Reading

In December 2014, I started posting brief comments on each book I read, bundled up into batches of half a dozen to a dozen, under the heading “What I’ve been reading lately”. Here is the ongoing list of those reviews.

• part 1 (Metamorphosis; The Rest of the Robots; Foundation; Foundation and Empire; Free Software, Free Society; The Kraken Wakes; Artemis Fowl)
• part 2 (Second Foundation; Windfall; Foundation’s Edge; Mary Poppins; The Prodigal God; Slam; The Annals of the Heechee)
• part 3 (Peter Pan and Wendy; Peril at End House; Lord Edgware Dies; The Chrysalids; The Hound of Death; Batman: Year One)
• part 4 (Murder on the Orient Express; The New Jerusalem; The Game (The Game is Life, book 1); The Club of Queer Trades; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Unoffendable)
• part 5 (One Hundred and Forty Characters in Search of an Argument; Through the Looking Glass; The Girl on the Pier; The Listerdale Mystery; Stardust; Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?)
• part 6 (Off to be the Wizard; Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens; Parker Pyne Investigates; Childhood’s End; Longbourne; Foundation and Earth; The Wisdom of Father Brown)
• part 7 (Joni Mitchell: in her Own Words, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, Equal Rites, Lords and Ladies, P.I. on a Hot Tin Roof, Three Act Tragedy, Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, The Eden Plague (Plague Wars, book 0))
• part 8 (Death in the Clouds; Carpe Jugulum; Silo 49: Going Dark; Maskerade; The Caves of Steel; The Naked Sun; The A.B.C. Murders; The Martian)
• part 9 (The Man who Sold the Moon, Cards on the Table, Murder in Mesopotamia, Thud!, Poirot Loses a Client, Going Postal, Thief of Time, Tremendous Trifles, A Fall of Moondust)
• part 10 (Night Watch, Appointment with Death, Monstrous Regiment, The Defendant, Pope Francis (Pastor of Mercy), Lilith, Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, Manalive, Feet of Clay, Death on the Nile)
• part 11 (Making Money, Orthodoxy, Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, Surveillance (Ghost Targets book 1), Jingo, The Man who was Thursday, Magic: a Fantastic Comedy, Mostly Harmless, What on Earth am I Here For?, Panglor, Murder in the Mews)
• part 12 (All Things Considered, The Stamp Collective, All Marketers are Liars, Legacy Code (Legacy Code book 1), How Did All This Happen?, Alarms and Discursions, The Big Sleep, The Authorities, E.M.P., Star Island)
• part 13 (Basket Case, Skinny Dip, Star Wars, Blink, A Book for Her, African Adventure, Thinking, Fast and Slow, How to Lie with Statistics, C. S. Lewis: a Life Inspired)
• part 14 (Career of Evil; The Cuckoo’s Calling; Anne of Green Gables; Anne of Avonlea; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Anne of the Island; Murder is Easy; Anne’s House of Dreams)
• part 15 (The Martian; Essential The Amazing Spider-Man, Volume 1; The Eyre Affair; The Silkworm; The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories; The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies; Essential The Amazing Spider-Man, Volume 2; Essential The Incredible Hulk, Volume 1; Lost in a Good Book)
• part 16 (And Then There Were None; The Well of Lost Plots; Sad Cypress; 15 Minutes: a Time Travel Suspense Thriller; Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom; Lucky You; One, Two, Buckle My Shoe; The Love You Make: an Insider’s Story of the Beatles; The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions)
• part 17 (Wings; Desert Solitaire; The Psychopath Test; Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway; The Sense of Style: the Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century; Trap Line; The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems; Essential The Fantastic Four, Volume 1)
• part 18 (Evil under the Sun; N or M?; Unoffendable; Harry Potter and the Cursed Child; The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to that which is to Come, delivered under the Similitude of a Dream; Testimony; The Pilgrim’s Regress; Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone; Blindsight)
• part 19 (The Complete Beyond the Fringe; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; From Fringe to Flying Circus; The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog; Dave Barry’s Gift Guide to End All Gift Guides; The Goodies’ Book of (Criminal) Records; George and Joe and Jack and Bob; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; What’s Wrong With the World)
• part 20 (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Body in the Library, Stalky and co., Bridget Jones’s Baby: the Diaries, Uprooted, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Children of Húrin, The General Danced at Dawn, The Salmon of Doubt, Systems of Survival: a Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics)
• part 21 (Who Sent the Sentinels?, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Watchmen, Pro Git, Complete Future Shocks)
• part 22 (Saga of the Swamp Thing, Miracleman book one: A Dream of Flying, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the Origin, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)
• part 23 (The Enemy; One Hundred and Forty Characters in Search of an Argument; Five Little Pigs; Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid; Pure Drivel; The Midwich Cuckoos; Out of Sight; The Complete Harlem Heroes; The Stainless Steel Rat; Crime and Punishment)
• part 24 (Zeno and the Tortoise: How to Think Like a Philosopher, Twelve Types, Return of the Timewaster Letters, The Moving Finger, Towards Zero, Didn’t You Kill My Mother-in-Law?, Agatha Raisin: As the Pig Turns, Flesh: the Dino Files)
• part 25 (Deep Space Accountant, Small Dreams of a Scorpion, Death Comes as an End, The Wisdom of the Desert, Thrill-Power Overload: 2000 AD, the First Forty Years, Snuff, The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, volume 3, Sparkling Cyanide)
• part 26 (You Had Me at Hello, After Hello, The Hollow, Taken at the Flood, The Labours of Hercules, Watership Down, Crooked House, The Confusion)
• part 27 (The Timewaster Letters, A Murder is Announced, Notes from a Small Island, Becoming Johnny Vegas, Neither Here nor There, They Came to Baghdad, The Innocence of Father Brown, Dr. Fegg’s Encyclopeadia of All World Knowledge)
• part 28 (Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, The Lost Continent, They Do It With Mirrors, Two Brothers, The Wisdom of Father Brown, A Wrinkle in Time, I’m a Stranger Here Myself, At Home, The Brand New Monty Python Papperbok)
• part 29 (Arkham Asylum, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World, and Why, Rothgar, All-Star Superman, Marvel Platinum: the Definitive Iron Man, Superman: True Brit, Batman: Year One, Superman: Red Son)
• part 30 (In Defence of Fascism, How to Operate a Chair, A Pocketful of Rye, Mere Christianity, Dog Killer, After the Funeral, Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, Flex Mentallo)
• part 31 (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Whose Body?, Time and Time Again, Contact, Five on Brexit Island, Cloud of Witnesses, Freakonomics, Dead Famous)
• part 32 (Popcorn, Destination Unknown, Gridlock, Hickory Dickory Death, Brian Clough: Nobody Ever Says Thank You, How Not to be a Boy, What Did You Think of the New Doctor Who, Andrew?, How to be Right … in a World Gone Wrong)
• part 33 (Ordeal by Innocence, 4:50 from Paddington, Orthodoxy, Doctor Who and Warrior’s Gate, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, Mother Tongue: the English Language, The Crystal Cave)
• part 34 (Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now?: 2018 edition, Essential The Incredible Hulk volume 1, The Long Earth, Axe Cop volume 3, Axe Cop volume 2: Bad Guy Earth, The Mating Season, How to Stop Time, Gorky Park)
• part 35 (Wintersmith, Serenity: Those Left Behind, Chart Throb, State of Fear, Moses May Have Been an Apache, and Other Actual Facts, The Club of Queer Trades, What If?, Past Mortem)
• part 36 (The Magician’s Nephew, This Other Eden, The Horse and His Boy, The Four Loves, Have You Eaten Grandma?, Raising Steam, It’s Not Me, It’s You)
• part 37 (High Society, Cat Among the Pigeons, Fifty Things that Made the Modern Economy, Lost for Words, Sense and Sensibility, So You Think You Know All About Football, Wishful Drinking, Lethal White)
• part 38 (Tremendous Trifles, Pride and Prejudice, Blind Faith, The Pale Horse, Cranford, Tangled up In Pooh, Here’s Looking at You, Five Go on a Strategy Away Day)
• part 39 (Northanger Abbey, The Cuckoo’s Calling, When We Were Very Young, The Silkworm, Winnie-the-Pooh, The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year, Slaughterhouse-Five, Persuasion)
• part 40 (If I Never Met You, Now We Are Six, London’s Strangest Tales, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, Fifty Stories for Fifty Years, The Lightning Thief, The House at Pooh Corner, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding.)
• part 41 (Emma; The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side; The Railway Children; The Sea of Monsters; The Dirty Parts of the Bible; Unplugged; UFO: Shoot Out the Lights; The Story of the Treasure Seekers)
• part 42 (Career of Evil, The Clocks, A Caribbean Mystery, Meltdown, Dead Man’s Folly, At Bertram’s Hotel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Dinosaurs, Artemis)
• part 43 (The Constant Rabbit, The Problem with Men, Court and Spark, On “On Monday, I Placed Two Apples”, The Firm, It’s Obvious You Won’t Survive by Your Wits Alone, The Seeds of Time, Heretics)
• part 44 (Made in America, A Brazen Curiosity: a Regency Cozy, Everything You Ever Wanted, Trouble with Lichen, Five Children and It, The Status Civilization, The Other Bennett Sister, Star Island, Stormy Weather)
• part 45 (Lead, Tourist Season, Double Whammy, Skin Tight, Native Tongue, Sci-ence! Justice Leak!, Last Night, Murder by Candlelight)
• part 46 (Blackout (Sam Archer book 3), The Phoenix and the Carpet, You Had Me at Hello, After Hello, The Titan’s Curse, Strip Tease, Artemis Fowl, Lucky You, The Battle of the Labyrinth, The Last Olympian)
• part 47 (Fake Law: the Truth about Justice in an Age of Lies, Armada, London Town, Because of You, Blessed are the Misfits, Fool Me Once, Master of Formalities, Worst Idea Ever, Blast Off at Woomera, Project Hail Mary)