Easy to trust Bernard Cornwell for a good read after all the Sharpe novels. (Which reminds me, I should return to those…) Wildtrack (1988) reads like a Dick Francis book with sailboats instead of horses, reminiscent of Sam Llewellyn’s thrillers. (I’ve read several, all before I started keeping track on this blog.) The only false…

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I’ve kept Salman Rushdie‘s Midnight’s Children since college, when I was supposed to read the celebrated 1980 novel. My paperback copy is from 1991, and 17 years later, I’ve finally completed this sweeping story. In only his second novel, Rushdie creates language and pulsating imagery like few I’ve read. Only immediate comparison would be Umberto…

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Steven Berlin Johnson has been justly celebrated for several of his books. I’ve read his blog and many of his articles in Salon and The New York Times, but The Ghost Map was the first book I’ve read. The subtitle is “The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the…

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I’m embarrassed to reveal that I read The Wheel of Darkness by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Please don’t repeat my mistake.

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Murder in the White House by Margaret Patterson is an eminently forgettable mystery. Location, location, location may rule in real estate, but it’s not enough to make up for boring plot.

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After all these years (and several re-readings of The Hunt for Red October), finding a pure Tom Clancy novel that I’ve missed helped fill several hours of travel. Without Remorse delves into the background of John Clark, a constant Jack Ryan companion in many of the novels. Clark was memorably played by Willem Dafoe in…

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Orson Scott Card is profligate, and I’ve loved several of his books, notably Ender’s Game and a few others in that series. The Worthing Saga collects several related short stories and novellas in a single paperback. I appreciated the Trantor-like setting for several of the later stories, but overall, this was a struggle to complete.

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The Most Dangerous Game by Gavin Lyall takes the thread of the well-known short story about man hunting man, and weaves it into a larger spy/mystery story. Nothing special, very much a genre book…fair work, but no need to seek out this 1963 thriller.

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The pursuit of victory: the life and achievement of Horatio Nelson pursues a personage whose fictional counterparts have entertained me for years. After multiple readings of C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower novels, and a pleasant perusal of the entire Aubrey-Maturin series, I could not miss the opportunity to learn the facts behind the legend. Roger Knight…

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Web Project Management, by Ashley Friedlein, lingered on my shelf for years. A quick, skimming read, and I learned very little, unfortunately. Maybe that’s because it’s from 1999. Even though it’s tool-agnostic, the book felt dated.

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