Amanda's Book Reviews

I use the word review loosely; they vary from a paragraph describing the book to extensive discussions of my thoughts about it. I wish I wrote a review of every book I read, but I often don't get around to it until the book has faded in my mind, so this is just a selection. Each title is followed by a rough (+/0/-) rating of the book overall.

I don't review every book I read, but I do try to give them all a rating and comment very briefly on them in a year-end write up. You can see my comments on all of the books I read in 2001, books I read in 2002, and books I read in 2003.

Categories

New Reviews:

Michael Chabon; The Final Solution (0)
Harold Love; Attributing Authorship (+)

Non-Genre Fiction

Joan Aiken; Jane Fairfax (+)
Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace (+)
Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye (+)
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (+)
Jane Austen, Persuasion (+)
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (+)

Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle (0)
John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (-)
Olive Ann Burns, Cold Sassy Tree (+)
A.S. Byatt, Possession (+)

Italo Calvino, Difficult Loves (+)
Colette, The Claudine Novels (+)
Douglas Coupland, microserfs (+)
Douglas Coupland, Miss Wyoming (+)

Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones's Diary (+)
Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (+)

Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street (0)
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (+)
Kent Haruf, Plainsong (+)
Ernest Hemmingway, A Farewell to Arms (-)
Ernest Hemmingway, The Sun Also Rises (0)

John Irving, A Widow for One Year (+)

Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (0)

Stanislaw Lem, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (+)
Madeleine L'Engle, The Love Letters (0)
Madeleine L'Engle, The Other Side of the Sun (-)
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (+)

Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (+)
Daphne du Maurier, The Loving Spirit (0)
Toni Morrison, Sula (-)

Ann Patchett, The Patron Saint of Liars (0)
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (+)

Ayn Rand, Anthem (0)
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (0)
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (+)
Richard Russo, Straight Man (+)

J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye (+)
Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (0)
Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine (0)
Jane Smiley, Moo (0)
Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres (+)
Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (+)
John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (+)

D. M. Thomas, The White Hotel (-)

Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men (+)
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (+)

Laura Zigman, Animal Husbandry (0)

Science Fiction and Fantasy

IsaacAsimov, Foundation (+)
Isaac Asmiov, The Robot Novels (+)
Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Forest House (0)
David Brin, Glory Season (0)
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game (+)
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow (+)
Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon (0)
Sharyn Crumb, Bimbos of the Death Sun (+)
Pamela Dean, Tam Lin (0)
Samuel Delany, Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (-)
Robert Heinlein, Expanded Universe (-)
Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (0)
Guy Gavriel Kay, Fionovar Tapestry (+)
Nancy Kress; Beggars in Spain (+)
Doris Lessing, Shikasta (0)
Anne McCaffrey, The Rowan (0)
Larry Niven, Ringworld (0)
Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye (+)
Matt Ruff, Sewer, Gas, and Electric (+)
Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow (+)
Robert Silverberg, ed.; A Century of Science Fiction, 1950-1959 (+)
Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age (+)
Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (+)
Sheri Tepper, Beauty (+)
Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (+)

Mystery

Michael Chabon, The Final Solution (0)
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (+)
Sue Grafton, A is for Alibi (+)
Laurie King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice (+)
Laurie King, A Monstrous Regiment of Women (+)

Young Adult Fiction

Louisa May Alcott, Eight Cousins (+)
Louisa May Alcott, Rose in Bloom (+)
Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting (-)
Kendall Hailey, The Day I Became an Autodidact (+)
Katherine Kurtz, Deryni Rising (0)
C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia (+)
Lois Lowry, The Giver (0)
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkanban (+)
J.R.R. Tolkien, Roverandom (+)
Tad Williams, Tailchaser's Song (0)

Non-fiction

Joan Delfattore, What Johnny Shouldn't Read: Textbook Censorship in America (+)
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (-)
Simson Garfinkel, Daniel Weise & Steven Strassmann (ed.), The UNIX-HATERS Handbook (0)
Steven Levy, Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything (+)
Harold Love; Attributing Authorship (+)
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (+)
John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (0)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (+)
Simon Singh, The Code Book (+)
Huston Smith, The Religions of Man (+)
Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life (+)
Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod (+)
Simon Winchester; The Professor and the Madman (+)

Reference

Jennifer Darling (ed.), Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook (+)
Editors of Vegetarian Times, Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook (+)
Elizabeth Zimmerman, Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac (+)

 

 

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