entertaining in audio is kind of inane in print.

2016.Book41 - The Wheel of Osheim (Lawrence)

Pretty good conclusion to the trilogy.

2016.Book40 - A Borrowed Man (Wolfe)

Very good. Pretty cool that it's almost all dialog. You get a strange world with lots unexplained (or maybe I just missed it).

2016.Book39 - Alif the Unseen (Wilson)

Pretty good. Some intellectual insecurity?

2016.Book38 - My Search for Absolutes (Tillich)

Surprisingly accessible.

2016.Book37 - Born Again (Harpur)

Pretty good, slightly flaky.

2016.Book36 - Sex Mom and God (Schaeffer)

Pretty interesting.

2016.Book35 - Unapologetic (Spufford)

Mixed. Snarky English argumentativness is just annoying. Descriptions of personal experience are great. But there's a big gap between meditative experiences and social/political effects. He marvels that the massive edifice of Christendom has been built on such a tiny, fragile set of experiences, but I think he'll find that is hasn't.

2016.Book34 - The Affinities (Wilson)

Just OK. Should be a good story: a protagonist with a conflict between his unaccepting family and the community he finds in another city. But Wilson kind of glosses over how Adam fits in with the Taus.

Julian Comstock was such a good book, but nothing else Wilson has done has really grabbed me. Kind of like Hansen's Chess Garden. Maybe it's me?

2016.Book33 - Lungdon (Carey)

Very good ending to the trilogy.

2016.Book32 - Corporation Wars: Dissidence (MacLeod)

Pretty cool stuff. Lots of intrigue.

2016.Book31 - Too Like The Lightning (Palmer)

Some cool ideas and extrapolations (though a little too neatly relevant). More revelations than plot. The scale of characters and rebellion is wrong. Will be interesting to read the rest of the series.

2016.Book30 - Galore (Crummey)

Pretty good. Covered a lot of ground.