Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Book Reviews (sorted by rating)

Perfect 5's

Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Love and Summer by William Trevor

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson

Writing in the Dark by David Grossman

4.5 out of 5

A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif

A Country Called Home by Kim Barnes

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

C by Tom McCarthy

The Collector of Worlds by Iliya Troyanov

Dervishes by Beth Helms

Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee

Effigy by Alissa York

Enough About Love by Herve Le Tellier

Franklin and Lucy by Joseph Persico

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Matrimony by Joshua Henkin

The Master Bedroom by Tessa Hadley

My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead by Jeffrey Eugenides

One More Year by Sana Krasikov

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

Rupert by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano

Songs for the Missing by Stewart O'Nan

The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

The Taker and Other Stories by Rubem Fonseca

Theft by Peter Carey

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

World and Town by Gish Jen

4 out of 5

A Better Angel by Chris Adrian

A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam

A Stingray Bit My Nipple! by Erik Torkells

America America by Ethan Canin

AM/PM by Amelia Gray

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

Beg, Borrow, Steal by Michael Greenberg

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham

The Confessions of Edward Day by Valerie Martin

Disquiet by Julis Leigh

Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis

The Elephant’s Journey by Jose Saramago

Everything Matters! by Ron Currie, Jr.

Fall of Frost by Brian Hall

Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick

The Foreigner by Francie Lin

The Forever War by Dexter Filkins

Fun with Problems by Robert Stone

Gasoline by Quim Monzo

The German Mujahid by Boualem Sansal

The Golden Calf by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov

The Halfway House by Guillermo Rosales

Handing One Another Along: Literature and Social Reflection by Robert Coles

A Happy Marriage by Rafael Yglesias

The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent

Hiding in the Spotlight by Greg Dawson

Home by Marilynne Robinson

Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut

Indignation by Philip Roth

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan

The Last War by Ana Menendez

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville

Little Fingers by Filip Florian

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer

Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

My Life in France by Julia Child

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

Nobody's Home by Dubravka Ugresic

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Passing Strange by Martha Sandweiss

The Passive Vampire by Ghérasim Luca

The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi

The Philosophical Breakfast Club by Laura Snyder

Pigeon Post by Dumitru Tsepeneag

Play it as it Lays by Joan Dideon

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton

Rex by José Manuel Prieto

Room by Emma Donoghue

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Solar by Ian McEwan

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

The Theory of Light & Matter by Andrew Porter

The Toss of a Lemon by Padma Viswanathan

Trespass by Rose Tremain

Vacation by Deb Olin Unferth

Vilnius Poker by Ricardas Gavelis

The Walking People by Mary Beth Keane

The Way We Eat by Peter Singer (and Jim Mason)

When Wanderers Cease to Roam by Vivian Swift

Where We Know: New Orleans as Home by David Rutledge

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Wish Her Safe at Home by Stephen Benatar

You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon

3.5 out of 5

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga

The Boat by Nam Lee

Crossing the Hudson by Peter Stephan Jungk

The Development by John Barth

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller

Down to a Sunless Sea by Mathias Freese

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Emily Post by Laura Claridge

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

The Fireman's Wife by Jack Riggs

The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews

Freeman Walker by David Allan Cates

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

Genius and Heroin by Michael Largo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The Good Wife by Stewart O'Nan

In the Land of Invisible Women by Qanta Ahmed

In the Wake of the Boatman by Jonathon Scott Fuqua

John the Revelator by Peter Murphy

The Last Bridge by Teri Coyne

Libation, a Bitter Alchemy by Deirdre Heekin

Love or Something Like It by Deirdre Shaw

Man in the Dark by Paul Auster

Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolaño

The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin

The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

The Patron Saint of Used Cars and Second Chances by Mark Millhone

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

The Privileges by Jonathan Dee

Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo

The Salt Smugglers by Gérard de Nerval

Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale

Sweeping Up Glass by Carolyn Wall

Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner

The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist

The Vampire of Ropraz by Jacques Chessex

3 out of 5

A Dangerous Affair by Caro Peacock

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

An Alphabetical Life by Wendy Werris

The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman

Be a Nose by Art Spiegelman

Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor

The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu

Conscience Point by Erica Abeel

Dali & I by Stan Lauryssens

Darkmans by Nicola Barker

Dragon House by John Shors

From A to X by John Berger

Gold of Kings by Davis Bunn

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti

His Illegal Self by Peter Carey

Honolulu by Alan Brennert

Lush Life by Richard Price

Lying with the Dead by Michael Mewshaw

The Man Who Ate the World by Jay Rayner

Nada by Carmen Laforet

Outcasts United by Warren St. John

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

Rhyming Life & Death by Amos Oz

Rocket Man by William Elliot Hazelgrove

Some of the Dead are Still Breathing by Charles Bowden

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

The Triumph of Deborah by Eva Etzioni-Halevy

Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo

War on the Margins by Libby Cone

2.5 out of 5

Bikeman by Thomas Flynn

The Book of Unholy Mischief by Elle Newmark

The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant

Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Etta by Gerald Kolpan

The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato

Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer (and Annie Barrows)

The Immortal by Traci Slatton

The Locust and the Bird by Hanan Al-Shaykh

Midwife of the Blue Ridge by Christine Blevins

2 out of 5

Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey

Curiosities of Literature by John Sutherland

The Face on Your Plate by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

The Gathering by Anne Enright

Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon

The Marchesa by Simonetta Agnello Hornby

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

Some Dream for Fools by Faïza Guène

Tell Me Where it Hurts by Nick Trout

The Watercooler Effect by Nicholas DiFonzo

1.5 out of 5

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta

The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz

1 out of 5

Castaway Kid by R.B. Mitchell

Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish

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