Since 2010
Kim Stanley Robinson
Abandoned
A recommendation from a friend, who did warn me about the writing style that I couldn’t stomach.
Gina Pera
Abandoned
Started repeating itself almost immediately. Could have been a blog post.
Marianne Bellotti
★★★☆☆
A lot of common sense, but a lot of good stories about software implementations and upgrades too.
S. C. Wynne
★★☆☆☆
Tedious.
Blake Crouch
★★★★☆
I liked this quite a lot. It could have easily descended into a confusing mess, but it didn’t. It was just the right amount of tricky!
Peter Robison
★★★☆☆
Long winded but interesting. It’s always about money isn’t it?
Tom Hanks
★★★★★
A 5-starrer! A delightful story with a pleasing combination of reality and fiction, delivered in a clever and satisfying way. Everything I want in a book!
RuPaul Charles
★★★☆☆
A fun read. He’s more spiritual than I thought he’d be.
Elly Conway
★★★☆☆
Strange start, and got a bit muddled and very violent at the end, but pretty exciting overall.
Amanda Brown
★★★★☆
Really interesting. Makes me grateful for what I have.
Lucy Foley
★★★★☆
Very much enjoyed the story being told from the perspective of different characters and from different times. It worked well. I also appreciate that no loose ends were left. Satisfying.
Andy Weir
★★★★★
One of my “must read at least once a year” books. Fifth read of this I think.
Gabriel Bergmoser
★★☆☆☆
A Kindle daily deal. When will I learn? Started skipping pages towards the end when I realised I couldn’t have cared less what the outcome was.
Also, the baddie removed one spark plug from the main character’s getaway car, and they keep talking about “the spark plug”. There are 17 occurrences of “the spark plug” in the book according to Kindle search. Nobody in the publishing pipeline picked that up??
Mike Bannister
★★★★☆
It took a while for the guy to actually get to Concorde, but having his backstory helped in the end. I know a bit about Concorde but I had no idea there was such a lengthy criminal investigation after Air France Flight 4590. Also new to me was the information that the original verdict was overturned after more evidence was found and a new theory as to the cause of the crash emerged.
Douglas Stuart
★★★☆☆
This one was a bit of a slog, but I never reached the point of not enjoying it. It was a well told but very long and repetitive story. And I don’t know why Shuggie’s sexuality was mentioned so often because it never paid off.
Kitty Flanagan
★★★★☆
Short and fun! She got several laugh-out-louds from me as well.
Marc Levinson
Abandoned
I’ve been picking at this one for a couple of months, but I’m never going to finish it. I got about a third of the way through and I’m convinced that what it took the bloke 200 pages to say could have been handled in about 15 pages.
I gave up when, in chapter 7, the author spent 20 pages detailing an absolute clusterfuck of bureaucracy, then took a pause and opened the next section with “The process of standardisation was proceeding nicely”. What?!
Andy Weir
★★★★★
Starting the year with my favourite.
Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik
★★★★☆
A good mix of stories about real-world screw-ups, results of related research, and actionable advice.