Web-log book reviews
This is an index page to the various miniature book reviews I've
written in the course of writing my web-log. Sometimes the “reviews”
linked to are a bit terse, and more can be garnered by reading up the
page to see if I've written anything in the various “Still
reading:” entries from before the final summing up.
Check the date at the bottom of the page to see when it was last
updated.
Fiction index | Non-fiction index
By author
- Karen Armstrong, The battle for
God.
- Margaret Atwood, A
handmaid's tale.
- Paul Auster, Timbuktu.
- Jane Austen, Complete letters.
- Jane Austen, Persuasion.
- Jane Austen, Pride and
prejudice.
- Jane Austen, Sense and
sensibility.
- Murray Bail, Eucalyptus.
- Frederick Bailey, Mission to
Tashkent.
- Anne Pimlott Baker, Beethoven.
- Iain Banks, The
Business.
- Iain Banks, Walking on
glass.
- Iain M. Banks, The
algebraist.
- Iain M. Banks, Consider
Phlebas.
- Iain M. Banks, Excession.
- Iain M. Banks, Inversions.
- Iain M. Banks, Look to
windward.
- Iain M. Banks, The player of
games.
- Iain M. Banks, Use of
weapons.
- Felix Barker and Peter Jackson, The history of London in
maps.
- Geoffrey Barraclough, The crucible of
Europe.
- John Baxter, A pound of
paper.
- Antony Beevor, Berlin.
- Antony Beevor, Stalingrad.
- David Berlinski, A tour of the
calculus.
- Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's
mandolin.
- Boethius, The
consolation of philosophy.
- Anthony Bourdain, A cook's
tour.
- Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen
confidential.
- Anita Brookner, Undue
influence.
- Bill Bryson, A
walk in the woods.
- John Byng, Rides round
Britain.
- Italo Calvino, Why read the
classics?.
- Peter Carey, The tax
inspector.
- Kenneth Clark, Civilisation.
- Eoin Colfer, Artemis
Fowl.
- Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl:
the Arctic incident.
- Eoin Colfer, Artemis
Fowl: the Eternity Code.
- Joseph Conrad, Almayer's
folly.
- Joseph Conrad, The
arrow of gold.
- Joseph Conrad, Chance.
- Joseph Conrad, An outcast of the
islands.
- Joseph Conrad, The rescue.
- Joseph Conrad, The
rover.
- Joseph Conrad, The secret
agent.
- Joseph Conrad, The secret
sharer.
- Joseph Conrad, A
set of six.
- Joseph Conrad, The shadow
line.
- Joseph Conrad, Tales of
unrest.
- Joseph Conrad, Typhoon and other
tales.
- Joseph Conrad, Under western
eyes.
- Joseph Conrad, Victory.
- Joseph Conrad, Within the
tides.
- Kaz Cooke, Up the
duff.
- Roald Dahl, The
BFG.
- Roald Dahl, Complete tales of
the unexpected.
- Roald Dahl, Matilda.
- Roald Dahl, The Twits.
- Charles Darwin, The
voyage of the Beagle.
- Robertson Davies, The Cornish
trilogy.
- Robertson Davies, The Deptford
trilogy.
- Terrence Deacon, The symbolic
species.
- Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s
dangerous idea.
- Daniel Dennett, Freedom
evolves.
- Jared Diamond, The rise and fall of the
third chimpanzee: the evolution and future of the human
animal.
- Philip K. Dick, The father
thing.
- Charles Dickens, Great
Expectations.
- Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit.
- Charles Dickens, Martin
Chuzzlewit.
- Charles Dickens, Our mutual
friend.
- Apostolis Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and the
Golbach Conjecture.
- George Dyson, Darwin among the
machines.
- Jason Elliot, An unexpected light:
travels in Afghanistan.
- Geoffrey Elton, England under
the Tudors.
- Michael Ende, Momo.
- Anne Fadiman, Ex
Libris.
- Jasper Fforde, The Eyre
affair.
- Tim Flannery, The eternal frontier: an
ecological history of North America and its peoples.
- Karl Fogel, Open source development
with CVS.
- Antonia Forest, Autumn
term.
- John Fothergill, An innkeeper's
diary.
- E. M. Forster, Howard's
end.
- E. M. Forster, The longest
journey.
- E. M. Forster, Maurice.
- E. M. Forster, A
passage to India.
- E. M. Forster, A room
with a view.
- E. M. Forster, Where
angels fear to tread.
- Marianne Fredriksson, Hanna's
daughters.
- Janice Galloway, Clara.
- Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and
daughters.
- Julia Glass, Three Junes.
- Robert L. Glass, Software
runaways.
- Stephen Jay Gould, Eight little piggies:
reflections in natural history.
- Dominic Green, The double life of
Dr. Lopez.
- Graham Greene, The confidential
agent.
- Graham Greene, A gun for
sale.
- Graham Greene, Ministry of
Fear.
- Graham Greene, Our man in
Havana.
- Graham Greene, Stamboul
train.
- Graham Greene, The third
man.
- Daniel Hahn, The Tower
Menagerie.
- Brian Hall, Madeleine’s
world.
- Joanne Harris, Chocolat.
- Alexandra Hasluck, Georgiana Molloy: portrait with
background.
- Joseph Heller, Catch-22.
- Peter Høeg, Miss Smilla’s feeling for
snow.
- Paul Hoffman, The
man who loved only numbers: the story of Paul Erdös and the
search for mathematical truth.
- Nick Hornby, About a
boy.
- Erich Hoyt, Earth dwellers:
adventures in the land of ants.
- Roger Hudson, London:
portrait of a city.
- Robert Hughes, Shock of the
new.
- J. Huizinga, The waning of the
Middle Ages.
- Jane Hutcheon, From rice to riches: a
personal journey through a changing China.
- Kazuo Ishiguro, An artist of the
floating world.
- Roy Jenkins, Gladstone.
- Diana Wynne Jones, Hexwood.
- James Joyce, Portrait of the artist as a young
man.
- James Joyce, Ulysses.
- John Keay, The
great arc.
- Jack Kerouac, On the
road.
- Michael King, The
Penguin History of New Zealand.
- Matthew Kneale, English
passengers.
- Philip Knightley, Australia: biography of a
nation.
- Elizabeth Knox, The vintner's
luck.
- Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of
maladies.
- John Lanchester, Mr. Phillips.
- David Landes, The wealth and poverty
of nations.
- Philip Lieberman, Eve spoke: human language and
human evolution.
- Mary S. Lovell, The Mitford girls: the
biography of an extraodinary family.
- Alexander McCall Smith, Heavenly date and
other flirtations.
- Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1
Ladies’ Detective Agency.
- Alexander McCall Smith, Portuguese
irregular verbs.
- Todd McEwen, Arithmetic.
- Alister McGrath, In the beginning: the
story of the King James Bible.
- Brenda Maddox, Rosalind Franklin: the
dark lady of DNA.
- Leo Marks, Between silk and
cyanide.
- Ben Mezrich, Bringing down the
house: the inside story of six MIT students who took Vegas for
millions.
- Rohinton Mistry, Family
matters.
- Rohinton Mistry, A fine balance.
- Mary Mitford, Our
village.
- Walter Moers, The
13½ lives of Captain Bluebear.
- H. St. L. B. Moss, The birth of the Middle
Ages.
- John H. Mundy, Europe in the High Middle
Ages, 1150–1309.
- Sylvia Nasar, A beautiful
mind.
- E. Nesbit, The railway
children.
- Eric Newby, The last grain
race.
- Patrick O'Brian, Master and
commander.
- Patrick O'Brian, Post
captain.
- Patrick O'Brian, H.M.S. Surprise.
- Patrick O'Brian, The Mauritius
command.
- Patrick O'Brian, Desolation
Island.
- Patrick O'Brian, The fortune of
war.
- Patrick O'Brian, The surgeon's
mate.
- Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian
mission.
- Patrick O'Brian, Treason's
harbour.
- Patrick O'Brian, The far side of the
world.
- Patrick O'Brian, The reverse of the
medal.
- Patrick O’Brian, The letter of
marque.
- Patrick O’Brian, The thirteen-gun
salute.
- Patrick O’Brian, The nutmeg of
consolation.
- Patrick O’Brian, Clarissa
Oakes.
- Patrick O’Brian, The wine-dark
sea.
- Jeremy Paxman, The
English.
- Henry Petroski, Invention by
design.
- Karl Popper, The open society and its
enemies.
- Terry Pratchett,
Carpe
jugulum.
- Terry Pratchett,
Equal
rites.
- Terry Pratchett,
The fifth
elephant.
- Terry Pratchett,
Hogfather.
- Terry Pratchett,
The last
continent.
- Terry Pratchett,
Thief of
time.
- Terry Pratchett, The truth.
- Philip Pullman, Northern
lights.
- Philip Pullman, The subtle
knife.
- Philip Pullman, The amber
spyglass.
- Thomas Pynchon, The crying of
Lot 49.
- Arthur Ransome, Swallows and
Amazons.
- Arthur Ransome, Swallowdale.
- Arthur Ransome, Winter
holiday.
- Arthur Ransome, Coot Club.
- Arthur Ransome, Pigeon
post.
- Signalling from Mars:
the letters of Arthur Ransome, selected and introduced by
Hugh Brogan.
- Matt Ridley, Genome.
- Joseph Roth, The Radetzky
March.
- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and
the Goblet of Fire.
- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of
the Phoenix.
- Oliver Sacks, Uncle
Tungsten.
- Paul Samuelson, Economics.
- Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma: the battle for
the code.
- Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: the court of the red
tsar.
- Vikram Seth, A
suitable boy.
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.
- Simon Singh, The
code book.
- Carl V. Smith, From N to Z.
- Zadie Smith, White
teeth.
- R. W. Southern, The making of the
Middle Ages.
- W. Stanley Moss, Ill met by
moonlight.
- Ian Stewart, Flatterland: like
Flatland only more so.
- Ian Stewart, Math hysteria: fun and
games with mathematics.
- Jan Swafford, Johannes
Brahms.
- The
assassin’s cloak: an anthology of the world’s greatest
diarists, edited by Irene and Alan Taylor.
- W. M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair.
- Michael Thomsett, Getting started with
options.
- J. R. R. Tolkien, The hobbit.
- J. R. R. Tolkien, The lord of the rings.
- Claire Tomalin, Samuel Pepys: the unequalled
self.
- G. M. Trevelyan, England under the
Stuarts.
- Anthony Trollope, Dr. Thorne.
- Solomon Volkov, Shostakovich and
Stalin.
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse
5.
- Sarah Waters, Fingersmith.
- Edmund White, The
flâneur.
- T. H. White, The once and future
king.
- Peter Whitfield, Mapping the world: a
history of exploration.
- Oscar Wilde, The
picture of Dorian Gray.
- George C. Williams, Plan and
purpose in nature.
- A. N. Wilson, The
Victorians.
- Simon Winchester, The meaning of
everything.
- P. G. Wodehouse, Plums of
P. G. Wodehouse.
