Reviews

Please click author or title for a review. Other links may lead to additional commentary. 

Note: These are all books I've bought, borrowed, or received as gifts from friends, with no expectation of anything except me reading them.   

BY AUTHOR
Abbey, Edward - Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

Adams, Alice - Superior Women
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi - Half of a Yellow Sun
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi - Purple Hibiscus
Adiga, Aravind - The White Tiger

Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Allende, Isabel - The House of the Spirits
Auchincloss, Louis - Pursuit of the Prodigal
Azzopardi, Trezza - Winterton Blue

Bagchi, Amitabha - Half the Night is Gone
Basso, Hamilton - The View from Pompey's Head
Baxter, Charles - First Light
Beavan, Colin - How to Be Alive: A Guide to the Kind of Happiness That Helps the World
Belben, Rosalind - Our Horses in Egypt
Belleville, Bill - Losing It All to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My Cracker Landscape
Belleville, Bill - Rediscovering Rawlings, a River and Time
Belleville, Bill - River of Lakes
Bellow, Saul - Henderson the Rain King
Berger, John - G.
Bly, Robert - The Light Around the Body
Boccaccio, Giovanni - The Decameron
Boswell, Thomas - How Life Imitates the World Series
Bradbury, Ray - Fahrenheit 451

Bromfield, Louis - Early Autumn

Brooks, Geraldine - March

Brosnan, Jim - The Long Season

Brosnan, Jim - Pennant Race
Buck, Pearl S. - The Good Earth

Burns, Anna - Milkman

Carroll, Lewis - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop

Chabon, Michael - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales

Chernow, Ron - Alexander Hamilton
Chodron, Pema - Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better 
Cisneros, Sandra - The House on Mango Street

Coelho, Paulo - The Alchemist
Coetzee, J.M. - Life & Times of Michael K

Conan, Neal - Play by Play: Baseball, Radio and Life in the Last Chance League
Connell, Evan S. - Mrs. Bridge
Dell, Twyla - Call of the Rainbow Warrior
DeLillo, Don - The Body Artist
Dennis, Carl - Practical Gods

Dewberry, Elizabeth - His Lovely Wife

Diaz, Junot - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Dillard, Annie - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Doctorow, E.L. - World's Fair

Doyle, Glennon - Untamed
Doyle, Roddy - Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
Drury, Allen - Advise and Consent

Duhigg, Charles - The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
Duncan, David James - The Brothers K (plus a little more)

Egan, Jennifer - A Visit from the Goon Squad
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems
Eng, Tan Twan - The Garden of Evening Mists

Engel, Patricia - Infinite Country
Enright, Anne - The Gathering
Epel, Naomi - Writers Dreaming

Erdrich, Louise - The Night Watchman
Farrell, J.G. - The Siege of Krishnapur

Farrell, J.G. - The Singapore Grip
Faulkner, William - Light in August (with background)
Feiyu, Bi - Three Sisters 
Flaherty, Tina Santi - What Jackie Taught Us
Forster, E.M. - A Room with a View
Forster, E.M. - Aspects of the Novel
Forster, E.M. - Howards End

Furman, Andrew - Bitten: My Unexpected Love Affair with Florida
Gallo, Carmine - Talk Like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds 
Gardner, John - Grendel
Godden, Rumer - The Greengage Summer
Gogol, Nikolai - The Overcoat
Golding, William - Rites of Passage
Gordimer, Nadine - The Conservationist
Gordon, Jaimy - Lord of Misrule

Groff, Lauren - Matrix

Groff, Lauren - The Vaster Wilds
Guillebeau, Chris - The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World
Hall, Donald - Fathers Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport [Mostly Baseball]

Hallock, Thomas - A Road Course in Early American Literature: Travel and Teaching from Atzlan to Amherst

Hapka, Catherine - Snowman: The True Story of a Champion
Harding, Paul - Tinkers
Hartnett, Sonya - The Silver Donkey
Hazzard, Shirley - The Great Fire
Heinlein, Robert A. - Stranger in a Strange Land
Hemingway, Ernest - Islands in the Stream
Hemon, Aleksandar - The Lazarus Project
Hewitt, Ben - $aved: How I Quit Worrying About Money and Became the Richest Guy in the World 
Hollinghurst, Alan - The Line of Beauty

Homes, A.M. - May We Be Forgiven

Houston, Pam - Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country
Hughes, Ted - Birthday Letters
Huxley, Elspeth - The Flame Trees of Thika 

Ishiguro, Kazuo - Klara and the Sun
Jacobsohn, Rachel W. - The Reading Group Handbook
Jacobson, Howard - The Finkler Question
James, Marlon - A Brief History of Seven Killings
Jamie, Kathleen - Sightlines
Jones, Edward P. - The Known World
Jordan, Pat - A False Spring
Joyce, James - Ulysses (plus this)

Karunatilaka, Shehan - Chinaman
Kelby, N.M. - A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts
Kelman, James - How Late It Was, How Late

Kingsolver, Barbara - Demon Copperhead
Kingsolver, Barbara - Flight Behavior
Kingsolver, Barbara - The Lacuna

Klinkenborg, Verlyn - The Rural Life
Kooser, Ted - Delights & Shadows

Krogerus, Mikael & Roman Tschappeler - The Decision Book: 50 Models for Strategic Thinking
Kunitz, Stanley - Selected Poems
Lahiri, Jhumpa - The Lowland
Lahiri, Jhumpa - The Namesake
Lamb, Wally - I Know This Much is True (preliminary here)

Lanham, J. Drew - The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature
Lao Tze - Tao Te Ching
Leopold, Aldo - A Sand County Almanac
Lerman, Eleanor - The Sensual World Re-emerges
Levertov, Denise - With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads
Lim, Shirley Geok-lin - Joss and Gold
Lowell, Robert - Life Studies and For the Union Dead

Lurie, Alison - Foreign Affairs
Lyon, Nina - Uprooted: On the Trail of the Green Man

MacArthur, Robin - Half Wild
Macdonald, Helen - H Is for Hawk

Macfarlane, Robert - Landmarks
Malamud, Bernard - The Fixer
Mantel, Hilary - Bring Up the Bodies
Mantel, Hilary - Wolf Hall

Marquand, John P. - The Late George Apley
Mason, Herbert (ed.) - Gilgamesh
McCann, Colum - Let the Great World Spin
McPhee, John - The Survival of the Bark Canoe
Middleton, Stanley - Holiday
Millay, Edna St. Vincent - Mine the Harvest
Miller, Karen Maezen - Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life
Miller, Madeline - The Song of Achilles
Momaday, N. Scott - House Made of Dawn
Moore, Jeffrey - Red-Rose Chain

Mortali, Micah - Rewilding: Meditations, Practices, and Skills for Awakening in Nature

Muir, John - A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf
Murdoch, Iris - The Black Prince
Murdoch, Iris - The Sea, The Sea
Naipaul, V.S. - In a Free State
Neruda, Pablo - 100 Love Sonnets
Nhat Hanh, Thich - The Art of Communicating
Nhat Hanh, Thich - The Sun My Heart
Obama, Michelle - Becoming
Obreht, Tea - The Tiger's Wife

O'Connor, David - The Beast and the Silent Blue
O'Hagan, Andrew - Personality
Okri, Ben - The Famished Road
Olds, Sharon - Stag's Leap

Orr, David - The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong

Pancake, Ann - Strange as this Weather Has Been
Penry, Tylluan - Seeking the Green

Peterkin, Julia - Scarlet Sister Mary
Pipher, Mary - Women Rowing North: Navigating Life's Currents and Flourishing as We Age 
Porter, Katherine Anne - The Collected Stories

Potok, Chaim - My Name is Asher Lev
Proulx, Annie - Brokeback Mountain
Proust, Marcel - Remembrance of Things Past

Raffin, Michele - The Birds of Pandemonium: Life Among the Exotic & the Endangered
Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan - Cross Creek Cookery

Reed, Thomas - Pocketful of Poseys

Rhys, Jean - Wide Sargasso Sea
Robinson, Marilynne - Housekeeping
Roth, Philip - Goodbye, Columbus
Rushdie, Salman - Midnight's Children
Russell, Karen - Swamplandia!

Russo, Richard - Empire Falls
Safina, Carl - The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World
Sagal, Peter - The Incomplete Book of Running
Salih, Tayeb - Season of Migration to the North
Sanders, Scott Russell - Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World
Sarton, May - The Fur Person

Schafer, Daniel L. - Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley: African Princess, Florida Slave, Plantation Slaveowner
Scott, Paul - Staying On

Shields, Carol - The Stone Diaries
Shields, David - The Thing About Life is that One Day You're Dead

Shin, Kyung-Sook - Please Look After Mom
Shomer, Enid - Tourist Season
Smallin, Donna - Organizing Plain & Simple

Smiley, Jane - A Thousand Acres

Smith, Alexander McCall - The Colors of All the Cattle
Smith, Alexander McCall - The Double Comfort Safari Club
Smith, Alexander McCall - The House of Unexpected Sisters

Smith, Alexander McCall - How to Raise an Elephant

Smith, Alexander McCall - In the Time of Five Pumpkins
Smith, Alexander McCall - The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection
Smith, Alexander McCall - The Miracle at Speedy Motors
Smith, Alexander McCall - Precious and Grace
Smith, Laura Lee - Heart of Palm

Springsteen, Bruce - Born to Run
Stimson, Ellen - Mud Season
St. John of the Cross - Dark Night of the Soul

Strout, Elizabeth - Abide with Me
Strout, Elizabeth - Olive Kitteridge
Stuckey, Priscilla - Kissed by a Fox and Other Stories of Friendship in Nature
Styron, William - Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness 
Swift, Graham - Last Orders
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Syjuco, Miguel - Ilustrado

Taber, Gladys - Stillmeadow Daybook

Tarkington, Booth - The Magnificent Ambersons

Tharp, Twyla - The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together

Tharp, Twyla - Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life
Thayil, Jeet - Narcopolis
Thubten, Anam - No Self, No Problem

Thurber, James - The Thurber Carnival
Tong, Su - The Boat to Redemption
Unsworth, Barry - Sacred Hunger

Ward, Jesmyn - Let Us Descend
Welty, Eudora - The Optimist's Daughter
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
White, E.B. - The Second Tree from the Corner
White, Randy Wayne - Deceived
Whybrow, Helen, ed. - Coming to Land in a Troubled World
Williams, Terry Tempest - When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice 
Wright, David (trans.) - Beowulf 
Wright, Richard - Native Son
Yezzi, David - Birds of the Air

BY TITLE
100 Love Sonnets - Pablo Neruda

Abide with Me - Elizabeth Strout
Advise and Consent - Allen Drury
A False Spring - Pat Jordan

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

Alexander Hamilton - Ron Chernow
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon

Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley: African Princess, Florida Slave, Plantation Slaveowner - Daniel L Schafer

A Road Course in Early American Literature: Travel and Teaching from Atzlan to Amherst - Thomas Hallock
A Room with a View - E.M. Forster
The Art of Communicating - Thich Nhat Hanh
The Art of Nonconformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World - Chris Guillebeau
Aspects of the Novel - E.M. Forster

A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan

The Beast and the Silent Blue - David O'Connor
Becoming - Michelle Obama
Beowulf - David Wright (trans.)
Birds of the Air - David Yezzi

The Birds of Pandemonium: Life Among the Exotic & the Endangered - Michele Raffin
Birthday Letters - Ted Hughes

Bitten: My Unexpected Love Affair with Florida - Andrew Furman
The Black Prince - Iris Murdoch
The Boat to Redemption - Su Tong
The Body Artist - Don DeLillo

Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
Bring Up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel
Brokeback Mountain - Annie Proulx
The Brothers K - David James Duncan (plus a little more)
Call of the Rainbow Warrior - Twyla Dell 
The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer

Chinaman - Shehan Karunatilaka

The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together - Twyla Tharp
The Collected Stories - Katherine Anne Porter

The Colors of All the Cattle - Alexander McCall Smith
Coming to Land in a Troubled World - Helen Whybrow, ed.
The Conservationist - Nadine Gordimer
Cross Creek Cookery - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness - William Styron 
Dark Night of the Soul - St. John of the Cross
Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather

A Death in the Family - James Agee
The Decameron - Giovanni Boccaccio
Deceived - Randy Wayne White

The Decision Book: 50 Models for Strategic Thinking - Mikael Krogerus & Roman Tschappeler

Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country - Pam Houston
Delights & Shadows - Ted Kooser

Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver
Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness - Edward Abbey
The Double Comfort Safari Club - Alexander McCall Smith

Early Autumn - Louis Bromfield

Empire Falls - Richard Russo
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better - Pema Chodron
The Famished Road - Ben Okri
Fathers Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport [Mostly Baseball] - Donald Hall
The Finkler Question - Howard Jacobson
First Light - Charles Baxter
The Fixer - Bernard Malamud
The Flame Trees of Thika - Elspeth Huxley
Flight Behavior - Barbara Kingsolver

Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie
The Fur Person - May Sarton
G. - John Berger
The Garden of Evening Mists - Tan Twan Eng
The Gathering - Anne Enright
Gilgamesh - Herbert Mason (ed.)
The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
Goodbye, Columbus - Philip Roth
The Great Fire - Shirley Hazzard
The Greengage Summer - Rumer Godden
Grendel - John Gardner
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Half the Night is Gone - Amitabha Bagchi

Half Wild - Robin MacArthur
Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life - Karen Maezen Miller
Heart of Palm - Laura Lee Smith
Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow
H Is for Hawk - Helen Macdonald

His Lovely Wife - Elizabeth Dewberry
Holiday - Stanley Middleton

The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature - J. Drew Lanham 
House Made of Dawn - N. Scott Momaday
The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende
The House of Unexpected Sisters - Alexander McCall Smith
The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
Howards End - E.M. Forster
How Late It Was, How Late - James Kelman
How Life Imitates the World Series - Thomas Boswell
How to Be Alive: A Guide to the Kind of Happiness That Helps the World - Colin Beavan

How to Raise an Elephant - Alexander McCall Smith
I Know This Much is True - Wally Lamb (preliminary here)
Ilustrado - Miguel Syjuco
In a Free State - V.S. Naipaul

In the Time of Five Pumpkins - Alexander McCall Smith
The Incomplete Book of Running - Peter Sagal

Infinite Country - Patricia Engel
Islands in the Stream - Ernest Hemingway
Joss and Gold - Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life - Twyla Tharp 
Kissed by a Fox and Other Stories of Friendship in Nature - Priscilla Stuckey 

Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Known World - Edward P. Jones
The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver

Landmarks - Robert Macfarlane
Last Orders - Graham Swift

The Late George Apley - John P. Marquand
The Lazarus Project - Aleksandar Hemon
Life & Times of Michael K - J.M. Coetzee
Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann

Let Us Descend - Jesmyn Ward
Life Studies and For the Union Dead - Robert Lowell
The Light Around the Body - Robert Bly
Light in August - William Faulkner (with background)
The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection - Alexander McCall Smith
The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst

The Long Season - Jim Brosnan
Lord of Misrule - Jaimy Gordon
Losing It All to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My Cracker Landscape - Bill Belleville
The Lowland - Jhumpa Lahiri

The Magnificent Ambersons - Booth Tarkington

May We Be Forgiven - A.M. Homes

March - Geraldine Brooks

Matrix - Lauren Groff
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

Milkman - Anna Burns
Mine the Harvest - Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Miracle at Speedy Motors - Alexander McCall Smith
Mrs. Bridge - Evan S. Connell
Mud Season - Ellen Stimson

My Name is Asher Lev - Chaim Potok
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
Narcopolis - Jeet Thayil
Native Son - Richard Wright
No Self, No Problem - Anam Thubten

The Night Watchman - Louise Erdrich
Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout
The Optimist's Daughter - Eudora Welty
Organizing Plain & Simple - Donna Smallin
Our Horses in Egypt - Rosalind Belben
The Overcoat - Nikolai Gogol
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle

Pennant Race - Jim Brosnan
Personality - Andrew O'Hagan
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - Annie Dillard

Play by Play: Baseball, Radio and Life in the Last Chance League - Neal Conan

Please Look After Mom - Kyung-Sook Shin 

Pocketful of Poseys - Thomas Reed

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business - Charles Duhigg 
Practical Gods - Carl Dennis
Precious and Grace - Alexander McCall Smith
Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Pursuit of the Prodigal - Louis Auchincloss
The Reading Group Handbook - Rachel W. Jacobsohn
Rediscovering Rawlings, a River and Time - Bill Belleville
Red-Rose Chain - Jeffrey Moore
Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust

Rewilding: Meditations, Practices, and Skills for Awakening in Nature - Micah Mortali
Rites of Passage - William Golding 
River of Lakes - Bill Belleville

The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong - David Orr 

The Rural Life - Verlyn Klinkenborg
Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth
A Sand County Almanac - Aldo Leopold
$aved: How I Quit Worrying About Money and Became the Richest Guy in the World - Ben Hewitt

Scarlet Sister Mary - Julia Peterkin
Season of Migration to the North - Tayeb Salih
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch
The Second Tree from the Corner - E.B. White
Seeking the Green - Tylluan Penry
Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Selected Poems - Stanley Kunitz 
The Sensual World Re-emerges - Eleanor Lerman
The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell

The Singapore Grip - J.G. Farrell
Sightlines - Kathleen Jamie
The Silver Donkey - Sonya Hartnett

Snowman: The True Story of a Champion - Catherine Hapka
The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Stag's Leap - Sharon Olds
Staying On - Paul Scott
Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World - Scott Russell Sanders

Stillmeadow Daybook - Gladys Taber

Strange as this Weather Has Been - Ann Pancake
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein

The Stone Diaries - Carol Shields
The Sun My Heart - Thich Nhat Hanh

Superior Women - Alice Adams
The Survival of the Bark Canoe - John McPhee
Swamplandia! - Karen Russell
Talk Like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds - Carmine Gallo
Tao Te Ching - Lao Tze
The Thing About Life is that One Day You're Dead - David Shields

A Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley

A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf - John Muir
Three Sisters - Bi Feiyu

The Thurber Carnival - James Thurber
The Tiger's Wife - Tea Obreht
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Tourist Season - Enid Shomer
A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts - N.M. Kelby
Ulysses - James Joyce (plus this)

Untamed - Glennon Doyle
Uprooted: On the Trail of the Green Man - Nina Lyon

The Vaster Wilds - Lauren Groff
The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World - Carl Safina
The View from Pompey's Head - Hamilton Basso
What Jackie Taught Us - Tina Santi Flaherty
When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice - Terry Tempest Williams 
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga

Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads - Denise Levertov
Winterton Blue - Trezza Azzopardi
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
Women Rowing North: Navigating Life's Currents and Flourishing as We Age - Mary Pipher
World's Fair - E.L. Doctorow
Writers Dreaming - Naomi Epel