2022.Book29 - The Mars Room (Kushner)

Excellent. Lurid and empathetic

2022.Book28 - The Misanthrope (Moliere)

 Kind of not that great, maybe better live?

2022.Book27 - A Time for Mercy (Grisham)

 Solid entertainment

2022.Book26 - The Beast (Martinez)

 Very good description of migrants through Mexico

2022.Book25 - Deacon King Kong (McBride)

 Excellent. Very entertaining.

2022.Book24 - Real Tigers (Herron)

 Very good. Lots of action.

2022.Book23 - The Sentence (Erdrich)

 Not very good, maybe for political reasons? Ghost arc was unoriginal -- too "Get Out". Book store characters fairly interchangeable, maybe because they were based on life?

There's so much room for an interesting investigation of identity formation - especially voluntary, conscious identity choice. And the political implications of partially-voluntary ethnic identities! Discourse privileges the involuntary status.

The current-events plots were inessential, as was the goofy loup-garou thing.

2022.Book22 - Wives and Daughters (Gaskell)

 Good entertainment. Feminine hobbledehoyhood!

2022.Book21 - Elite Capture (Táíwò)

 Pretty good. Quite simple. Pitched as "why oppressive companies have DEI", but it's more about progressive-aligned organizations.

2022.Book20 - Election (Perrotta)

 Not great, but better than the movie.

2022.Book19 - Material Girls (Stock)

 Good stuff, but I'm not hopeful. Extremism will win over moderation; allies can't stop.

2022.Book18 - Lonely Boy (Jones)

 Pretty interesting. One work of art and the right publicity can last a lifetime.

2022.Book17 - The Song of the Lark (Cather)

 Excellent. Loved it. Great novel about art.

2022.Book16 - The Music Lesson (Wooten)

 Some very good stuff, mixed in with a kind of ridiculous frame story.

2022.Book15 - Dead Lions (Harron)

 Pretty enjoyable follow-up. Kind of funny how Webb keeps getting beaten up.

2022.Book14 - Slow Horses (Harron)

 Pretty good, entertaining stuff.

2022.Book13 - The Professor's House (Cather)

 Excellent. Trying to understand the place of the Western in the middle. Comparison of the abandoned civilization with the professor?

2022.Book12 - Making of biblical womanhood (Barr)

 Very good. Continually shocking that complementarianism is a thing

2022.Book11 - All Our Wrong Todays (Mastai)

 Some parts are excellent, a little uneven

2022.Book10 - The Fall of Babel (Bancroft)

 Reasonable world and plot, ridiculous style.

2022.Book9 - The Half-Drowned King (Hartsuyker)

 Solid entertainment. A bit slow after the middle, with lots of action at the end.

2022.Book8 - Lab Girl (Jahren)

 Really good.

2022.Book7 - The Genetic Lottery (Harden)

 Excellent

2022.Book6 - Jesus and John Wayne (Du Mez)

 Spectacular history of American Evangelical Christianity. Bad memories, but somehow I never got that into it. Anabaptist inoculation.

2022.Book5 - Creeks and Crises (Neufeld)

 Excellent family history.

2022.Book4 - The Word is Murder (Horowitz)

If anyone can make metafiction too self-absorbed, it's the British.

2022.Book3 - Fight Night (Toews)

 Pretty good. Works hard for not much payoff. Entertaining.

2022.Book2 - The Talented Mr. Varg (McCall Smith)

 Not very good. Loose plot, unimportant characters.

2022.Book1 - The Handsome Man's Deluxe Cafe (McCall Smith)

 Just OK.

2021.Book 49 - Conversations with Friends

 Not sure what it was going to be about. Kind of Neapolitan

2021.Book48 - The Institute (King)

 Good stuff. You know what you're getting with Stephen King.

2021.Book47 - Agent Running in the Field (LeCarre)

 Very good. Excellent twist, ending kind of unresolved.

2021.Book46 - Side Effects (Allen)

 We had to steal to eat. Then we had to steal to tip.

2021.Book45 - Greenlights (McConaghey)

 pretty good

2021.Book44 - Rivendell Readers (Petersen)

 Pretty interesting, learned a lot.

2021.Book43 - The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (LeCarre)

 Very good. Complex and bleak.

2021.Book42 - Dead Astronauts (Vandermeer)

 Phenomenology of genetic engineering? Inside the apocalypse?

2021.Book41 - Kingdom and Empire (Tempelmeyer)

 Pretty good.

2021.Book40 - Nobody Will Tell You This But Me (Kalb)

 A nice life.

2021.Book39 - Piranesi (Clarke)

 Not what I expected, but very good.  Seems pretty straightforward, are there hidden depths?

2021.Book38 - Red Dragon (Harris)

 Good stuff.

2021.Book37 - All the Light We Cannot See (Doerr)

 Pretty enjoyable.

2021.Book36 - Reading while Black (McCaulley)

 Can you read the bible through an emancipatory lens? Of course you can. Unconvincing R7 exegesis, and the "you're saying the slaveowners were right" is a ludicrous straw man.

2021.Book35 - On Awkwardness (Kotsko)

 Surprisingly good.

2021.Book34 - Racial Contract (Mills)

 Good stuff. Seems pretty standard for today High-level thesis (proposing racial contract as better explanation than social contract) is, as Mills says, a category error. But that's just the "woah dude" hook - the actual content is accurate.

Is Europe's racism in America a betrayal of Enlightenment ideals or their inevitable actualization? I think the former.

2021.Book33 - Existentialist Cafe (Bakewell)

 Pretty interesting. Especially Heidegger.

2021.Book32 - Ides of March (Wilder)

 Pretty good. "Hell exhaled you, mountain of lies" - that's some quality invective.

2021.Book31 - Witch Week (Jones)

 Pretty enjoyable.

2021.Book30 - The Looking-Glass War (LeCarre)

 Enjoyable.

2021.Book29 - Memory of Running (McLarty)

 Pretty enjoyable. Good moments of low-key comedy (hospital, vegetable cult)

2021.Book28 - A Murder of Quality (LeCarre)

 Pretty good, quite grim.

2021.Book27 - Call for the Dead (LeCarre)

 Very good little mystery.

2021.Book26 - The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Wilder)

 Excellent, very well done and absorbing

2021.Book25 - Single and Single (LeCarre)

 Pretty good. Entertaining thriller

2021.Book24 - Who Killed Mr Moonlight (Haskins)

 Pretty good. Music is interesting, magic and meditation aren't.

2021.Book23 - Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry (Widdowson, Howard)

 Excellent. Devastating.

2021.Book22 - Sula (Morrison)

 Very good.

2021.Book21 - Monolithic Undertow (Sword)

 Pretty fun. Gets away from pure drone stuff, but it's probably hard to write a book about just drone. Best find from this was Eliane Radigue.

2021.Book20 - Weather (Offill)

 It's fine.

2021.Book19 - Dept. of Speculation (Offill)

 Very good.

2021.Book18 - Soleri (Johnston)

 Not good. Has a self-published, non-edited feel. Tries to cram too much in, and lazy "oh yeah this happened before"

2021.Book17 - Chapo Guide to Revolution

 Skimmable.

2021.Book16 - Theolonious Monk (Kelley)

 Really interesting; didn't know much about his music.

2021.Book15 - Prozac Nation (Wurtzel)

 A bit of a slog.

2021.Book14 - The Sea Wolf (London)

 Very good. I'm with Bierce on this one.

2021.Book13 - No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Smith)

 Enjoyable.

2021.Book12 - Monkey Wrench Gang (Abbey)

 Pretty good fantasy.

2021.Book11 - I'm Thinking of Ending Things (Reid)

 Pretty good. Internal view, stops short of horror.

2021.Book10 - Ghost Rider (Peart)

 General note; the more I read about bands I like, the less I like the people (see Max Webster).

This was pretty good, competently written, terrible events, not much insight. "Smite the smug" vs "if you do good, you get good" (unless this was subtle irony? but I don't think so)

2021.Book9 - The Prince of This World (Kotsko)

 Excellent. Good deep stuff.

2021.Book8 - Hunger (Gay)

Many short repetitive sections,

skimming along the surface.

Introspection without insight.

2021.Book7 - The Lying Life of Adults (Ferrante)

 Very good. Interesting people.

2021.Book6 - The Recognitions (Gaddis)

 Yeah, no.

2021.Book5 - Muscle (Fussell)

 Very good autobiography. Body building as escape from humanity, but if it's just one among many, what's the alternative? What was life like after bodybuilding?

2021.Book4 - Unraveled (Evans)

 Interesting. Does she pull her punches or did I give up the fight?

2021.Book3 - How to Pronounce Knife (Thammavongsa)

 Misery as entertainment

2021.Book2 - Mexico Set (Deighton)

 Pretty good spy stuff. Can an author write a depressed character and not know it?

2021.Book1 - Twelve Who Ruled (Palmer)

 Very interesting how much the first republic was the image of what all governments look like now.

2020.Book38 - Berlin Game (Deighton)

 Pretty good, but such an unlikable protagonist. Not sure if that's just the distance between then and now or intentional, or maybe a portrait of depression?

2020.Book37 - This was Supposed to be Fun (Martis)

Fairly shallow memoir (of legitimately traumatic events) coupled with some basic race-and-society run-through

2020.Book36 - Spy Hook (Deighton)

 Pretty good. Middle of a series though, so I'll start at the beginning.

2020.Book35 - Middle C (Gass)

 Excellent. Live free of blame by lying. Also modern composers!

2020.Book34 - My Lady Ludlow (Gaskell)

 Good characters.

2020.Book33 - A Jazz Odyssey (Peterson)

 Very interesting life story. Includes a lot of commentary on music and musicians, which is great.

2020.Book32 - The Atrocity Archive (Stross)

 Pretty good. A little too ostentatiously nerdy.

2020.Book31 - The Rhesus Chart (Stross)

 Fun stuff.

2020.Book30 - Give, Take

 Nice

2020.Book29 - The Bell Jar (Plath)

 Sad, then hopeful.

2020.Book28 - The Mirror and the Light (Mantel)

 Excellent. A great novel.

2020.Book27 - Caste (Wilkerson)

 Excellent. Race is the skin, caste is the bones.

2020.Book26 - The Angel of the Crows (Addison)

 Very good. Not the non-stop fun times of Goblin Emperor; Doyle has more problems.

2020.Book25 - The Enigma of Clarence Thomas (Robin)

 Very interesting. Tragic view.

2020.Book24 - Being and Place Among the Tlingit (Thornton)

 Pretty interesting.

2020.Book23 - Order of the Pure Moon ... (Cho)

Pretty good. Cho will have my eternal respect for that "smoke curling from her jaws" in Sorceror to the Crown.

2020.Book22 - Wolf Hall (Mantel)

Excellent historical novel.

2020.Book21 - The Red Threads of Fortune (Yang)

OK. Takes the epic out of epic fantasy. Gender world-building unconvincing (we didn't have it, so we invented it?), grammar is awkward, but that's not a deal-breaker.

2020.Book20 - The Skin We're In (Cole)

Excellent review of 2017.

2020.Book19 - LETTERS (Barth)

Like wading through waist-deep water. The exertion is pleasurable if you don't need to get anywhere.

2020.Book18 - The Last Emperox (Scalzi)

Good. Entertaining. Felt like floating along the top.

2020.Book17 - Listen, Liberal (Frank)

Excellent but, sadly, obsolete.