Book Ratings
Ratings and one-sentence reviews of (many of) the books I’ve read recently. I started rating books during the COVID quarantine, and have kept it up.
Last updated: sometime in mid-2023
The Top Five
Rolling top-five ranking of the books I’ve read during the pandemic:
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollet
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
Shadow Country by Peter Matthiesson
The Yellow House: A Memoir by Sarah Broom
To be rated
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (re-read)
The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
The Fund by Rob Copeland
Your Face Belongs to Us by Kashmir Hill
A Perfect Spy by John le Carre
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
Outlive by Peter Attia
Atomic Storm: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb by Togzhan Kassenova
The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy
Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy
Chip War by Chris Miller
Age of Vice by Deepti Kapor
Too many Alan Furst novels:
Night Soldiers
Dark Star
The Polish Officer
The World at Night
Red Gold
Kingdom of Shadows
Blood of Victory
Dark Voyage
The Foreign Correspondent
The Spies of Warsaw
Spies of the Balkans
Mission to Paris
Midnight in Europe
A Hero of France
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
On The Move by Oliver Sacks
The Paladin by David Ignatius
The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
A Girl’s Guide to Missiles by Karen Piper
The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard
American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin
The Ratings
The Bond King by Mary Childs
📘📘📘 out of five books. Good book, just unreasonable to expect a story that’s largely about bonds to deliver more than three books.
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. A classic of the “dumb spy novel” genre, much better literature than it needed to be.
How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
📘 out of five books. I really wanted this to be good but finished only out of spite; a profoundly vain book that totally failed to deliver.
Various novels by John Le Carre
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: 📘📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Re-read it to make sure it still slaps; it does.
A Legacy of Spies: 📘📘📘 out of five books. Would have been better with more focus on the actual spy stuff and less on the government bureaucracy stuff.
Silverview: 📘 out of five books. There’s definitely a reason this wasn’t published while Le Carre was alive.
The Night Manager: Incomplete. It got too stressful and couldn’t finish it; I liked most of what I read even though the key plot element is pretty hard to believe.
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
📘📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Just a great novel about absolutely everything going to shit.
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Paced like a Bourne movie that’s surprisingly not-that-dated for being 50+ years old.
The L.A. Quartet by James Ellroy
The Black Dahlia: 📘📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Maybe the best noir crime novel?
The Big Nowhere: 📘📘📘 out of five books. Pales in comparison to the others and also pretty … weird … plot-wise. James Ellroy is a strange dude.
L.A. Confidential: 📘📘📘📘 out of five books. A little convoluted but still great. Less satisfying ending than the movie.
White Jazz: TK.
The Power of Geography by Tim Marshall
📘📘 out of five books. Nothing wrong with it but pretty basic and also sort of self-refuting since like two-thirds of it wasn’t about geography.
Red Widow by Alma Katsu
📘📘 out of five books. One of the dumber books I’ve read in a while, even by the low standard of dumb spy novels.
The Miernick Dossier by Charles McCarry
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Parts of the plot haven’t really aged well (a Sudanese prince driving a Cadillac across the Sahara?) but very entertaining and well done; a much better faux-window into intelligence practices than An Ordinary Spy.
An Ordinary Spy by Joseph Weisberg
📘📘📘 out of five books. Kind of schtick-y but entertaining enough.
Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted by Justin Martin
📘📘📘 out of five books. Pretty average biography but Olmstead really is a remarkable dude and a true inspiration for other aimless dilletantes… it’s never too late to reinvent yourself, apparently!
Leaving Before the Rains Come by Alexandra Fuller
📘📘 out of five books. Hard to follow Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, and… it didn’t.
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
📘📘📘📘📘 out of five books. The kind of memoir that could easily be a screenplay.
Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence by Kate Crawford
📘📘📘 out of five books. Loved the concept, didn’t really love the execution.
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
📘📘📘 out of five books. More engaging in some ways than The Remains of the Day but not nearly as good a novel; sort of like when Cormac McCarthy started writing movies.
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. A deserved but it doesn’t get the full five books because the Nazi and heartbreak things were pretty obvious early on and maybe I’m just an American but I could have used 20% less discussion of butlers.
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. I liked the schitck, easy read, could have been 20% more dystopian.
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Zero books. Maybe I was too tired each time I tried to read this book but I just could not follow what was going on well enough to enjoy it.
Sellout: The Major Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994-2007) by Dan Ozzie
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Interesting which bands came across as sympathetic (Blink-182) and which… did not (Against Me!).
The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
📘📘📘 out of five books. How do you follow up on a novel like The Sympathizer? This was fine, a little less coherent, sort of fell apart at the end.
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Very likely going to be the book of the quarantine for me, absolutely incredible novel, impossible to characterize… sort of like if Kafka wrote Apocalypse Now from the perspective of the Vietnamese.
Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones
📘📘 out of five books. But only barely 📘📘 books; would have been twice as good if it was half as long.
Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Extremely weird tech-noir, but somehow it just worked.
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth
📘📘📘 out of five books. A fascinating primer on the market for zero-days but it would have benefited from more color on what the U.S. (not just the Russians and Iranians) do with them.
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
📘📘📘📘📘 out of five books. At risk of significantly oversimplifying, a classic war story from one of the OG anti-fascists.
Himalaya: A Human History by Ed Douglas
📘📘 out of five books. Trying to read this book was like trying to climb a goddamn mountain. (Here’s a representative sentence: “According to the Puranas, in these valleys are spirits, gandharvas, both good and ill, half animal or bird, enchanting the gods with their signing, as well as nature spirits, yaksha, mercurial, sometimes lecherous protectors of the trees and the wealth of the earth, and their cousins, the rakshasa, eating raw human flesh, born from the breath of Brahma.” It goes on like this for 600 pages.)
Surprise, Kill, Vanish by Annie Jacobsen
📘 out of five books. Scattershot, unfocused, too many typos.
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming
📘📘 out of five books. Not enough art.
Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollet
📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Incandescent, heart-wrenching, beautiful memoir of the author’s childhood absolutely crushed me in the best possible way.
The Fighters by C.J. Chivers
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. The most honest portrayal I’ve read about what U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq actually experienced.
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
📘📘 out of five books. The little people are uninspiring bad guys, the air chrysalis stuff was incomprehensible, and the book was 400 pages too long.
Death in Her Hands by Otessa Mosfegh
Zero books. Infuriating concept that I couldn’t quit fast enough.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. The second best Murakami could have gotten to the point a little faster.
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
📘📘📘 out of five books. Gorgeous novel with an uncomfortable (to me a least) number of suicides.
Agent Storm: My Life Inside al Qaeda and the CIA by Morten Storm
📘 out of five books. Implausible memoir of a complete fucking moron who somehow may have helped lead the CIA to Anwar al-Awlaki.
Milkman by Anna Burns
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Puzzling (there are no proper nouns in the entire novel) but vivid account of the Troubles. Essentially a fictional version of Say Nothing written by a shy, quirky 19 year old.
No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison by Behrooz Boochani
Unrated. I can’t bring myself to give it a bad rating given that the book’s mere existence is a profound triumph, but, I couldn’t finish it.
Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman
📘📘📘 out of five books. The unfiltered, straight from the horse’s mouth version of Richard Feynman is funnier but less flattering than the James Glieck version (below).
His Truth is Marching On by Jon Meacham
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Great book but perhaps not the epic that John Lewis deserves.
Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State by Barton Gellman
📘📘 out of five books. The operational details and interactions with the feds made it a worthwhile read, but IMO didn’t really break much new ground.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
📘📘📘📘📘 out of five books. My first book by Haruki Murakami and still the best IMO.
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull
📘📘 out of five books. Pretty boring considering the book is about Pixar, among the greatest storytellers of all time.
Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Rare sports autobiography that actually delivers.
Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronan Bergman
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Deft, magnificently reported critique walks a very fine line. Some of the shit this book describes is unbelievable.
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higganbotham
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Scary as hell.
Shadow Country by Peter Matthiesson
Book 1: 📘📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Book 2: 📘📘 out of five books. Book 3: 📘📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Book 2 dragged but taken together it’s a powerhouse that’s worth the (substantial) time investment. Also a fantastic geographic portrait of the Ten Thousand Islands at the northwest tip of the Florida Everglades, an area that I knew nothing about. Separately, is there a more interesting dude than Peter Matthiesson?
A Coach’s Life by Dean Smith
📘📘 out of five books. Admirable guy, boring book.
Genuis by James Glieck
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Maybe the best science biography out there.
The Yellow House: A Memoir by Sarah Broom
📘📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Stunning, poetic portrait of a New Orleans family, but, that doesn’t do this book justice.
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Sci-fi short stories about time travel are virtually all fantastic.
The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman
📘 out of five books. Neither a successful portrait of Simons himself nor a convincing explanation of what made him successful.
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
📘📘📘📘📘 out of five books. Could not put down the now-definitive book about The Troubles.