Skip to content

Arukiyomi

Walk and read. Live and learn.

  • AboutExpand
    • My Ratings
    • Privacy Policy
  • TBR
  • HistoryExpand
    • Hall of Fame
    • 2020
    • 2019
    • 2018
    • 2017
    • 2016
    • 2015
    • 2014
    • 2013
    • 2012
    • 2011
    • 2010
    • 2009
    • 2008
    • 2007
  • 1001 Books SpreadsheetExpand
    • v6 Spreadsheet Download Page
    • Official 1001 Books Spreadsheet FAQ
Arukiyomi
Walk and read. Live and learn.

okay books

0712 | Flat Earth | Christine Garwood
non-fiction

0712 | Flat Earth | Christine Garwood

Completed30 December, 202015 January, 2021

Just before Christmas, this popped through the door completely anonymously. Tearing it open, it sounded like just the thing to while away a day or so reading over the break….

Read MoreContinue

0710 | Mother | Maxim Gorky
fiction

0710 | Mother | Maxim Gorky

Completed23 December, 202013 January, 2021

This reads like a cross between Dr Zhivago and the last part of The Jungle. It’s packed full of characters who, in true Russian fashion, each have seven names they…

Read MoreContinue

fiction

0704 | The Circle | Dave Eggers

Completed8 October, 202028 December, 2020

Whoever reviewed this for The Guardian said it was “prescient, important and very funny.” Two out of three ain’t bad, I suppose; there are precious few laughs to be had…

Read MoreContinue

fiction

0698 | Possession | A. S. Byatt

Completed1 July, 202019 December, 2020

Oh boy, it seems Virgin in the Garden wasn’t large enough of a stage for Byatt to perform her one-woman show of intellectual capacity. 12 years later, she’s back with…

Read MoreContinue

fiction

0694 | Clear Light of Day | Anita Desai

Completed16 April, 20204 October, 2020

Although this was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, I couldn’t quite see where this was going or the point of it all. I kept expecting things to happen or the…

Read MoreContinue

non-fiction

0691 | Touch | David Linden

Completed1 April, 202017 September, 2020

This has the subtitle The Science of the Sense that Makes Us Human, but nowhere in it will you find an explanation as to why touch apparently makes us any…

Read MoreContinue

non-fiction

0689 | Falling Upward | Richard Rohr

Completed29 March, 20205 September, 2020

Not a man I’ll read any more of, but this one was recommended to me by some friends and none other than my wife so I wasn’t about to refuse…

Read MoreContinue

fiction

0680 | Family Matters | Rohinton Mistry

Completed24 September, 201920 August, 2020

Not a patch on A Fine Balance, this starts out alright with a family fighting to survive on the fine margins of lower-middle class Indian life. However, once things settle…

Read MoreContinue

fiction

0675 | Freedom | Jonathan Franzen

Completed1 July, 201915 August, 2020

As with Franzen’s other novels, everyone’s got hangups and skeletons in the closet and he spends the novel dragging these out into the light while the characters kick and scream….

Read MoreContinue

fiction

0667 | LaBrava | Elmore Leonard

Completed8 June, 20195 July, 2020

If you like hard-boiled detective stuff, this is for you. Leonard even throws in a faded 1950s movie star so you get a bit of film noir along the way….

Read MoreContinue

fiction

0665 | The Goldfinch | Donna Tartt

Completed29 May, 20195 July, 2020

Some people say this is overlong. I’m not entirely sure I agree. At the pace the novel moves at, I can’t see what might be omitted. What I will state…

Read MoreContinue

fiction

0661 | The Man Without Qualities | Robert Musil

Completed12 May, 20195 July, 2020

This unfinished tome of a book is an extremely strange one to experience. Written in a very Magic-Mountain-like way, we find ourselves party to the life of Ulrich, a minor…

Read MoreContinue

fiction

0656 | The Pigeon | Patrick Suskind

Completed29 April, 20191 April, 2020

This is a little slip of a book and quite why it should make the 1001 Books list at all is a mystery to me. There’s nothing wrong with it,…

Read MoreContinue

fiction

0650 | One, No One and One Hundred Thousand | Luigi Pirandello

Completed1 April, 201922 March, 2020

Started out a bit Kafka-esque but then didn’t really go anywhere. Maybe that’s the point. It took Pirandello 15 years to write it which equates to just over 10 pages…

Read MoreContinue

fiction

0645 | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace

Completed10 March, 201923 September, 2020

My my, what a book. And the eponymous joke is on who exactly? The characters or the readers? Not for the faint hearted at over 1,000 pages including 380 miniscule…

Read MoreContinue

non-fiction

0638 | Testament of Youth | Vera Brittain

Completed2 February, 20195 September, 2020

While this is one of the classic war books and written from the almost unique perspective of a woman, if you can find an abridged version to read, get that…

Read MoreContinue

0634| The Virgin in the Garden | A. S. Byatt
fiction

0634| The Virgin in the Garden | A. S. Byatt

Completed5 January, 20191 March, 2019

The influence of Iris Murdoch on Byatt seems to be very apparent here. Virgin reads like an intellectual’s version of Murdoch’s The Bell, written 20 years earlier, but without as…

Read MoreContinue

0633 | Sabbath’s Theater | Philip Roth
fiction

0633 | Sabbath’s Theater | Philip Roth

Completed1 January, 201923 February, 2019

Not the most pleasant read anyone of us will experience. Just under 500 pages describing the purposefully repugnant Mickey Sabbath. While the more prudish among us will simply stop reading,…

Read MoreContinue

Page navigation

1 2 3 … 8 Next

All reviews and book photographs © 2021, Arukiyomi.

Scroll to top
  • About
    • My Ratings
    • Privacy Policy
  • TBR
  • History
    • Hall of Fame
    • 2020
    • 2019
    • 2018
    • 2017
    • 2016
    • 2015
    • 2014
    • 2013
    • 2012
    • 2011
    • 2010
    • 2009
    • 2008
    • 2007
  • 1001 Books Spreadsheet
    • v6 Spreadsheet Download Page
    • Official 1001 Books Spreadsheet FAQ
Search