Similar review to my last Grisham: way too many characters for me to keep a track of, and a conclusion that didn’t seem big enough for the amount of set up. I’ll see if I can find the movie - maybe I’ll enjoy that more.
Since 2010
A list of things I've read since late 2019. 2019 was backfilled from memory and has holes and fabricated dates, but the listings for 2020 onwards are accurate.
John Grisham
★★☆☆☆
Similar review to my last Grisham: way too many characters for me to keep a track of, and a conclusion that didn’t seem big enough for the amount of set up. I’ll see if I can find the movie - maybe I’ll enjoy that more.
Douglas Stuart
★★★★☆
Long book! No gimmicks, gotchas or unnecessary threads, just a really well told story from a time and a place that are both very familiar and yet difficult to remember. Also, I’m Scottish and I still had to look up some of the language used! Good on the author for not watering it down.
Craig Silvey
★★★★☆
Beautiful story. I really got wrapped up in this one, and then… it just ended. Might have gotten 5 stars if some of the many loose ends got tied up.
Ray Bradbury
Abandoned
I have got to stop attempting to read “classic” novels.
Dava Sobel
★★★★☆
As always, it was more about the people than the technology than I’d like, but this provided a gentle little history lesson. I wonder what those first clockmakers would say about our cheap and unfathomably accurate clocks today.
Alice Oseman
★★★☆☆
I read the original Heartstopper books and have similar thoughts to this sequel novella thing: I’m about twice the age of the target audience, but the story is sweet and the illustrations are brilliant.
Alexander McCall Smith
★★☆☆☆
Nope, not for me. Nothing happened, and just when it seemed like something was about to happen, the bloody thing ended. Didn’t enjoy the way the main characters constantly tried to intellectually one-up each other either - felt like the author was trying to do that with me as the reader.
Andy Weir
★★★★★
Thought I’d start the year with an old friend.
Adam Kay
★★★★☆
This is my third Kay book and they’ve all been consistent in making me laugh and think. This one had copious amounts of footnotes though 😠 I’ve said it before - it’s either important enough to appear in the main body, or it’s not important enough to appear at all.
Matt Haig
★★★☆☆
Similar review to the other Matt Haig I’ve read: super interesting premise but the story just kind of… ended.
Franz Kafka
Abandoned
Discovered via this comment on Hacker News but it was just a rambling mess that I gave up on about 20% of the way in.
Will Carver
★★★★☆
Plenty of twists and dark comedy.
Tal Bauer
★★★★☆
I needed something… lighter after taking about a month to read the last book. I’m man enough to admit that I had a little weep a couple of times reading this. Predictable story, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
Christina Sweeney-Baird
★★★☆☆
Written pre-COVID and as noted by the author in her foreword, the premise of this story is frighteningly similar to the reality of a global pandemic. So points for that. The final third of the book (“recovery”) lost me a bit though. It lacked the drama of the previous chapters and seemed to drag on.
Alice Feeney
★★★★☆
Yeah alright, 4 stars. I didn’t see the last couple of twists coming and they did add a good depth to the whole thing.
Garrett M
★★★★☆
I promise you it’s just a coincidence that I finished reading this on 11 September. Good read. Emotional. It must have been a real pain to structure so many interviews.
Andy Greenberg
★★★☆☆
Enjoyed the technical sections - wish they were more technical in fact. Some of it felt a bit conspiratorial.
Lori Gottlieb
★★★☆☆
Well written and pretty emotional towards the end. Too touchy-feely for my taste.
Kit Oliver
★★☆☆☆
Jeez what an exhausting book. Took a really long, repetitive path to it’s entirely predictable outcome.
Andy Weir
★★★★★
Third read of this. Keeps all 5 stars and marks the completion of my Andy Weir marathon.
Andy Weir
★★★★☆
I’m on an Andy Weir marathon. Keeps it’s 4-star rating. Been a while since I originally read this but I think I enjoyed it more second time around.
Andy Weir
★★★★★
Nothing to add. Fourth read, still my favourite!
Tom Daley
★★★★☆
Daley’s a bit young for a biography, but there’s no doubt he’s lead an interesting life so far and taken a right beating from professional sports, physically and emotionally.
John Grisham
★★★☆☆
I don’t think I’ve read a Grisham before. Took me a while to get through this one and I’m not convinced it was worth it. Lots of characters to keep a track of and I’m never good at that. Mediocre conclusion to the story.
Miriam Margolyes
★★★★☆
Apart from a couple of chapters at the end that went off on a political rant, this was an easy and good fun read. The woman isn’t afraid to say what she thinks!
Freya Marske
★★☆☆☆
I was just reading the words - I never felt like I was part of the story. Plenty of potential but it was a bit of a mess with a sprinkling of women-writing-men.
Lech Blaine
★★☆☆☆
I think this was more for the author than it was for anyone else. And that’s fine. But I wasn’t entertained or educated or… anything when I reached the end of this.
Stephen Hawking
Abandoned
Nah, way too theoretical for me.
Audrey J. Cole
★★★☆☆
Quick and believable. The love story wasn’t necessary, but I have a cold, cold heart.
Anne Glenconner
★★☆☆☆
The woman’s lead an interesting life, no doubt about it. This was way too name-drop-ey and aristocrat-ey for me though. It’s hard to relate to someone who buys a new house every other month and insists that knowing exactly who to contact in the Foreign Office “wasn’t special treatment”. And several points lost for saying about her own son: “…he gave no outward hint of being gay…”. That ain’t how it works posh lady.
Bridget Collins
★★★★★
Third read. Still finding little details that only reveal themselves once you get to know the whole story better.
Josh Malerman
★★☆☆☆
Repetitive, no twists, and failed to explain anything.
Jax Calder
★★★☆☆
Andy Weir
★★★★★
First re-read of this, so obviously the shocks and twists didn’t land the same as they did last time, but it’s still an awesome story with lovable characters, great humour, all woven together in a clever way.
Trent Dalton
★★★☆☆
Fine. Medium. It was pretty funny and very Australian. I feel like it left a lot of loose ends though.
Neal Stephenson
Abandoned
What a load of old shit. And a colossal waste of reading time. I spent almost a month picking through this book. The chapters kept getting longer and longer, and when I looked to see how far I was from the end I still had something like a third of the fucking thing to go. Kindle was estimating I’d need another nine hours to finish it. It started fine, interesting premise etc. etc. but I just couldn’t go on once the mountains started talking and “Adam” was ejaculating over “Eve”.
Andy Weir
★★★★★
Third read. I reckon this is my favouritest book ever.
Kerry Greenwood
★★☆☆☆
Harmless but lacked substance.
Tom Clancy
★★★☆☆
Ugh I don’t know. I nearly gave this two stars, but I didn’t hate it. I’m indifferent. It took me bloody weeks to get through, I can tell you that. A very detailed story, with lots of characters and locations to keep track of. I think it’s just the subject that turned me off - I normally love detail in a story, but sneaky warfare and military stuff doesn’t work for me. Maybe I’ll watch the movie - I can imagine how it would make a good movie.
L.C. Rosen
★★☆☆☆
I definitely wasn’t the target audience for this one. It was a sweet story, and I’m really happy books like this exist in the world though. Maybe if it had existed/I had read it about 25 years ago I’d have given it more stars.
Patrick Smith
★★★★☆
I follow the author’s blog, and it seemed appropriate to dig into this book - which was already sitting in my queue - having just finished that MH370 book. It’s clear the author enjoys his industry, and he’s a great communicator. I’m a sucker for “behind the scenes” stories about everyday events.
Florence de Changy
★★★★☆
I followed the hunt for MH370 with interest, and I’ve read a wee bit about the mystery since. This author seems to have spoken to a lot of people over the last few years and makes a fairly solid case that the commonly accepted cause of the flight’s disappearance is a load of crap. The story we all know, about the rogue pilot and the incredibly accurate route he took in order to remain hidden, really doesn’t make sense to me after reading this book. At the same time, how on earth could any alternative solution have been kept so well hidden by so many people for so long?
Steve Cavanagh
★★★★☆
I really enjoyed the way the stories being told met in the middle. There was a good balance between letting the reader know what’s about to happen, and keeping the next twist hidden from us. I might check out some more of this author’s work.
Jonny Garza Villa
★★★☆☆
Fine. Medium. The letter the main character sends to his asshole dad in one of the last chapters was 👌
Bill Bryson
★★★★☆
Och I love a good Bill Bryson book, and I’d never read this one before. I’m never in these ones for the travel - he just makes me laugh!
Matt Haig
★★★☆☆
Had some feel-good moments, some of which came close to being eye-roll clichés, but it all held together nicely in the end. The story was overall a rather interesting concept.
Joseph Heller
Abandoned
This is the second time I’ve attempted this “classic”, and while I made it further this time than last time I still only got about one-sixth of the way into it before giving up, mid-paragraph, in an agitated strop. I don’t get it. How is this on every “must read before you die” list? By about the second page there’s a cast of 300 characters you have to keep a track of, and there’s almost never any link between one sentence and the next. What a load of old shit.
Casey McQuiston
★★★★★
Great fun with an enticing premise. Made me laugh out loud several times, which isn’t something that happens very often. Surprisingly mucky in sections, not that I’m a prude or didn’t enjoy those sections… Anyway it was clever, funny, romantic (but not too lovey-dovey), and very well put together.
Stuart MacBride
★★☆☆☆
Ugh this was a struggle, especially on the back of that 5-star-er by Weir. That aside, I didn’t care for this one - didn’t care about the characters, didn’t care about the outcome.
Andy Weir
★★★★★
Holy hell yes. This has a very similar feel to “The Martian”, with the same sort of humour and plausable science, but with a kind of… a kind of unexpected love story thrown in. I want to re-read this already!
Kevin van Whye
★★★★☆
I’m a sucker for these young adult, coming-out, self-discovery stories. They make me feel all sorts of things, and cause me to relive my own late teenage years.
Beth O'Leary
★★★☆☆
Yeah a pretty easy and intriguing story once I got into it. Somewhat predictable, but just enough “gotchas” to keep things interesting. I’ve realised that I quite enjoy stories where each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character.
David Koenig
★★★★☆
This was fun, and I like the way the book was structured.
R J Palacio
★★★★★
Hey look - a rare 5 star-er! A beautiful story, told in an interesting way.
Tina Seskis
★★☆☆☆
So much potential, but it became apparent in the last quarter that this one was not going anywhere interesting. Desperate Housewives without any of the drama or fun or unpredictability.
Stuart MacBride
★★★★☆
I’m not sure this one counts as a “book”: it calls itself a novella and it only took a couple of hours to get through. I really enjoyed it though - it was a short, sharp, funny little story focussing on our favourite characters from the Logan McRae series.
Stuart MacBride
★★★★☆
My 9th from the Logan McRae by my count. I enjoyed this one - it had fewer characters and names to keep track of than some of the books from this series, which is fine with me. Had a couple of good “wow” moments towards the end too.
William Kuhn
★★★☆☆
Not sure about this. It was quirky and amusing to think of HRH going AWOL and making breakfast for people. The personal stories of the characters never landed though. I also felt like there was a lot of work done so that the different back-stories would intertwine, but they never did either.
Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera
★★★☆☆
I think the target audience for this is half my age, but it was fast and fun and relatable in an I’d-rather-not-remember-those-years kind of way.
D. B. John
★★★☆☆
It took me ages to get into this, but something told me I should persevere and about half-way through it started properly drawing me in. I’m not sure the pay-off was worth it hence my tepid review. The North Korean theme was interesting and thought provoking though, I’ll give it that.
Shannon Molloy
★★★★☆
An emotional and relatable story.
Evan Currie
Abandoned
Nope. Too much war and military shit.
Andy Weir
★★★★★
Yep, easily keeps it’s 5 stars after my first re-read.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
★★★☆☆
Long one, but kept me interested and entertained throughout. She deserves a rant, but that wasn’t the tone of the book at all: it was calm, factual, and kept an eye on the big picture. The edition I got has an addendum Clinton added about a year after initial publication, which was excellent - nice to get her thoughts after the dust of the 2016 election had settled a bit.
Douglas Adams
Abandoned
I closed my review of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by saying “I bought the whole series, so I’ll certainly continue with it.” Well I tried, but it wasn’t making me happy. Not funny, not clever.
Adrian Newey
★★★☆☆
I don’t usually go for autobiographies but the topic of designing Formula 1 cars sounded interesting. As with most autobiographies, there was more than enough self-congratulations, but what’s the point of writing a book if you can’t toot your own horn eh? Most of the engineering sections were about aerodynamics which doesn’t really float my boat, but it did open my eyes to the world of competitive racing a bit.
Shaun Bythell
★★★★☆
A short and fun read.
Lisa Regan
★★★☆☆
It was only now when I looked up the author of this one that I saw it’s book seven in an ongoing series. Might keep an eye out for others. Didn’t blow my socks off but had some good twists and held my attention.
Stuart MacBride
★★★★☆
Yep, another MacBride. Enjoyed this one. Good humour as well. By my count I’ve now read the first seven Logan MacRae books from the series (not in order though).
Stuart MacBride
★★☆☆☆
Just two stars for this Logan McRae. I think that’s on me though: I just wasn’t able to hold the names of the main players in my head, so I was constantly moderately lost.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
★★★★☆
This one gets better the further you read - the first couple of chapters are proper astrophysics and completely beyond me. Crams a lot of information into a little book.
Bridget Collins
★★★★☆
Big fan of Collins’ “The Binding”, so I was looking forward to the release of this one. Didn’t quite get the full 5-stars from me, but boy do I enjoy her writing. She manages to play with time and narrators in a way that leaves you curious, but never confused. The story got a bit too luvvy-duvvy towards the end for me, but as with “The Binding” I suspect there are nuances and layers that only a second read will reveal.
Michael Connelly
★★☆☆☆
Took me ages to get through this one and I almost gave up about 20% of the way through, but it just managed to keep a hold of me. I dunno, it sort of felt like the story was constantly setting up for something that never happened.
Taylor Jenkins Reid
★★★★☆
I really enjoyed the style of this one, jumping between the present and the past. I didn’t think I’d care for the general subject that much, but the way the story was told made up for it. And a lumpy-throat ending too! I’ll keep an eye on this author.
Bill Bryson
★★★★☆
Bryson never fails to crack me up. This was a good fun read. A little dense in places perhaps, but boy the amount of research that must have gone into this one is staggering.
Tim Harford
★★★☆☆
Ach it was fine. Difficult to take a book that preaches the scrutiny of statistics seriously when the book itself is full of statistics. See also this post.
Stuart MacBride
★★★☆☆
Another Logan McRae, another three stars. Very graphical, pretty confronting, but a disappointing ending that lacked a solid conclusion.
Stuart MacBride
★★★☆☆
Number 3 in the Logan McRae series. I’ve said it before about these novels, but I really do enjoy the Scottish-ness of them. This one was pretty easy to follow, and had a good amount of humour as well.
Eliot Peper
★☆☆☆☆
I have got to stop buying books from the Kindle Daily Deal. Exciting premise, flat execution. And bloody hell does the bloke enjoy long fancy sentences. Thesaurus much?
Molly Bloom
★★★★☆
I didn’t think I was one for autobiographies, but this was a pretty exciting read. Parts of the story are so unbelievable they have to be true.
Bridget Collins
★★★★★
My first re-read of this one, and it keeps all five of it’s stars. As I suspected I would, I picked up on lots of little threads second time through that went largely unnoticed on my first read. Hits me in the feels.
Hanna Jameson
★★☆☆☆
Was immediately hooked on the premise, and the first half of the book unravelled very nicely, but then it started to become clear that we weren’t going to get any answers or satisfying conclusions. Sure enough, it just… ended.
Derek Kunsken
Abandoned
Nope. Persevered with this for way longer than I should have because I really wanted to like it. The basic plot was intriguing, but it was dense reading. Felt like the author had spent years building a massive, complicated world, and then a long-weekend cramming the whole bloody thing into one average sized novel.
Stuart MacBride
★★★★☆
I’ve been jumping around the Logan McRae series a bit, but they do all manage to stand up by themselves. This is number 2 in the series, and I read number 1 back in May, and have given both 4 stars. A special shout-out to the self-deprecating humour about crime novels in this one!
Douglas Adams
★★★☆☆
Hm. Weird, but I knew that going in. It got a couple of chuckles out of me, but not as many as I hoped for. I suppose I was expecting greater things because this is one of those cult everyone-knows-a-line-from-it classics that’s hyped up. I bought the whole series, so I’ll certainly continue with it.
Stuart MacBride
★★☆☆☆
Another from the Logan McRae series. Didn’t enjoy this one. Couldn’t get into it, and there were way too many characters and disconnected stories for me to keep a track of.
Andy Weir
★★★★☆
As I promised myself, Weir’s other big novel. Not as good as “The Martian”, but I still really liked this. Hope he writes more!
Andy Weir
★★★★★
Ploughed through this one in a couple of days, which says it all. The movie has become one of my favourites, and I don’t usually like reading books after having seen the movie, but there were no disappointments here. Fantastic humour, well considered and plausible science, and a caught-me-by-surprise wave of emotions towards the end. Really want to read “Artemis”, Weir’s other big novel now.
Pat Cunnane
★★★☆☆
My last couple of reads were Kindle daily deals and I didn’t rate them very highly, so time to read something from my list. West Winging It never got deep into politics, keeping things more about office shenanigans, which was fine by me! A little haphazard perhaps. The author has unique stories to tell, but was never boastful. A real fast and fun read.
Matthew FitzSimmons
★★☆☆☆
There was nothing wrong with this, and it wasn’t a struggle to finish, but at the same time I was never excited about reading the next chapter. Was half-way through before I realised this is part of a series - whether that had an impact on my enjoyment or not, I don’t know.
Stephen King
★★☆☆☆
I don’t think I’ve read a King novel before. I knew going in that I’m not a fan of supernatural stuff, and this book hasn’t changed that. Nice mystery, likeable characters, lots of visuals, but nah not for me.
Stuart MacBride
★★★★☆
After reading “The Blood Road” last week (which I got on the cheap in one of Amazon’s Kindle daily deals) I decided to check out the first book in the McRae series. Was not disappointed. Gritty, extremely gory, but with great humour as well. I’ll be reading more of these.
Stuart MacBride
★★★★☆
I was not prepared for the Scottish-ness of the setting and language used by the characters! It took me straight back there. I might pick up a few more MacBride novels just to have in stock.
Neal Stephenson
★★★★☆
Took me a while to get through this one. I can’t decide whether reading things on Kindle, and therefore having no physical sense of progress through a book, is good or bad. Anyway, the first two thirds of Seveneves had me absolutely bloody hooked. Apparently “hard science fiction” is a genre, and one which I will certainly be reading more of. Fantastic blend of actual science with science fiction.
Simon Winchester
★★★★☆
I enjoyed the progression through this one. Author has an old fashioned style of writing and loves enormously long sentences. Last chapter about Japanese watchmakers didn’t fit in either. Everything else was delightfully engineering-ey though.
Kevin Sullivan
★★★☆☆
First half was suitably technical and rather exciting. There was a big chunk of self-pity and the guy blaming inanimate objects in the middle, but it picked up towards the end with nerdy details and Air Force stories.
Shaun Bythell
★★★★☆
Recommendation from a friend. Ripped through it in a couple of evenings. Good fun, slightly repetitive, and the bloke got grumpier towards the end. Lots of laughs though. Kept finding myself reminiscing about life in Scotland as I was reading it as well.
Suzanne Collins
★★★☆☆
Mm. Thought the start of this one halted the pace of the second half of “Catching Fire”. Picked up again after a few chapters though. Lacked the climactic finish I was hoping for. Still, I’m looking forward to watching the movies now.
Suzanne Collins
★★★★☆
Did not go where I thought it was going to go, and that’s a good thing! On to the final in the trilogy next.
Suzanne Collins
★★★★☆
Easy to read, and left lots of interesting possibilities. Looking forward to reading the next couple of books in the trilogy.
Dan Lyons
★★☆☆☆
Started off pretty interesting, but the last third was just the guy moaning about the way he was treated. Relatable, but I’ve got my own problems, thanks.
J. K. Rowling
★★★★☆
Finished the series! I’m definitely going to re-read the whole lot in a few months as I just know there are lots of clever little threads that I’ll have missed on this read. I got a bit lost with Deathly Hallows - who had what wand and which horcruxes had already been found and and… A very satisfying conclusion though.
J. K. Rowling
★★★★★
My favourite book in the Harry Potter series so far. Tied together a whole bunch of stuff from the previous books, and answered lots of questions. The magical universe felt pretty tight in this one as well - there wasn’t just magic for the sake of it, and the consequences of potions and spells were explained a little more. I suspect a full re-read of the series would uncover lots of layers I’ve missed.
Caroline Criado Perez
Abandoned
Enlightening and thoughtful, but became repetitive after a few chapters. Gave up about ¾ of the way through this one.
J. K. Rowling
★★★★☆
No review.
J. K. Rowling
★★★☆☆
I could feel my brain starting to loose track of all the characters and magical stuff in this one. Kindle X-Ray saved me a few times when a character cropped up that I was obviously supposed to have remembered from one of the previous four books.
J. K. Rowling
★★★★☆
No review.
Anna-Lou Weatherley
★★★☆☆
Easy read, and there weren’t as many characters to keep track of as I feared when I started this one. A few twists but nothing that blew my socks off.
Mark Lawrence
★★★☆☆
Very imaginative, but didn’t give me a burning desire to read the next book in the series.
Adam Kay
★★★★☆
A short and sweet companion to “This Is Going To Hurt”. Equally as funny. I like that Kay clarified a couple of things from his first book in this one, and explained why he ended up quitting the NHS.
J. K. Rowling
★★★★☆
An easy read. I’ve read the Harry Potter series before, and was worried that the movies would cloud my mind’s eye during a re-read, but I needn’t have been concerned.
J. K. Rowling
★★★★☆
No Review.
Bill Bryson
★★★☆☆
I’m a big Bryson fan, but I wasn’t sold on the way he whizzed through the major organs of the body in this one. I suppose you have to draw a line somewhere, and while each chapter was full of fascinating facts, I frequently felt unsatisfied at the end of them.
Billy Connolly
★★★★☆
Plenty of laugh-out-louds. Classic Connolly humour.
Serhii Plokhy
★★★☆☆
Interesting enough but as with most modern history books I end up reading, was much more about the people and politics than it was about the science and engineering.
Bridget Collins
★★★★★
I really enjoyed this. It was dark and mysterious and had twists I didn’t see coming. I cried at the end 😳
Taylor Jenkins Reid
★★★☆☆
No review.
Jeanne Marie Laskas
★★★★★
A roller coaster of emotions! Impossible to imagine anything as compassionate as the work presented in this book going on inside the 2019 US administration. This was recommended to me by a friend, and I have since recommended it to several other people who have all praised it.
Adam Kay
★★★★☆
Very funny, but don’t read this while you’re recovering from an illness or about to go into hospital for any reason!
Ean Higgins
★★★★☆
Pleasingly technical, pretty haunting, but somehow reassuring.