Book Notes
See my archive of notes and quotes from 130+ books I’ve read.
Best-Of Lists
Original posts with remarks and initial rankings:
Reviews
Post date in parentheses. More book talking on Goodreads.
- The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (October 2021)
- Paper Trails by Cameron Blevins (June 2021)
- The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson (June 2021)
- Down from Basswood by Lynn Maria Laitala (February 2021)
- Meditations on Hunting by José Ortega y Gasset (December 2020)
- Information Hunters by Kathy Peiss (March 2020)
- Get Thee Back to the Future by Ian Doescher (August 2019)
- Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser (December 2018)
- Boom Town by Sam Anderson (November 2018)
- How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan (August 2018)
- John Tyler by Gary May (July 2018)
- Atlas of a Lost World by Craig Childs (June 2018)
- Quisling: A Study in Treachery by Hans Fredrick Dahl (March 2018)
- 84 Charing Cross Road (February 2018)
- Win Bigly by Scott Adams (February 2018)
- Pinery Boys by Franz Rickaby (January 2018)
- The New Analog by Damon Krukowski (December 2017)
- How to Think by Alan Jacobs (November 2017)
- The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (September 2017)
- The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel (September 2017)
- The Iliad by Homer (August 2017)
- Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler (July 2017)
- Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks (July 2017)
- The Vanishing American Adult by Ben Sasse (July 2017)
- Movies Are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings by Josh Larsen (June 2017)
- Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper (April 2017)
- The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher (March 2017)
- The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe’s Libraries by Anders Rydell (February 2017)
- Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon (February 2017)
- Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester Alan Arthur by Thomas Reeves (December 2016)
- A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-40 by William Trotter (December 2016)
- But What If We’re Wrong? by Chuck Klosterman (August 2016)
- Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West (July 2016)
- Track Changes by Matthew Kirschenbaum (June 2016)
- Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher (March 2016)
- Better Living Through Criticism by A.O. Scott (February 2016)
- First Entrepreneur by Edward Lengel (February 2016) for Library Journal
- Herbert Hoover in the White House by Charles Rappleye (February 2016) for LJ
- The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks (February 2016)
- Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (January 2016)
- The Typewriter: A Graphic History by Janine Vangool (January 2016)
- The Typewriter Revolution by Richard Polt (December 2015)
- The Hunt for Vulcan by Thomas Levenson (November 2015)
- The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman (November 2015)
- Step Aside, Pops by Kate Beaton (October 2015)
- We Don’t Need Roads by Caseen Gaines (September 2015)
- The Meaning of the Library by Alice Crawford (July 2015)
- So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson (June 2015)
- Dataclysm: Who We Are by Christian Rudder (June 2015)
- H Is For Hawk by Helen Macdonald (April 2015)
- How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson (January 2015)
- Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James Swanson (January 2015)
- The Glass Cage: Automation and Us by Nicholas Carr (October 2014)
- Deep by James Nestor (August 2014 – Published at ThinkChristian)
- The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon (March 2014)
- The Race Beat by Hank Klibanoff (January 2014)
- An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield (December 2013)
- The Little Way of Ruthie Leming by Rod Dreher (October 2013)
- Then They Came For Me by Maziar Bahari (September 2013)
- Longitude by Dava Sobel (July 2013)
- Twelve Years A Slave by Solomon Northup (July 2013)
- The Pleasures of Reading in An Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs (July 2013)
- Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President by Ari Hoogenboom (June 2013)
- Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times by H.W. Brands (April 2013)
- The Reason for God by Tim Keller (March 2013)
- Hellhound On His Trail by Hampton Sides (February 2013)
- Black Bodies and Quantum Cats by Jennifer Ouellette (August 2012)
- Bound for Canaan by Fergus Bordewich (August 2012)
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (May 2008)
Features
Interview: Alena Graedon, author of The Word Exchange (June 2014)
Interview: Unprofessional Confessions with Rich Dyson (June 2014)
Two Librarians Discuss: The Fault In Our Stars – Okay? (June 2014)
“Read Books. Often. Mostly Print” – A Rather Bookish Manifesto (June 2014)
A Novel Ninevember (November 2013)