Reviews 2017


This page features a variety of types of review, including some longer ones for particular books. The thumbnail reviews are a very personal way for me to formulate my response to a book that I’ve just read. They have proved to be quite popular on Facebook, so I reproduce them here. Please note that they are not in any way intended to be formal judgments; they’re merely my immediate reactions. Star ratings are on a five-point scale, except for The Tale of Genji, Persuasion and Gormenghast which always receive six each time I read them.

 

2017 Review #1 A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford

 

2017 Thumbnail Review #1 A Snow Garden and Other Stories by Rachel Joyce
2017 Thumbnail Review #2 A Month in the Country by J.L.Carr
2017 Thumbnail Review #3 Something About Eve by James Branch Cabell
2017 Thumbnail Review #4 The Certain Hour by James Branch Cabell
2017 Thumbnail Review #5 The Cords of Vanity by James Branch Cabell
2017 Thumbnail Review #6 From the Hidden Way/The Jewel Merchants by James Branch Cabell
2017 Thumbnail Review #7 The Rivet in Grandfather’s Neck by James Branch Cabell
2017 Thumbnail Review #8 The Eagle’s Shadow by James Branch Cabell
2017 Thumbnail Review #9 The Cream of the Jest by James Branch Cabell
2017 Thumbnail Review #10 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2017 Thumbnail Review #11 Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
2017 Thumbnail Review #12 The Ambassadors by Henry James
2017 Thumbnail Review #13 Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett
2017 Thumbnail Review #14 Beowulf tr. Seamus Heaney / Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tr. Simon Armitage
2017 Thumbnail Review #15 Macbeth by William Shakespeare
2017 Thumbnail Review #16 Stories of Your Life and Others (now re-packaged and sold under the title Arrival) by Ted Chiang
2017 Thumbnail Review #17 Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson
2017 Thumbnail Review #18 The Ginger Man by J.P.Donleavy
2017 Thumbnail Review #19 Daybreak by Joan Baez
2017 Thumbnail Review #20 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
2017 Thumbnail Review #21 South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
2017 Thumbnail Review #22 The Last Battle by C.S.Lewis
2017 Thumbnail Review #23 The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima
2017 Thumbnail Review #24 The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
2017 Thumbnail Review #25 The Anchoress by Robyn Cadwallader
2017 Thumbnail Review #26 The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth
2017 Thumbnail Review #27 The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
2017 Thumbnail Review #28 Sagittarius Rising by Cecil Lewis
2017 Thumbnail Review #29 The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin
2017 Thumbnail Review #30 Orlando by Virginia Woolf
2017 Thumbnail Review #31 Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
2017 Thumbnail Review #32 Wind in the Wires by Duncan Grinnell-Milne
2017 Thumbnail Review #33 High in the Empty Blue by Alex Revell
2017 Thumbnail Review #34 Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
2017 Thumbnail Review #35 Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
2017 Thumbnail Review #36 Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake
2017 Thumbnail Review #37 The Trial by Franz Kafka
2017 Thumbnail Review #38 Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
2017 Thumbnail Review #39 Steering the Craft by Ursula Le Guin
2017 Thumbnail Review #40 The Castle by Franz Kafka
2017 Thumbnail Review #41 War Horse/Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo
2017 Thumbnail Review #42 America by Franz Kafka
2017 Thumbnail Review #43 Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
2017 Thumbnail Review #44 Phantastes by George MacDonald
2017 Thumbnail Review #45 Tree and Leaf by J.R.R.Tolkien
2017 Thumbnail Review #46 A Room with a View by E.M.Forster
2017 Thumbnail Review #47 A Passage to India by E.M.Forster
2017 Thumbnail Review #48 Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
2017 Thumbnail Review #49 Persuasion by Jane Austen
2017 Thumbnail Review #50 An Old Man\'s Love by Anthony Trollope
2017 Thumbnail Review #51 Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
2017 Thumbnail Review #52 Collected Short Stories by E.M.Forster
2017 Thumbnail Review #53 The Death of Grass by John Christopher
2017 Thumbnail Review #54 Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa) and Hojoki by Kenko and Chomei
2017 Thumbnail Review #55 Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
2017 Thumbnail Review #56 Artemis by Andy Weir