Books Read Pre-Blog

This is a list of the books I read—excluding shorter children's books—between April 1997, when I started tracking such things, and my first book review on book-blog.com, posted in May 2003.

I didn't start rating books until 2001, and I didn't rate them in a way that I could easily translate to the blog until 2002. Even then, the rating system I used was slightly different from that which I adopted for the blog. In effect, nonfiction books were rated on a scale of 1-4, and fiction on a scale of 1-5.

Anyway, here they are, with ratings when available, interspersed with occasional notes from me. Books read before 2002 that I remember as being particularly good appear in bold.

1997

• Stephen Dixon, Interstate

Stephen Dixon writes short stories more than novels, and I've enjoyed the stories of his that I've read—one about eating placenta comes to mind at once. He is also among the handful of people—so I heard second-hand—who have thought I look like Mariel Hemingway. (He was a guest teacher in a small writing class I was in at Johns Hopkins. Very small class, maybe seven students, and I was the only person there too timid to ask him a question.) At any rate, Interstate is, if you're a parent, a particularly difficult read. I had trouble getting through it, reading it, as I was, when my elder daughter was just a year old.

• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford
• George Eliot, Middlemarch
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
• Ken Follett, The Third Twin
• Robert Louis Stevenson, Weir of Hermiston
• Quentin Crisp, How to Become a Virgin

This is Mr. Crisp's sequel to his autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant—which you may know, even if you haven't read the book, from the movie starring William Hurt. Thanks to a certain book-blog reader, one-time star of MTV's Oddville (seriously: we're in the big leagues here), the husband and I had the pleasure of meeting Quentin Crisp twice. So I can say with authority that he and William Hurt are essentially one and the same. Watch the movie and you get the flavor of the man. But read The Naked Civil Servant too, because Crisp's writing is absolutely gorgeous. He explains in How to Become a Virgin that he wrote that book in a "minimum risk style" with which he hoped "to offend nobody." The result is unfortunately not as effective: he shouldn't have listened to his critics.

• Alison Weir, The Children of Henry VIII
• Alison Weir, The Princes in the Tower
• Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII
• Steven Ozment, The Burgermeister's Daughter
• Ronald McNair Scott, Robert the Bruce
• Antonia Frasier, Faith and Treason

1998

• Sharon Kay Penman, The Queen's Man
• Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and his Saints Slept
• Jostein Gaarder, The Solitaire Mystery
• W. Somerset Maugham, Catalina
• A.S. Byatt, Possession
• Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth
• Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters
• Colin Dexter, Last Bus to Woodstock
• Iris Murdoch, Jackson's Dilemma
• Sue Reidy, The Visitation
• Colin Dexter, Death is Now My Neighbor
• Jan Karon, At Home in Mitford
• Colin Dexter, The Wench is Dead
• Colin Dexter, The Dead of Jericho
• Colin Dexter, The Way Through the Woods
• Michael Palin, Hemingway's Chair
• W. Somerset Maugham, The Mixture as Before
• Jan Karon, A Light in the Window
• Colin Dexter, The Jewel that Was Ours
• Colin Dexter, The Daughters of Cain
• Colin Dexter, Last Seen Wearing
• Lorrie Moore, Anagrams
• Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman
• Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, The Beggar and the Professor

The memoirs of the male members of a 16th-century Swiss family. The author is insufficiently brutal in excising uninteresting detail.

 • Quentin Crisp, Resident Alien
• Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

One of the funniest books I've ever read.

1999

• Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire
• Kingsley Amis, The Russian Girl
• Sharon Kay Penman, Cruel as the Grave
• Colin Dexter, The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn
• Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Man of the Cloth

A sleuthing Jane Austen.

• Colin Dexter, Service of All the Dead
• Peter DeVries, The Mackerel Plaza
• Bernhard Schlink, The Reader
• Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet

This is a fascinating book. The author writes about the revolution of the telegraph, sometimes pointing out parallels with our own internet revolution. Telegraphers varied in their talents, some of them able to transcribe or send messages with incredible speed. Experienced telegraphers (my own grandfather evidently among them) could identify other operators by their telegraphic style.

• Brian Lamb, Booknotes: America's Finest Authors on Reading, Writing, and the Power of Ideas

A good collection of essays about how writers write.

• Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All
• Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett
• Edmund White, Marcel Proust
• Rafi Zabor, The Bear Comes Home

The story of a jazz musician bear living among humans.

• Colin Dexter, The Riddle of the Third Mile
• Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor
• Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Wandering Eye
• John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
• Ken Follett, The Hammer of Eden
• Ruth Rendell, A Guilty Thing Surprised
• Frederick and Steven Barthelme, Double Down

The brothers Barthelme lost a lot of money gambling. Let's hope they made some of it back with this account of their fall. The book's cover is noteworthy for its photograph, a picture of the authors as boys with their beautiful mother.

• Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

Thus begins my obsession with Patricia Highsmith novels. The Ripley books are simply great, sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat reading. Tom Ripley is one of the greatest characters of all time—a likeable sociopath. If you saw *this* movie (the Matt Damon version, though there was an earlier version made as well, which I netflixed a while back), well, the book is better. The movie tacks on a non-Highsmithian scene at the end that just doesn't make sense. (Though the character of Freddie is perfectly cast in the film.)

• Ruth Rendell, Death Notes
• Denise Giardina, Good King Harry
• J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

2000

• Ruth Rendell, Best Man to Die  
• Peter Gay, Mozart  
• Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg  
• J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets  
• Patricia Highsmith, Ripley Under Ground  
• J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban  
• Patricia Highsmith, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction  
• Patricia Highsmith, Ripley's Game  
• P.D. James, A Taste for Death  
• Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes  
• Reginald Hill, Bones and Silence  
• Patricia Highsmith, The Boy who Followed Ripley  
• Patricia Highsmith, Ripley under Water  
• Nuala O'Faolain, Are you Somebody?  

This book in combination with Angela's Ashes depressed me for quite some time.

• Mark Caldwell, A Short History of Rudeness  
• Patricia Highsmith, A Tremor of Forgery  
• Patricia Highsmith, A Game for the Living  
• Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha  
• Michael Caine, What's it all about?  

I've been holding a candle for Michael Caine for some time now. I'm happy to say that along with having the acting thing going for him he can write well. The show-business-related material in this autobiography is okay, but the stuff about his family life can be downright poignant. The man tells a good story. And he's got that work ethic thing going for him, too.

• Patricia Highsmith, The Cry of the Owl  
• Robert Goddard, Beyond Recall

Brilliantly plotted, un-putdownable fiction. All his books are great.

• Francine Prose, Blue Angel

A good novel about a disasterous academic affair.

• James Sharpe, The Bewitching of Anne Gunter  

An inherently interesting story about a girl in the early 17th century who pretended to be bewitched. Among the manifestations of this condition, as I recall, was her coughing up pins. The account unfortunately left a lot of my questions unanswered. (How'd she do the pin thing?) But the book is nonetheless of historical interest to me because it was a blurb on its back cover, from the London Review of Books, that prompted me to write Trying Neaira.

• A.S. Byatt, The Game  
• Ellen Raskin, The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues  
• Colin Dexter, The Secret of Annexe 3  
• J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire  
• Michael Paterniti, Driving Mr. Albert  

Do you have any idea what happened to Einstein's brain after his death? Unbelievable. You've got to read this one.

• Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt  
• Mark Burnett, Survivor

The story behind the first season of Survivor. I've lost interest since, but I was quite the addict back in the day. I think the show lost something after the first season because the survivors of subsequent years came armed with a knowledge of how to play the game. No one except Richard Hatch—and he only imperfectly—seemed to know what to do the first time around.

• Debra Ginsberg, Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress  
• Robert Goddard, Out of the Sun  
• Robert Goddard, Closed Circle  
• M.J. Trow, The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade  
• Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time  
• Arturo Perez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel  
• Edward Kanze, Kangaroo Dreaming  
• David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress  
• Charles Palliser, The Unburied  
• Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life  
• Morris Philipson, A Man in Charge  
• Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader  

2001

• Simon Singh, The Code Book  
• Thomas Harris, Hannibal  
• Frank McCourt, 'Tis  
• Thomas Harris, Red Dragon  
• Arturo Perez-Reverte, The Seville Communion  
• Colin Dexter, The Remorseful Day  
• Arturo Perez-Reverte, The Fencing Master  
• Peter Lovesey, The Last Detective  
• Judith Merkle Riley, The Master of all Desires  
• David Lodge, Home Truths  
• Susan Vreeland, Girl in Hyacinth Blue  
• George Saunders, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip  
• Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland  
• Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine  
• Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass  
• Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory  
• Nick Middleton, Travels as a Brussels' Scout  
• Miles Harvey, The Island of Lost Maps  
• George MacDonald, The Golden Key  
• Deborah and James Howe, Bunnicula  
• Judith Merkle Riley, The Serpent Garden  
• Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory  
• Steve Martin, Shopgirl  
• Ellen Raskin, The Westing Game  
• Stephen King, On Writing  
• Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass  
• Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife  
• Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass  
• Roald Dahl, The Witches  
• J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone  
• John Mortimer, The Summer of a Dormouse  
• Stefan Fatsis, Word Freak  

An exploration of the dark underworld of competitive Scrabble players. Great book.

• Greg Nagan, The 5-Minute Iliad  
• Patricia Highsmith, A Suspension of Mercy  

Apart from the Ripley novels, this is my favorite Highsmith book. A writer decides to find out what it would feel like to kill his wife and bury her body in a rolled up carpet, so he acts out the crime in her absence. Naturally, trouble ensues.

• Christopher S. Wren, The Cat Who Covered the World  
• Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train  

The book on which Alfred Hitchcock's film was based.

• Arturo Perez-Reverte, The Club Dumas  
• Michael Dibdin, The Dying of the Light  
• David Lodge, Therapy  
• Peter Lovesey, The Vault  
• Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day  

Most interesting, I thought, for its description of the life of a gentleman's gentleman of the early-twentieth-century.

• Peter Lovesey, The False Inspector Dew  
• Peter Lovesey, Rough Cider  
• Nick Hornby, High Fidelity  
• Robert Goddard, Borrowed Time  
• Michael Dibdin, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story  
• M.J. Trow, Lestrade and the Hallowed House  
• J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace  
• Ken Follett, Code to Zero  
• Kingsley Amis, The Green Man  
• Patricia Highsmith, Those Who Walk Away  
• Patricia Highsmith, Found in the Street  
• J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians  
• Patricia Highsmith, Edith's Diary  
• Bill Bryson, Mother Tongue  

2002

5 stars • Carol Goodman, The Lake of Dead Languages

A Latin teacher at a private school in the winter near a lake. A good story. But I tend to conflate it with Drowning Ruth, by Christina Schwarz, as that too involves a frozen lake and a long-ago mystery.

4 stars • Patricia Highsmith, People Who Knock on the Door
5 stars • Ken Follett, Jackdaws  
4 stars • Ruth Rendell, The Lake of Darkness  
4 stars • Patricia Highsmith, The Blunderer  
4 stars • Ruth Rendell, One Across, Two Down  
5 stars • Robert Goddard, In Pale Battalions  
3 stars • Reginald Hill, A Pinch of Snuff  
3 stars • Alexa Albert, Brothel: Mustang Ranch and Its Women  

Interesting introduction to the world of legalized prostitution in Nevada. The display of women in the Mustang Ranch's lobby reminded me of the ancient brothel prostitutes described by the comic poet Xenarchos: they (the ancient women) display themselves, "basking in the sun, breasts bared, naked and stationed side-by-side in a semi-circle."

4 stars • Patricia Highsmith, The Two Faces of January  
2 stars • Patricia Highsmith, Eleven  
3 stars • Beverly Cleary, The Mouse and the Motorcycle  
5 stars • Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning  
5 stars • Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room  
5 stars • Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window  
4 stars • Lemony Snicket, The Miserable Mill  
5 stars • Lemony Snicket, The Austere Academy  
4 stars • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes  

I read this one on my Palm Pilot!

5 stars • Lemony Snicket, The Ersatz Elevator  
5 stars • Lemony Snicket, The Vile Village  
5 stars • Lemony Snicket, The Hostile Hospital  
4 stars • Eva Ibbotson, The Secret of Platform 13  
4 stars • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes  
3 stars • Michael Hoeye, Time Stops for No Mouse  
3 stars • Nero Blanc, A Crossword to Die For  
3 stars • Edward Eager, Half Magic  
3 stars • Philip Gourevitch, A Cold Case  
4 stars • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return of Sherlock Holmes  
5 stars • Daniel Handler, The Basic Eight  

I'll say it again: I love this man.

3 stars • Edward Eager, Magic by the Lake  
2 stars • Liane de Pougy, My Blue Notebooks  
3 stars • Calvin Trillin, Tepper Isn't Going Out  
5 stars • Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice  

Engaging story—the first in a series—about Sherlock Holmes's life in retirement.

5 stars • Robert Goddard, Caught in the Light  
3 stars • Ruth Rendell, Murder Being Once Done  
3 stars • Arturo Perez-Reverte, The Nautical Chart  
3 stars • Laurie R. King, A Monstrous Regiment of Women  
3 stars • Allen Kurzweil, The Grand Complication  
4 stars • Laurie R. King, A Letter of Mary  
3 stars • Daniel Handler, Watch Your Mouth  

Incest and opera. Operatic incest. My introduction to the golum, so I think of the book whenever I see the word.

4 stars • Robert Goddard, Past Caring  
5 stars • John Colapinto, About the Author  
3 stars • Mark Dunn, Ella Minnow Pea  
3 stars • Patricia Highsmith, This Sweet Sickness  
5 stars • Laurie R. King, Folly  
4 stars • Johnathan Coe, The Winshaw Legacy  
3 stars • John Fowles, The Collector  
3 stars • Sherwin B. Nuland, Leonard da Vinci  

2003

4 stars • Ken Follett, Hornet Flight  
5 stars • Christina Schwarz, All is Vanity  

I very much liked this book about a teacher-turned-novelist and her desperate attempts to avoid writing.

4 stars • Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief  

Yet another movie book. I netflixed Adaptation recently too and found myself laughing at what they'd done to poor Susan Orlean, perfectly innocent essayist turned drug-addicted murderess. But I found myself wondering how the movie was received by people who hadn't read the book. At any rate, the book is a delight. Susan Orlean has a way of writing that I find very calming and comfortable—the sort of thing you want to read in a still, sunny room with dust motes floating around you.  

4 stars • Christina Schwarz, Drowning Ruth  
3 stars • Patricia Highsmith, A Dog's Ransom  
4 stars • Susan Orlean, The Bullfighter Checks her Makeup  

Another one by Orlean, this a collection of her essays about ordinary people who turn out to be extraordinarily interesting.

5 stars • Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair  
2.5 stars • Jose Carlos Somoza, The Athenian Murders  
3.5 stars • Quinn Fawcett, Against the Brotherhood  
5 stars • Lemony Snicket, The Carnivorous Carnival  
3.5 stars • Sharon Kay Penman, Time and Chance  
5 stars • Carol Goodman, The Seduction of Water  
3 stars • John D. Freyer, All My Life for Sale  
3 stars • Neil Gaiman, Coraline