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)

The TBR 22 in '22 Challenge -- My Wrap Up Post

 

TBR 22 IN '22 CHALLENGE

My Wrap Up Post

COMPLETED

Sign up for the TBR 23 in '23 Challenge here!

The TBR 22 in '22 Challenge was simple -- read 22 books off your TBR shelf in 2022. You could pick them ahead of time, like I did, pick them as you went, or any combination you like. Or pick ahead of time and then switch! The only "rule" is that the 22 books had to be books you owned before January 1, 2022.

Here is the list of the 22 book I read for the challenge, in alphabetical order by author, not the order in which I read them:

• These Ruins are Inhabited by Margaret Beadle, a memoir by an American living in England in the 1950s

• Dangling Man by Saul Bellow, on my Classics Club list

• Atlantic High by William F. Buckley, Jr., the second of his four sailing memoirs. I read the first one last year and planned to read them all but didn't get to them. 2022 will be the year I finally do. 

• Racing through Paradise by William F. Buckley, Jr., the third of the four

• Windfall by William F. Buckley, Jr., the last one

• The Master and the Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakow, on my Classics Club list

• The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble, on my Classics Club list

• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award

• Rat Race by Dick Francis, on my Classics Club list

• Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend by Meryl Gordon

• French Women Don't get Fat by Mireille Guiliano

• The Wall by John Hersey, on my Classics Club list

• The Bostonians by Henry James, on my Classics Club list

• A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream by Yuval Levin

• When She was Good by Philip Roth, on my Classics Club list

• Zuckerman Unbound by Philip RothThe Anatomy Lesson by Philip Roth

• The Prague Orgy by Philip Roth

• The Masters by C. P. Snow is the fourth book in his Strangers and Brothers series, which I started years ago and want to finish. This one is on my Classics Club list because it won the James Tait Black Prize in 1954.

• If Morning Ever Comes by Anne Tyler, on my Classics Club list

• God Save the Mark by Donald Westlake, which won the Edgar Award and is on my Classics Club list

• Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson, a campus novel on my Classics Club list

 

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.

Book List: Books Read in 2022

BOOKS READ IN 2022

Every January, when I remember, I post a list here on the blog of the books I read the prior year. I keep track of the books I read on LibraryThing. 

Here's the list of the 111 books I read in 2022, in the order I read them.

Notes about my rating system are below the list.

• Murder at the Castle by M. B. Shaw (reviewed here) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Katherine by Anya Seton 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating For Pleasure by Mireille Guiliano 🌹🌹🌹

• The Bostonians by Henry James 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Lolly Willowes: Or the Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Murder at the Mill by M. B. Shaw 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Atlantic High: A Celebration by William F. Buckley, Jr. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Dangling Man by Saul Bellow 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country by Amanda Gorman 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Island of Gold by Amy Maroney 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz 🌹🌹🌹

• The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Narrow Door by Joanne Harris (reviewed here)🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Hope of Heaven by John O'Hara 🌹🌹🌹

• The Anatomy Lesson by Philip Roth 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The House in Good Taste by Elsie De Wolfe 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom by Yeonmi Park 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Champagne Widows: First Woman of Champagne, Veuve Clicquot by Rebecca Rosenberg (reviewed here) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• If Morning Ever Comes by Anne Tyler 🌹🌹🌹

• The Falls by Ian Rankin 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Slightly Foxed, Vol 72 (Winter 2021) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Family Business by S. J. Rozan (reviewed here) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• These Ruins are Inhabited by Muriel Beadle 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Essentially French: Homes With Classic French Style by Josephine Ryan 🌹🌹🌹

• Little Big Man by Thomas Berger 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble 🌹🌹🌹

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Rat Race by Dick Francis 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Prague Orgy by Philip Roth 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• When She was Good by Philip Roth 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Hell of a Book by Jason Mott 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Trio by William Boyd 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• As Husbands Go by Susan Isaacs 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Lucky by Marissa Staples 🌹🌹🌹

• The Skull Beneath the Skin by P. D. James 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Galileo's Daughter - A Historical Memoir Of Science, Faith, And Love by Dava Sobel 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Love is Blind by William Boyd 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Only in Naples: Lessons in Food and Famiglia from My Italian Mother-in-Law by Katherine Wilson 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Racing Through Paradise: A Pacific Passage by William F. Buckley, Jr. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Holy Orders by Benjamin Black 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Blue Moon by Lee Child 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Long Way Home by Louise Penny 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream by Yuval Levin 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Master and the Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Broken Harbor by Tana French 🌹🌹🌹

• The Counterlife by Philip Roth 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Annotated Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham 🌹🌹🌹🌹 (5 for the book, 3 for the annotations) 

• Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Mr. Majestyk by Elmore Leonard 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Masters by C. P. Snow 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Slightly Foxed, Vol. 73 (Spring 2022) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Reservoir by David Duchovny (reviewed here) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend by Meryl Gordon 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Woke Racism: How a New Religion has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Slightly Foxed, Vol. 74 (Summer 2022) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus 🌹🌹

• Windfall: The End of the Affair by William F. Buckley, Jr.  🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Beautiful Cassandra by Jane Austen 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Murder at Hazelmoor (aka The Sittaford Mystery) by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• God Save the Mark by Donald E. Westlake 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor 🌹🌹🌹

• Book Lovers by Emily Henry 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Under Dog and Other Stories by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City by David Lebovitz 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Literary Life by Larry McMurtry 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• What to Read and Why by Francine Prose 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger by Nigel Slater 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The High Window by Raymond Chandler 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Black Cat by Martha Grimes 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Airframe by Michael Chrichton 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• White Teeth by Zadie Smith 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Death in a Tenured Position by Amanda Cross 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Did Ye Hear Mammy Died by Séamas O'Reilly  🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Mistletoe Murder: And Other Stories by P. D. James 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Call it Sleep by Henry Roth 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Pale Criminal by Philip Kerr 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Intrusion of Jimmy by P. G. Wodehouse 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Lists of Note: An Eclectic Collection Deserving of a Wider Audience by Shaun Usher 🌹🌹🌹🌹

MY RATING SYSTEM

I switched to using roses for my rating system, since this is Rose City Reader. My rating system is my own and evolving. Whatever five stars might mean on amazon, goodreads, or Netflix, a five-rose rating probably doesn't mean that here. My system is a mix of how a book subjectively appeals to me, its technical merits, and whether 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. So I give a lot of four roses because I might really like a book, but it didn't knock my socks off. 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.

🌹🌹 Two roses if I didn't like it. Lessons in Chemistry is an example, which proves how subjective my system is because lots of people loved that book. I found it cartoonish and intolerant. 

🌹 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.

Happy New Year!

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2023!

I started this New Year by cracking open War & Peace! Talk about classic resolutions!

January 1, 2023 is the first day of a mammoth War & Peace readalong over on Instagram, hosted by @renie_reads and @footnotes.and.tangents. The plan is to read one chapter a day and we will be finished before next New Year’s Eve! The hashtag for the readalong, if you are interested in playing along, is #whiskyandperseverance, or #warandpeace2023 for those readers not inclined or too young for whiskey.  

I'm ready! I read the first chapter today. I plan to read one chapter a day. But if that gets too crazy-making, I may read seven chapters each weekend to be ready for the group chat the following weekend. Or, just read at my own pace and chat as I can. We will see how it goes.

This is the first time I’ve read Tolstoy’s masterpiece, so I dragged in my Russian icons to give me a little saintly support! That, and the whiskey. 

Hubby gave me the fancy Easton Press edition for Christmas. Mine is the Aylmer and Louise Maude translation, with one twist. Maude and Maude lived in Moscow, spoke fluent Russian, and knew Tolstoy. Tolstoy gave his stamp of approval to their 1922-23 translation of War & Peace. They later revised their translation for a 1938 Heritage Press special edition. It’s this 1938 revised Maude & Maude translation that Easton Press used for this one, which was part of its set of The 100 Greatest Books Ever.

Have you read War & Peace? Is it worth it? Did you make any of your own bookish resolutions for 2023?