Book Reviews

There are reviews on the internet of just about every book published, certainly all of those below. What I try to do is to relate them to my own experiences and explain why they are significant to me. So these are personal reviews and person ratings. They are indexed in this blog under the label book reviews and also linked from below.

Key to ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up. 

Amis - Lucky Jim (4*)
Atwood - The Handmaid’s Tale (4*)
Baring-Gould - Yorkshire Oddities (3*)
Baring-Gould - A Book of Ghosts (3*)
Baring-Gould - Curiosities of Olden Times (2*)
Barstow - A Kind of Loving (4*)
Barstow - The Watchers On The Shore (3*)
Barstow - The Right True End (3*)
Bennett - Writing Home / Untold Stories (4* / 4*)
Blackmore - Lorna Doone (4*)
Bonington - Ascent (3*)
Bradbury - Eating People is Wrong (2*)
Braine - Room At The Top (4*)
Brandreth - Have You Eaten Grandma? (5*)
Brierley - A Long Way Home (4*)
Bronowski - The Ascent of Man (5***)
Bronte - Agnes Grey (3*)
Bryson - One Summer / Little Dribbling (4* / 4*)
Bryson - At Home (4*)
Byatt - Possession (5***)
Byatt - The Children's Book (4*)
Charteris - The Brighter Buccaneer (2*)
Clark - Civilisation (3*)
Cooke - America / Letter From America (4* / 3*)
Cohen with Cox - The Planets (5*)
Crane - Making Of The British Landscape (2*)
Davies - A Very Peculiar Practice (3*)
Deacon - Twenty Worlds (1* or 5*)
du Maurier - Rebecca (5*)
Drabble - The Millstone (4*)
Evans - The Mighty Micro (3*)
Fleming - From Russia With Love (3*)
Forster - Georgy Girl (3*)
Gaita - Romulus, My Father (4*)
Garner - Everywhere I Look (5*)
Golding S - Life After Kes (3*)
Golding W - Rites of Passage (3*)
Gosling - Sum Total / Personal Copy (3 to 5* / 3 to 5*)
Xiaolu Guo - Once Upon a Time in the East (5*)
Haig - How To Stop Time (4*)
Hanauer - Biology Made Simple (not rated)
Hardy - Tess of the d'Urbervilles (4*)
Hartley - The Go Between (5*)
Hattersley - Goodbye To Yorkshire (4*)
Hines - A Kestrel For A Knave (5***)
Holroyd - Lytton Strachey (5***)
Humphries, Mack and Perks - A Century Of Childhood (3*)
Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day (5*)
Jack - The Country Formerly Known As Great Britain (5*)
James - Unreliable Memoirs (5*)
Johnson - This Boy / Please Mr. Postman (4* / 3*)
Jones - The Establishment / Chavs (4* / 4*)
Kavanagh - The Perfect Stranger (3*)
Kay - This is Going to Hurt (4*)
Kingsnorth - Real England (4*)
Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness Of Being (2*)
Kynaston - Histories of Post-War Britain (3*)
Lee - Red Sky At Sunrise (trilogy) (5*)
Lewis - Out of the Silent Planet (3*)
Lively - Treasures of Time (4*)
Lively - A House Unlocked (4*)
Lively - Moon Tiger (5***)
Lodge - Quite A Good Time To Be Born (1*)
Obama - Dreams From My Father (2*)
Opie - My Very First Mother Goose (5*)
Orwell - The Road to Wigan Pier (4*)
Packham - Fingers in the Sparkle Jar (4*)
Phinn - Road To The Dales (4*)
Plath - The Bell Jar (5*)
Pritchett - A Cab At The Door and Midnight Oil (3*)
Pym - Quartet In Autumn (4*)
Rushdie - Midnight's Children (5*)
Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye (5*)
Sandbrook - Histories of Post-War Britain (4*)
Shute - A Town Like Alice (4*)
Sillitoe - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (4*)
Sillitoe - The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (4*)
Simsion - The Rosie Project (4*)
The Secret Barrister (3*)
Theroux - The Great Railway Bazaar (5*)
Thubron - In Siberia (4*)
Wells - The World Of William Clissold (3*)
von Daniken - Chariots of the Gods (2*)
Waterhouse - Billy Liar (4*)
Waterhouse - Mondays, Thursdays (2*)
Wyndham - The Chrysalids (5*)