Books

Books I've read. Reviews, ratings, reactions. Quotations, highlights, commentary.

Conventions
  • Words within square brackets ("[]") are my additions or paraphrases. Ellipses in brackets ("[...]" or "[…]") show where I've elided part of a quotation.
  • Emphasized text is original emphasis; I use the mark element when I want to point something out.
  • Non-English words are marked up like this.
  • Anything read before 2018 is unlikely to be added here.
  • A minimal entry doesn't mean I have nothing to say. It means I haven't yet uploaded the notes for that book.
Score Scale
  • 0: Terrible. No redeeming qualities.
  • 1: Bad. Not saved by scattered sections of higher quality or inventiveness.
  • 2: Poor. Below the bar. Excessive flaws cast a shadow over what may otherwise be enjoyable or have artistic merit. Not worth rereading except for comfort or nostalgia. Recommendable only to those with a strong interest in its topic.
  • 3: Solid. Above the bar. Good parts greatly outweigh any shortcomings. I'm glad to have read it once.
  • 4: Good. Left a unique impression on me, and excels in multiple areas of written composition. Gets prioritized when digitizing my notes and excerpts.
  • 5: Superb. Masterful. Worth reading twice or more.
By the Numbers

189 books read since 2014, an average of 24.9 a year over 6 fully recorded years and 2026 so far.

YearBooks
2026 26 so far
2025 14
2024 18
2023 (incomplete) 4
2022 19
2021 26
2020 37
2019 30
2018 (incomplete) 6
2017 (incomplete) 7
2016 (incomplete) 1
2015 (incomplete) 0
2014 (incomplete) 1

My to-read list has 212 books on it. At the pace calculated above, reading them all would take 9 years, finishing in 2035. Of course, that assumes I'll never add another book to the list, and we both know that's not true!

181 books rated, averaging 3.6 out of 5.

ScoreBooks
5 superb 23
4.5 13
4 good 59
3.5 21
3 solid 47
2.5 2
2 poor 12
1.5 1
1 bad 3
0 terrible 0

Currently Reading

Reviews and Ratings

The newest 20 of 189. See all.

Review of The Dangerous Summer

bullfighting fiction spain

Ernest Hemingway

Full StarFull StarFull StarFull StarEmpty Star

I'm glad that The Dangerous Summer is more novella than novel: it's just as long as it needs to be and no longer. (James Michener's introduction tells us that Hemingway originally wrote some 120,000 words, which were cut to 70,000 for publication in Life magazine in 1960; the published version which I read is 45,000 words. ) Michener's introduction is interesting in its own right. Among other things, he makes it clear that we should go into the book expecting Hemingway to be partial to Antonio Ordóñez over his brother-in-law and rival, Luis Miguel Dominguín. It's possible to read the book against that interpretation, but I think Michener's reading holds up.

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Review of Anchorwick

fantasy fiction spirits

Jeffrey E. Barlough

Full StarFull StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty Star

Anchorwick is written in a deliberately old-fashioned style (that of the early 20th century, perhaps) and it feels very English, as in England. The best compliment I can pay the author is that, despite the book having been published in 2007, the writing feels authentically old throughout. Unfortunately, he also imitates the wordiness of his inspirations: the narrator goes on a few too many paragraph-long digressions about the contents of a room, or the way someone dresses or behaves.

The plot is interesting but not intriguing, and it's too thin for the length of the book and for the slowness with which new information drips out between the cracks of overwritten sentences.

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Review of The Frozen Hours

history korea military war

Jeff Shaara

Full StarFull StarFull StarEmpty StarEmpty Star

For historical content, this book is strong, and it effectively forms a man-on-the-ground narrative from the battles of the Chosin Reservoir campaign of the Korean War. But considered purely on writing quality, it's only decent. For instance, the author has a strange and persistent love of comma-splicing clauses that are nowhere near full sentences. I can accept it as a stylistic quirk, but it makes for uneven reading.

Review of Inherent Vice

crime hippies intrigue police psychedelics thriller

Thomas Pynchon

Full StarFull StarFull StarFull StarFull Star

I read my first two Pynchon books this year. The Crying of Lot 49 knocked my socks off. Inherent Vice grabbed those socks and ate them. I am sockless and I am converted: Pynchon is my favorite fiction author.

The premise: In 1970, Doc Sportello is a chronically stoned private investigator living in Gordita Beach near Los Angeles. Doc's ex, Shasta, tips him off to a plot to seize the fortune of her boyfriend, Wolfmann, a major real estate developer. Soon after, Shasta and Wolfmann disappear. As Doc investigates, he keeps encountering the Golden Fang, a mysterious group which has its tentacles in everything: real estate, a dentists' guild, a smuggling ring, and more. Doc is never exactly targeted by the Golden Fang, but everywhere he looks, he finds another tentacle, and he can never be sure who's in league with it.

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Review of A Farewell to Arms

childbirth fiction italy love military war

Ernest Hemingway

Full StarFull StarFull StarFull StarHalf Star

First Hemingway I’ve read in a good long while. The stereotype is that he writes lots of short sentences, but I don’t think that’s true. He likes writes a lot of direct descriptive sentences, but also goes hog wild joining them together into the long run on that are expressive in the way poetry is: dense with imagery, occasionally wandering into philosophical speculation.

I was holding out hope that the ending would not be sad, but it was, and abruptly, viciously so.

Review of Going After Cacciato

vietnam war

Tim O'Brien

Full StarFull StarFull StarEmpty StarEmpty Star

I felt a little disappointed that the main plot was ultimately all in Paul Berlin's imagination. Yet there were clues throughout the book, such as in Paul's thoughts to himself while in the observation post, that the soldiers had successfully returned from their search for Cacciato. So I knew ahead of time that in some way they had to have "returned" to Vietnam. I guess I was just holding out hope that all the fantastic events of the book would have really happened.

Review of Black Flags, Blue Waters

history pirate

Eric Jay Dolin

Full StarFull StarFull StarFull StarEmpty Star

This book was valuable even though I'd already read Under the Black Flag and The Republic of Pirates. Dolin focuses on piracy's effects on the eastern seaboard of colonial-era America, which the other books only covered in passing as necessary.

For instance, from The Republic of Pirates I knew the basic outline of Henry Avery's attack on Muslim treasure fleets off the coast of India, but I never knew that the Mughal Empire's outcry over that attack, transmitted to the British East India Company and from there to the Crown, directly led to an Act of Parliament which materially contributed to the decline of piracy in its Golden Age. I also didn't know that there was a thriving pirate base in Madagascar involved in both the slave trade and the transport of pirates to and from the New World.

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Books to Read

What I hope to read.