About this pile
The pile is the stack of books on the table by the window, plus the two on the floor next to it, plus whatever the library has decided to release to me this week. This site is where I write down what I thought about them before I forget.
I am not a critic and I do not read for work. I read in the evening, in the last hour before bed, and on trains. That means I finish maybe thirty books a year and abandon another ten without much guilt. There is no rating system here because I have never been able to keep one honest: the same book gets four stars in March and two in November depending on what else I was reading.
What I try to do in each note: say what the book is actually doing, say what worked, say what did not, and be specific enough that a version of me two years from now can tell whether to reread it. That is the whole editorial policy.
What tends to be on it
Novels, mostly. Nineteenth-century doorstops when I have a long stretch free. Science fiction and fantasy, which I read as a first language. A popular-science book every few months, usually about physics or the natural world, usually borrowed. Very little poetry, which I keep meaning to fix.
Some things I have reread more than twice
- A Wizard of Earthsea Le Guin
- The Remains of the Day Ishiguro
- Dune Herbert
- The Count of Monte Cristo Dumas
Housekeeping
The notes go out on RSS and nowhere else. There is no newsletter, no comments, and no login. Nothing here is sponsored and no publisher has ever sent me anything; the books are bought, borrowed, or lent by friends, and the note says which.
Spoilers: I try to avoid them for anything published in the last few years, and I do not worry about them for books older than I am.