Favorite Books -- BOOK THOUGHTS

 

BOOK THOUGHTS

Favorite Books

Here are two dozen of my favorite books. Think of this as a sort of Meet the Book Blogger post. I pulled these favorite fiction and favorite nonfiction books off my shelves to illustrate the types of books I like to read. They aren't my favorite books of all times, but they are favorites that I've kept around. All have survived several shelf purges, proving they really are favorite books. 

One thing you can tell from these favorites is I don't run out to read the latest book. My TBR shelves overflow with dated popular fiction, "modern" classics from the 20th Century, and books that were never popular but caught my eye. I read a lot of crime fiction and dabble with a few romance novels now and again, but there are several genres I rarely, if ever, read, like sci-fi, fantasy, erotica, and horror. 

As for nonfiction, I love food writing, travel writing of the expat memoir variety, biographies of Midcentury socialites (there's a sub-genre for you!), style guides (as in writing style, not clothes), coffee table books about home decorating, and books about books.   

Do we share any tastes in books? Here are some of my favorites.

 FAVORITE FICTION

📗 The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch

📗 Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

📗 The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

📗 Independence Day by Richard Ford

📗 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

📗 Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion

📗 Mating by Norman Rush

📗 Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

📗 Transcription by Kate Atkinson

📗 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

📗 Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

📗 American Tabloid by James Ellroy

FAVORITE NONFICTION

📘 Merry Hall by Beverley Nichols

📘 The Library Book by Susan Orlean

📘 Wait for Me! By Deborah Mitford

📘 The King’s English: A Guide to Modern Usage by Kingsley Amis

📘 Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O’Connor

📘 Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell

📘 My Life in France by Julia Child

📘 The Food of France by Waverley Root

📘 Eats Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

📘 The Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell

📘 Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government by P.J. O’Rourke

Have you read any of these? Would you?

Kingsley Amis, Favorite Author -- BOOK THOUGHTS

 

BOOK THOUGHTS

Kingsley Amis, Favorite Author

"If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing."
~ Kingsley Amis in Lucky Jim

Kingsley Amis was born on this day in 1922. He is in my pantheon of favorite authors, right up there with Graham Greene, Jim Harrison, Iris Murdoch, Philip Roth, Muriel Spark, and Evelyn Waugh.

But Amis holds a special place in my reader’s heart. His Lucky Jim book, which I first read in a college lit class, opened my eyes to the idea that “literature” could be funny. Until then – after books in school like The Grapes of Wrath, A Separate Peace, and Othello – I assumed all “good” writing was stone cold serious. I even missed the funny bits in books like Huckleberry Finn and Oliver Twist because I was sure anything I thought was funny must be a mistake on my part, not intentional. 

Then a professor assigned Lucky Jim and I couldn’t help laughing. Here was poor Jim Dixon, bumbling his way through college (as a new professor) just like me and my friends: Jim trying to go to class hungover, struggling through a lecture while drunk, getting rejected in love, wanting to impress the adults, and making embarrassing gaffes. I was laughing and my professor was explaining how the novel was a turning point in English literature. Turn away, I thought. I want more of this.

Because of Amis, I learned to read "good books" for pleasure, not just because I should. So I’ve been an Amis fan going on 40 years. I’m still less than halfway through all his books because he was prolific. He was fortunate to live in a time when the publishing industry tolerated popular authors writing anything they wanted, as long as they turned out a new book on a regular basis. Along with the comic novels of which he was the master, he turned his hand to mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, alternate history, poetry, biography, and essays. He was also a prodigious letter writer, especially with his buddy Philip Larkin.

The picture above is my collection of Amis books. Those I’ve read are on the left. This includes four volumes of Lucky Jim, which even I recognize is excessive, but I love the Penguin triband and the later Penguin with the Edward Gorey cover. Those in the stack on the right are the ones on my TBR shelf, including two biographies.

Have you read anything by Kingsley Amis? What’s your favorite? 

I keep a bibliography of Kingsley Amis books here on Rose City Reader, noting those I've finished, those on my TBR shelf, and those I have yet to track down. 

Kingsley Amis Bibliography -- BOOK LIST

KINGLSEY AMIS

Kingsley Amis (1922 - 1995) was an English novelist, poet, and critic, known off the page for his hard drinking and philandering. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social and literary criticism. His son is the author Martin Amis. 

Amis is a favorite of mine because his novel, Lucky Jim, taught me (and thousands of others) that literature can be funny. Because of Amis, I learned to read "good books" for pleasure, not just because I should. He was fortunate to live in a time when the publishing industry tolerated popular authors writing anything they wanted, as long as they turned out a new book on a regular basis. Along with the comic novels of which he was the master, he turned his hand to mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, alternate history, poetry, biography, and essays.

Here is a list of Kingsley Amis's books, from most recent to oldest, with notes about whether I've read the book or it is on my TBR shelf. Some I can't find links to because they are so out of print. You can bet I'd like to get my hands on those! 

• 2001 The Letters of Kingsley Amis, Edited by Zachary Leader TBR SHELF

• 1997 The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage FINISHED

• 1995 The Biographer's Moustache FINISHED

• 1994 You Can't Do Both TBR SHELF

• 1992 The Russian Girl TBR SHELF

• 1991 We Are All Guilty TBR SHELF

• 1991 Mr. Barrett's Secret and Other Stories

• 1991 Memoirs TBR SHELF

• 1990 The Amis Collection TBR SHELF

• 1990 The Folks That Live on the Hill FINISHED

• 1988 Difficulties With Girls FINISHED

• 1986 The Great British Songbook (songs; with James Cochrane)

• 1986 The Old Devils FINISHED

• 1984 Stanley and the Women TBR SHELF

• 1984 How's Your Glass? (reviewed here) FINISHED

• 1983 Every Day Drinking (reviewed here) FINISHED

• 1980 Dear Illusion: Collected Short Stories TBR SHELF

• 1980 Russian Hide-and-Seek TBR SHELF

• 1979 An Arts Policy (essay)

• 1979 Collected Poems 1944-78 FINISHED

• 1978 Jake's Thing FINISHED

• 1977 Harold's Years: Impressions of the Harold Wilson Era (nonfiction)

• 1976 The Alteration FINISHED

• 1975 The Crime of the Century FINISHED

• 1974 Rudyard Kipling and his World TBR SHELF

• 1974 Ending Up TBR SHELF

• 1973 The Riverside Villas Murders TBR SHELF

• 1972 On Drink (reviewed here) FINISHED

• 1971 Girl, 20 FINISHED

• 1970 What Became of Jane Austen? and Other Questions

• 1969 The Green Man FINISHED 

• 1968 Lucky Jim's Politics (essay)

• 1968 A Look Round the Estate: Poems, 1957-1967 FINISHED (in omnibus)

• 1968 I Want It Now TBR SHELF

• 1968 Colonel Sun: A James Bond Adventure (as Robert Markham)

• 1966 The Anti-Death League (Burgess favorite) FINISHED 

• 1965 The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007 (as Lt. Col. William "Bill" Tanner)

• 1965 The James Bond Dossier

• 1965 The Egyptologists (with Robert Conquest) FINISHED 

• 1963 One Fat Englishman (reviewed here) FINISHED

• 1962 The Evans County (poems) FINISHED (in omnibus)

• 1962 My Enemy's Enemy (short stories) TBR SHELF

• 1960 New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction

• 1960 Take A Girl Like You TBR SHELF

• 1958 I Like it Here TBR SHELF

• 1957 Socialism and the Intellectuals (a Fabian Society pamphlet)

• 1956 A Case of Samples: Poems 1946-1956 FINISHED (in omnibus)

• 1955 That Uncertain Feeling TBR SHELF

• 1954 Lucky Jim FINISHED (twice)

• 1954 Fantasy Portraits (poems) FINISHED (in omnibus)

• 1953 A Frame of Mind (poems) FINISHED (in omnibus)

• 1947 Bright November (poems) FINISHED (in omnibus)

Book List: Books Read in 2021

 

BOOKS READ IN 2021

Every January, I try to remember to post a list of the books I read the prior year. Somehow, I completely forgot to post my list of 2021 books. I was really busy at work in early 2022, getting ready for a big trial that started in March. A lot of non-work stuff fell out of my brain. I didn't realize that my 2021 list was missing until I went to post my 2022 list. Oh well. Life happens. 

Here now, a year late, is the lit of the 134 books I read in 2021, in the order I read them. I usually read 100 - 110 books a year and have no idea how I read so many in 2021. You can find an explanation of my rating system below the list. 

• The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Red and the Black by Stendhal 🌹🌹🌹

• Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctrow 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Not Now, But Now by M. F. K. Fisher 🌹🌹🌹

• Ship of Fools by Katherine Ann Porter 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah Reed (reviewed here)🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman by Elizabeth Buchan 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Time Machine by H. G. Wells 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall 🌹🌹

• On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist by Clarissa Ward 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Murder in the Bastille by Cara Black 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Reflex by Dick Francis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live with and Care for Their Libraries by Estelle Ellis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir by Erica Jong 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Shugie Bain by Stuart Douglas 🌹🌹🌹

• Whip Hand by Dick Francis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany by Jane Mount 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Lighthouse by P. D. James 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Anglophile's Notebook by Sunday Taylor 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Midnight Line by Lee Child 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Library Book by Susan Orlean 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Charlotte Moss: A Visual Life: Scrapbooks, Collages, and Inspirations by Charlotte Moss 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Missing Joseph by Elizabeth George 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Old Filth by Jane Gardam 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• On The Wealth of Nations: Books That Changed the World by P. J. O'Rourke 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters 🌹🌹🌹

• Mystery Man by Colin Bateman 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Dead Cert by Dick Francis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Slightly Foxed, Vol. 60 (Winter 2018) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Last Friends by Jane Gardam 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Obasan by Joy Kogawa 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Wisdom of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Florence King Reader by Florence King 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• How They Decorated: Inspiration from Great Women of the Twentieth Century by Gaye P. Tapp 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Faithful Place by Tana French 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt by Arthur C. Brooks 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Consequences by Penelope Lively 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Day of the Jack Russell by Colin Bateman 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Orchids & Salami: A Gay and Impudent Memoir by Eva Gabor 🌹🌹🌹

• The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Jeeves in the Offing by P. G. Woodhouse 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Dead Bell by Reid Winslow (reviewed here) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Tender Bar by J. R. Moehringer 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Really Big Lunch: The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life by Jim Harrison 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Private Patient by P. D. James 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Mark Hampton: An American Decorator by Duane Hampton 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. 🌹🌹🌹

• Skios by Michael Frayn 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by Maarten J. Troost 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them, edited by Roxanne J. Coady 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Conservative Sensibility by George F. Will 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Eat Cake for Breakfast: And 99 Other Small Acts of Happiness by Viola Stanto 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Place in the World by Amy Maroney 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Twice Shy by Dick Francis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Little Book of Japanese Contentments: Ikigai, Forest Bathing, Wabi-sabi, and More by Erin Niimi Longhurst 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Jolie Blon's Bounce by James Lee Burke 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Bruno: Chief of Police by Martin Walker 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Fork It Over: The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater by Alan Richman 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind by Debra Ollivier 🌹🌹🌹

• Mysteries of Pittsburg by Michael Chabon 🌹🌹🌹

• Slightly Foxed, Vol. 69 (Spring 2021) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems by Jim Harrison 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Wry Martinis by Christopher Buckley 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Labyrinth by Kate Mosse 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X by Deborah Davis 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Anxious People by Fredrik Backman 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend 🌹🌹🌹

• The Darlings by Cristina Alger 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Choir by Joanna Trollope 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Uncommon Clay by Margaret Maron 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• An Alphabet for Gourmets by M. F. K. Fisher 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler 🌹🌹🌹

• Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O'Connor 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Changed Man by Francine Prose 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Split Images by Leonard Elmore 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• May We be Forgiven by A. M. Holmes 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Theban Mysteries by Amanda Cross 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• BUtterfield 8 by John O'Hara 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Building Beauty: The Alchemy of Design by Michael S. Smith 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Incredulity of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Funerals are Fatal (aka After the Funeral) by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Slightly Foxed, Vol. 71 (Autumn 2021) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• French Lessons by Ellen Sussman 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Rizzio: A Novella by Denise Mina 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• House Made of Dawn by Scott N. Momaday 🌹🌹🌹

• Peril at End House by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Past Tense by Lee Child 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Walden by Henry David Thoreau 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The French Chef in America: Julia Child's Second Act by Alex Prud'homme 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• March Violets by Philip Kerr 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Dr. Yes by Colin Bateman 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Plum Sauce: A Wodehouse Companion by Richard Usborne 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Reflections on the Psalms by C. S. Lewis 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• LaBrava by Elmore Leonard 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Final Curtain by Ngaio Marsh 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Gertie: The Fabulous Life of Gertrude Sanford Legendre, Heiress, Explorer, Socialite, Spy by Kathryn Smith 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Secret of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Scandal of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Maison: French Country Style by Elizabeth Hilliard 🌹🌹🌹

• Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? by Marion Meade 🌹🌹🌹🌹

MY RATING SYSTEM

In 2020, I switched to using roses for my rating system, since this is Rose City Reader. My rating system is idiosyncratic and ever-changing. It is a mix of how a book subjectively appeals to me when I read it, its technical merits, and whether I would recommend it to other people. For example, I might rate a book highly if it's a social comedy set in a British country house because that kind of story checks all my boxes. On the other hand, I will probably rate a book on the low end if it lacks any humor, takes itself too seriously, or intolerantly espouses a point of view I disagree with ("intolerantly" is key in that sentence). 

With those general guidelines in mind:

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 Five roses for books I loved, or would recommend to anyone, or I think are worthy of classic "must read" status." Examples would be Lucky Jim (personal favorite), A Gentleman in Moscow (universal recommendation), and Great Expectations (must read).

🌹🌹🌹🌹 Four roses for books I really enjoyed and/or would recommend to people who enjoy that type of book. So I give a lot of four roses because I might really like a book, but it isn't an all-time favorite. And while I'd recommend it to someone who likes that genre -- mystery, historical fiction, food writing, whatever -- I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who asked me for a "good book."

🌹🌹🌹 Three roses for books I was lukewarm on or maybe was glad I read but wouldn't recommend. This is where my subjectivity really shows because I will often give a book three roses simply because it isn't a genre I like. I will read sci-fi books, for example, because they are on some Must read list I'm working on, then not enjoy them because I don't like sci-fi. So when I give a sci-fi book three roses, take it with a big grain of salt.  

🌹🌹 Two roses if I didn't like it. I like most of the book I read because I chose to read them and I read what I like. But I occasionally pick a clunker. And I often dislike the book my Book Club picks. 😉

🌹 One rose if I really didn't like it. I don't know if I've ever rated a book this low. The Magus might be my only example and I read it before I started keeping my lists.

I use half roses if a book falls between categories. I can't explain what that half rose might mean, it's just a feeling.

Here is a link to the star rating system I used for years. I include it because the stars I used in years past meant something different than these roses, so if you look at my lists from past years, the ratings won't mean quite the same thing.

All-TIME Best 100 English-Language Novels -- BOOK LIST

ALL-TIME BEST 100 ENGLISH-LANGUAGE NOVELS

In 2005, TIME Magazine critics Richard Lacayo and Lev Grossman picked the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923, the year TIME began publishing. Lacayo offers a thorough explanation of their process on the magazine's website, along with descriptions of each book.

As Lacayo said in his article, "Lists like this one have two purposes. One is to instruct. The other of course is to enrage." Everyone can argue about books they think should have made this list and others that should have been left off. 

Personally, I'd prefer seeing Mary McCarthy, Barbara Pym, and Penelope Lively on this list and jettison Pynchon, Kosinski, and DeLillo. I've read 88 of the 100 books on this list so far, but I may never finish all 100. I know I'm never going to read Infinite Jest, for example. And I will probably never read Gravity's Rainbow. 

How about you? What are your thoughts?

Here is the complete list in alphabetical order, with notes if I've read it, it's on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library. 

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (reviewed here) FINISHED

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (reviewed here) FINISHED

American Pastoral by Philip Roth FINISHED

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser FINISHED

Animal Farm by George Orwell FINISHED

Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara FINISHED

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume FINISHED

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud (reviewed here) FINISHED

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien TBR SHELF

Atonement by Ian McEwan FINISHED

Beloved by Toni Morrison FINISHED

The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood TBR SHELF

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler FINISHED

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood FINISHED

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy FINISHED

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh FINISHED

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder FINISHED

Call It Sleep by Henry Roth FINISHED

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller FINISHED

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger FINISHED

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess FINISHED

The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron FINISHED

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen FINISHED

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon FINISHED

A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell (discussed here) FINISHED

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West FINISHED

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather FINISHED

A Death in the Family by James Agee FINISHED

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen FINISHED

Deliverance by James Dickey FINISHED

Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone FINISHED

Falconer by John Cheever TBR SHELF

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles FINISHED

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing FINISHED

Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin FINISHED

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell FINISHED

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck FINISHED

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon ON OVERDRIVE

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald FINISHED

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh FINISHED

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers FINISHED

The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene FINISHED

Herzog by Saul Bellow FINISHED

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson FINISHED

A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul FINISHED

I, Claudius by Robert Graves FINISHED

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace ON OVERDRIVE (but 56 hours!)

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison FINISHED

Light in August by William Faulkner FINISHED

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis FINISHED

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov FINISHED

Lord of the Flies by William Golding FINISHED

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien FINISHED

Loving by Henry Green FINISHED

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis FINISHED

The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead ON OVERDRIVE

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (reviewed here) FINISHED

Money by Martin Amis (reviewed here) FINISHED

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy FINISHED

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

Naked Lunch by William Burroughs FINISHED

Native Son by Richard Wright FINISHED

Neuromancer by William Gibson ON OVERDRIVE

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro FINISHED

1984 by George Orwell FINISHED

On the Road by Jack Kerouac FINISHED

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey FINISHED

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski (I finished as much as I could stand) FINISHED

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov FINISHED

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster FINISHED

Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion (reviewed here) FINISHED

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth FINISHED

Possession by A.S. Byatt FINISHED

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene FINISHED

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark FINISHED

Rabbit, Run by John Updike FINISHED

Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow FINISHED

The Recognitions by William Gaddis

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett FINISHED

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates FINISHED

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles FINISHED

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (reviewed here) FINISHED

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson TBR SHELF

The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth TBR SHELF

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (reviewed here) FINISHED

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford FINISHED

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre FINISHED

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway FINISHED

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston FINISHED

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe FINISHED

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee FINISHED

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller FINISHED

Ubik by Philip K. Dick ON OVERDRIVE

Under the Net by Iris Murdoch FINISHED

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry FINISHED

Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

White Noise by Don DeLillo ON OVERDRIVE

White Teeth by Zadie Smith FINISHED

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (reviewed here) FINISHED

NOTES

Updated October 26, 2023. This is a repost of the list I first posted back in 2009. The links needed refreshing. 

The Booker Prize -- LIST

THE BOOKER PRIZE

The Booker Prize is awarded each year for a full-length novel, written English and published in the UK. The Booker was traditionally awarded for novels by British, Irish, and Commonwealth authors published in the UK. In 2014, the award was opened to any novel originally written in English, mostly meaning Americans became eligible. The winner is awarded £50,000. The winner and the shortlisted authors see a significant increase in sales.

The Booker winners is one of my favorite books lists. That said, I am not going to keep updating the winners after 2021. My enthusiasm for prize-winners is waning with the 2020s. I plan to focus my efforts on reading the winners up to 2020 then declare victory and move on to other bookish projects.

If anyone else working on this list would like me to post a link to reviews or your progress report(s), please leave a comment with a link and I will add it below.

So far, I have read 46 of the winners. Here is the list, with notes about whether I've finished a book or if it is on my TBR shelf:

2021: Damon Galgut: The Promise

2020: Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain FINISHED

2019: Margaret Atwood, The Testaments ON OVERDRIVE; Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other ON OVERDRIVE

2018: Anna Burns, Milkman FINISHED

2017: George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo FINISHED

2016: Paul Beatty, The Sellout FINISHED

2015: Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings FINISHED

2014: Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North FINISHED

2013: Elinor Catton, The Luminaries FINISHED

2012: Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies FINISHED

2011: Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (reviewed here) FINISHED

2010: Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (reviewed here) FINISHED

2009: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (reviewed here) FINISHED

2008: Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger FINISHED

2007: Anne Enright, The Gathering (reviewed here) FINISHED

2006: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss FINISHED

2005: John Banville, The Sea (reviewed here) FINISHED

2004: Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty TBR SHELF

2003: DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little FINISHED

2002: Yann Martel, Life of Pi FINISHED

2001: Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang FINISHED
 
2000: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin FINISHED

1999: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace FINISHED

1998: Ian McEwan, Amsterdam FINISHED (twice)

1997: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things FINISHED

1996: Graham Swift, Last Orders FINISHED

1995: Pat Barker, The Ghost Road TBR SHELF

1994: James Kelman, How Late it Was, How Late TBR SHELF

1993: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha FINISHED

1992: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient TBR SHELF, and Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger (reviewed here) FINISHED

1991: Ben Okri, The Famished Road

1990: A.S. Byatt, Possession FINISHED

1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day FINISHED

1988: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda (reviewed here) FINISHED

1987: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger FINISHED

1986: Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils FINISHED

1985: Keri Hulme, The Bone People (reviewed here) FINISHED

1984: Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac FINISHED (twice)

1983: J. M. Coetzee, The Life and Times of Michael K (reviewed here) FINISHED

1982: Thomas Keneally, Schindler's List FINISHED

1981: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (reviewed here) FINISHED 

1980: William Golding, Rites of Passage FINISHED

1979: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore FINISHED

1978: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea (reviewed here) FINISHED

1977: Paul Scott, Staying On FINISHED

1976: David Storey, Saville TBR SHELF

1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust FINISHED

1974: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist FINISHED, and Stanley Middleton, Holiday FINISHED

1973: J. G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur TBR SHELF

1972: John Berger, G (reviewed here) FINISHED

1971: V.S. Naipaul, In a Free State FINISHED

1970, The Lost Booker: J. G. Farrell, Troubles TBR SHELF

1970: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member TBR SHELF

1969: Percy Howard Newby, Something to Answer For FINISHED


NOTES

Updated July 3, 2025. This is a redo of the Booker list I originally created in 2014. 

OTHERS READING BOOKER WINNERS

The Complete Booker: This group blog is no longer actively administered, but there is a treasure trove of Booker-related material.

If you would like to be listed, please leave a comment with links to your progress reports or reviews and I will add them here.

January Wrap Up - My January Books

JANUARY WRAP UP

One of my bookish New Year's resolutions was to try to post monthly wrap ups of the books I read each month. I haven't done this in the past because I read so many books with my ears that I don't have book books to photograph. I also often give books away right when I finish reading them so don't have a complete stack to take a picture of at the end of the month. 

Because I made this resolution -- let's call it an intention, it's less than a resolution -- I did two things. First, I remembered to keep the books I finished reading until the end of the month so I could take a picture of them. Important. 

Second, I concentrated my audiobook selection on books that were already on my TBR shelves. This might sound silly to you. Why chose an audiobook when the perfectly good paper book is sitting right there, waiting to be read? I'll tell you. Because some of those books have been sitting on my TBR shelves for years - years! According to LibraryThing, there are over 1,700 physical books on my groaning TBR shelves. It could be many more years before I get to any particular book. So I decided to start reading some of them with my ears and clearing off those shelves just a tiny bit faster.

The result is that I managed to knock nine books off my TBR shelves, reread an old favorite, read one new one for book club, and still get in two audiobooks not otherwise on my shelves. 

MY JANUARY BOOKS

My January books, in the order I read them, not the order in this picture, were:

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy. A friend gave this to me and I read it on New Year's Day. It is charming and I understand its popularity. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Lucky Jim by Kinglsey Amis made me appreciate this old favorite even more than when I first read it in college. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

The Red and the Black by Stendhal. This was a clunker for me. I found the hero, Julien Sorel, unbearable. 🌹🌹

Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow. I'm not much of a Doctorow fan and was surprised how much I enjoyed this one. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

Now Now, But NOW by M. F. K. Fisher. This is Fisher's only novel. I read it for book club. It's an odd book, really four short stories about the same character, set in four different times and places, so connected by time travel. It was like Orlando, written by Colette, commissioned by Gourmet magazine. I'm glad I read it but I prefer her nonfiction. 🌹🌹🌹

Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter. This is on the Erica Jong list of Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women and on my Classics Club list. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis. This is one of the audiobooks I read that isn't pictured. Another bookish resolution of mine is to read several C. S. Lewis books this year. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. Another audiobook. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah Reed. I loved this book! See my review here. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman by Elizabeth Buchan. This was a nice surprise. It was much better, with a lot more heft to it, than the cover and description led me to expect. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. I've been meaning to read this classic sci-fi forever and am glad I finally did. I didn't love it like I loved War of the Worlds, but it was still very good. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. This early police procedural didn’t engage me, even though it won the Edgar Award for best mystery. It felt like a prototype compared to more recent versions of Nordic Noir like Jo Nesbo’s books. And the female characters were absurd – “nymphomaniacs,” shrews, or dipsos. 🌹🌹

On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist by Clarissa Ward. I just finished this gripping memoir about being a war correspondent. Can’t wait to discuss it at book club! 🌹🌹🌹🌹

I usually only read eight, maybe nine, books in a month. I don't know why I finished 13 in January. We will see what February has in store. 

What was your favorite January read? What books are you looking forward to in February? 

Book List: Books Read in 2020

I keep track of the books I read on LibraryThing. Every January, I post a list of the books I read the prior year. It's usually a few over 100. There have been a couple of years when I didn't get to 100, when work was crazy. There haven't been many years when I got over 110. 

Here's the list of the 109 books I read in 2020, in the order I read them. 2020 was such an insane year, it could have gone either way, reading-wise. I know some people read twice as many books as usual, some people read hardly any. I read the same.

Notes about my rating system are below the list.

BOOKS READ IN 2020

• Circe by Madeline Miller 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged by Roger Scruton 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Devil's Star by Jo Nesbo 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie (Women's Prize) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Egyptologists by Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Live by Night by Denis Lehane (Edgar Award) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics By Kevin D. Williamson 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Party Going by Henry Green 🌹🌹🌹

• My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Days Without End by Sebastian Barry (Costa Book of the Year) 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Cheri by Colette 🌹🌹🌹

• The Last of Cheri by Colette 🌹🌹🌹 

• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Gigi by Colette 🌹🌹🌹

• Warlight by Michaele Ondaatje 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Vagabond by Colette 🌹🌹🌹

• Calypso by Davis Sedaris 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Shackle by Colette 🌹🌹🌹

• France is a Feast: The Photographic Journey of Paul and Julia Child by Alex Prud'homme 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Outlyer and Ghazals by Jim Harrison 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Pulitzer Prize) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Sweeney Sisters by Lian Dolan 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Overstory by Richard Powers (Pulitzer Prize) 🌹🌹

• The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brene Brown 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht (Women's Prize) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Radical Kindness: The Life-Changing Power of Giving and Receiving by Angela Santomero 🌹🌹🌹

• Patrimony by Philip Roth 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• True Prep: It's a Whole New Old World by Lisa Birnbach 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Charlotte Moss Entertains by Charlotte Moss 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Come Hell or Highball by Maia Chance 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Hidden Falls by Kevin Meyers 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (National Book Award) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Lost for Words by Edward St. Aubyn (Wodehouse Prize) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Never Mind: Book One of the Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Bad News: Book Two of the Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs (Classics Club) 🌹🌹

• Some Hope: Book Three of the Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Billy (the Kid) by Peter Meech 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Mother's Milk: Book Four of the Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• At Last: The Final Patrick Melrose Novel by Edward St. Aubyn 🌹🌹🌹

• The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (National Book Award) 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Book of V by Anna Solomon 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Death in Holy Orders by P. D. James 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Paris to the Past: Traveling through French History by Train by Ina Caro 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Unmaking of a Mayor by William F. Buckley, Jr. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Make Russia Great Again by Christopher Buckley 🌹🌹🌹

• The Likeness by Tana French 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Britain by the Book: A Curious Tour of Our Literary Landscape by Oliver Tearle 🌹🌹🌹

• The Guest List by Lucy Foley 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Pulitzer Prize) 🌹🌹🌹

• Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Letters to Yesenin by Jim Harrison 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• A Dance at the Slaughterhouse by Lawrence Block (Edgar Award) 🌹🌹🌹

• Country Girl by Edna O'Brien 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Late George Apley by John P. Marquand 🌹🌹🌹

• House of Trelawney by Hannah Rothschild (Wodehouse Award) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Style Evolution: How to Create Ageless Personal Style in Your 40s and Beyond by Kendall Farr 🌹🌹🌹

• The Invitation by Lucy Foley 🌹🌹🌹

• The Drowning Season by Alice Hoffman (Erica Jong List) 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (Classics Club) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Underground Railroad by Coleson Whitehead (Pulitzer Prize) 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Nickel Boys by Coleson Whitehead (Pulitzer Prize) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Airborne: A Sentimental Journey by William F. Buckley, Jr. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King (Edgar Award) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Quartet in Autumn by Barba Pym 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The White Album by Joan Didion 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Prospero's Cell: A Guide To The Landscape And Manners of The Island Of Corfu by Lawrence Durrell 🌹🌹🌹

• The Stranger by Albert Camus (Classics Club) 🌹🌹1/2

• The Adventures of Sally by P. G. Wodehouse 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens (Classics Club) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Murder Room by P. D. James 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov 🌹🌹🌹

• English House Style from the Archives of Country Life by John Goodall 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Writers & Lovers by Lily King 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Something to Answer For by P. H. Newby (Booker Prize) 🌹🌹🌹

• For the Sake of Elena by Elizabeth George 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Room at the Top by John Braine (Burgess List) 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Just Like You by Nick Hornby 🌹🌹🌹

• They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker 🌹🌹1/2

• The Hanging in the Hotel by Simon Brett 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Venetian Reckoning (aka Death and Judgment) by Donna Leon 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries by Helen Fielding 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Stars Look Down by A. J. Cronin 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Jump the Gun by Zoe Burke🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Life Is Meals: A Food Lover's Book of Days by James and Kay Salter 🌹🌹🌹🌹

MY RATING SYSTEM

My rating system is my own and evolving. Whatever five stars might mean on amazon, goodreads, or Netflix, a five-star rating probably doesn't mean that here. In fact, I'm going to change this year and use roses for my rating system, since this is Rose City Reader. My system is a mix of how a book appeals to me and how I would recommend it to other people. 

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 Five roses for books I loved, or would recommend to anyone, or I think are worthy of classic "must read" status." Examples would be Lucky Jim (personal favorite), A Gentleman in Moscow (universal recommendation), and Great Expectations (must read). 

🌹🌹🌹🌹 Four roses for books I really enjoyed and/or would recommend to people who enjoy that type of book. Examples would be The Jewel in the Crown and In the Woods. Most mysteries get four roses from me because I like them a lot but would only recommend them to people who like mysteries. (A few really great mysteries get five roses from me.) Similarly, some of my favorite authors get four roses from me because I wouldn't recommend them to a general audience, like funny books by P.G. Wodehouse or food memoirs by M.F.K. Fisher. 

🌹🌹🌹 Three roses for books I was lukewarm on or maybe liked personally but wouldn't think of recommending. Examples would be Sexing the Cherry (lukewarm) and The Year of the French (liked personally but wouldn't inflict recommend).

🌹🌹 Two roses if I didn't like it. The Neapolitan Quartet is an example, which proves how subjective my system is because lots of people loved those books. 

🌹 One rose if I really didn't like it. I don't know if I've ever rated a book this low. The Magus might be my only example and I read it before I started keeping my lists. 

I use half roses if a book falls between categories. I can't explain what that half rose might mean, it's just a feeling.

Here is a link to the star rating system I used for years. I include it because the stars I used in years past meant something different than these roses, so if you look at my lists from past years, the ratings won't mean quite the same thing.