The books I read in 2016–55 in all
Some great, some adequate, some frightful.
I used to be a voracious reader in my youth. As I grew older I thought my reading had slowed down. Yet, I seemed to be clicking a lot on Amazon’s Kindle Buy Now button.
So, I decided to start cataloging my novel reading (as distinct from magazines and news) in 2016. I was relieved to realise that I was averaging more than a book a week.
The list below is based on the month in which I finished the book and the notes are those I made in my journal as I finished each book: immediate reactions, unedited. The genre classification is simplistic since many of these books could be classified across genres, but it serves. My tastes obviously ran to thrillers (crime or otherwise) — 17, SF — 20, Mystery — 11 and a smattering of others. Only one non-fiction book. Hmm. I guess I’m at that stage in life where I need entertainment more than education. Which is why there were a sprinkling of re-reads in here.
January 2016
- The Short Drop — Matthew FitzSimmons [Thriller]
Crackerjack thriller. Loved it.
2. Knight Moves — Walter Jon Williams [SF]
Quite remarkable and ultimately enjoyable, although I took the longest break ever around the middle of the book. Basically catching up on the the Economist rather than reading this novel. I wonder why. I think I enjoyed the speculative ‘hard’ sf stuff better than the relationship stuff.
3. Quinn Goes West — LH Thomson [Thriller]
Good fun, as always. Chandler meets Rick Castle.
Why Are We in Vietnam? — Norman Mailer [Literature, seriously?]
Waded through 10% of it, then relegated it to the Unreadable Crap pile. I wonder how some authors (American ones, particularly) get a completely undeserved reputation as geniuses.
February 2016
4. Fear is the Key — Alistair Maclean [Thriller]
Need some sane storytelling after that last disaster. Vintage Maclean. Such a relief after that disastrous Mailer.
5. Qualify — Vera Nazarian [SF]
Young Adult Hunger Games stuff but pretty decent — 10% of the way through so far. Quickly went from Pretty Decent to Jolly Damn Good. YA for sure but exciting and a protagonist you get to really like. May be worth splurging on the rest of the trilogy.
6. The Killing League — Dan Ames [Thriller]
Great airplane reading. Fast paced thriller with chapters no more than a page or so long.
7. Parallax View — Allan Leverone [Thriller]
Reliable thriller. Good airplane read.
8. Double Star — Robert Heinlein [SF]
That was a fast read! Sign of a great book.
9. Birdsongs — Jason Deas [Crime]
Curiously bad and inept writing replete with strangely misspelt words and plotting that seemed to quit half way through. And yet I finished it.
March 2016
10. Three Doors to Death — Rex Stout [Mystery]
Great fun as always.
11. Across a Billion Years — Robert Silverberg [SF]
Marvellous. Silverberg is a great SF writer.
12. The Tiger in The Smoke — Margery Allingham [Thriller]
Great stuff. More a crime thriller than a mystery but charmingly told.
13. Blitzkrieg — Len Deighton [Non-fiction]
Astonishing story of incompetency, foolhardiness & blind luck
April 2016
14. Black Orchids — Rex Stout[Mystery]
15. The Dead Man — Joel Goldman [Thriller]
Quite decent even though the killer had been telegraphed in the prologue itself. A bit long-winded too at times, but good for a flight.
16. The Ember War — Richard Fox [SF]
War SF. Too much war not enough SF. Very gung-ho.
17. Detonator — Andy McNab [Thriller]
Would probably make a better movie than a book. Too detailed about what he ate and how he loaded the gun and so on. A bit tedious. And everybody dies fairly pointlessly.
18. The Goblin Reservation — Clifford Simak [Fantasy]
Good fun. Sort of Terry Pratchett.
May 2016
19. The Red Fox — Anthony Hyde [Espionage]
Quite good. Graham Greene-esque. A bit long-winded but excellent writing and Greene’s moral ambiguity about spies and their motives and lives.
Thirteen, Fourteen Little Boy Unseen — Willow Rose [Ugh]
Amateur stilted writing. Maybe it’s lost in translation but it was horribly clunky. Set my teeth on edge. Abandoned.
20. Star Sand — Roger Pulver [General]
A strange little book, but very well written and quite engrossing despite its absence of a real plot.
21. Journey Into Fear — Eric Ambler [Thriller]
A classic. Deceptively simple writing but a perfect, intelligent thriller.
22. Murder on Wheels — Stuart Palmer [Mystery]
Excellent stuff — cozy mystery a la John Dickson Carr with a sprinkling of Crispin. Worth visiting this series.
June 2016
23. Helliconia Spring — Brian Aldiss [SF]
Good but lo-o-ong. Great feat of imagination and world-building but I think I now lack the patience for these long-winded expositions. Interesting though it is, I often found myself wondering, “So what?”
24. The Bone Collector — Jeffrey Deaver [Thriller]
Awfully good, despite all the detailing of evidence and chemical analysis and so on. Must catch the movie. Started this about a week ago after reaching 65-odd percent of Helliconia. Needed a faster paced read for a change. This one delivered in spades.
July 2016
25. Doubt — C E Tobisman [Thriller]
Decent legal thriller, could be a bit faster paced and less introspective about the main protagonist, though. But overall enjoyable.
26. The Passage — Justin Cronin [SF]
Outstanding. Vampires meet Walking Dead. Well worth exploring the trilogy.
27. Holy Disorders — Edmund Crispin [Mystery]
Fabulous re-read. I love Crispin’s stylish use of obscure and obsolete words and his deadpan, wry British humour.
August 2016
28. Cold — John Sweeney [Thriller]
This took longer than it deserved to because I was catching up on my missed Economist & Time issues. Ultimately it was a satisfying thriller though initially it seemed more complicated and disjointed than necessary. But it started clicking about 40% through and then came to together nicely at the end with a satisfying and coherent denouement.
29. When Gravity Falls — George Alec Effinger [SF]
Outstanding! Cyberpunk meets Chandler with a generous and authentic sounding Islamic twist. Great first person sardonic hero and believable SF tropes.
30. Six Days of the Condor — James Grady [Thriller]
Crackling thriller despite being a bit over-expository. Seemed amateurish in parts but overall held together nicely.
31. Black Rain — Matthew B. J. Delaney [SF]
Not bad but very overblown. Hunger Games meets Blade Runner with a side order of apocalypse. Couldn’t get involved with the protagonists. And too many over dramatic twists.
32. Graven Images — Jane Waterhouse [Crime]
Great writing but overly emotional — weirdly so — characters. A crime novel (not very thriller) not a mystery but a lot of the emotional drama and character motivations were very mysterious and unnecessarily emotionally dramatic. The characters could have benefited from a tight slap. Overall, readable but with reservations.
33. A Morbid Taste for Bones — Ellis Peters [Mystery]
Great fun. A cozy murder thriller (kinda) with great period writing and a clever if unusual detective.
September 2016
34. Remanence — Jennifer Foehner Wells [SF]
Book 2 of the Confluence series. Lives up to the first one. Rollicking read with a richly imagined alien ethos. Some unnecessary cringe-worthy sex scenes though.
35. The Monogram Murders — Sophie Hannah [Mystery]
Quite decent. The plotting was thick with lots of clues & red herrings scattered about. But the characters’ motivation was not something I could relate to — too Victorian. Also, Poirot’s sidekick was too dumb and squeamish for someone supposed to be a top Scotland Yard dude. On the plus side, Poirot was good and the writing was quite vintage Christie.
36. The Atlantis Plague | The Atlantis Gene — A. G. Riddle [SF]
As fast-paced, convoluted, over the top, Da Vinci code meets Orson Scott Card as the first one and just as enjoyable.
On to the last in the trilogy…
37. The Atlantis World — A.G. Riddle [SF]
Finale to the Atlantis / Origin trilogy. Interesting, not as up to the mark as the earlier two because a lot was spent on flashbacks serving as exposition for the sequence of the last two books. Overall, a complex but entertaining and fast-paced trilogy, if considerably over the top in content.
October 2016
38. Cage of Bones — Tania Carver [Crime]
A bit of a mixed bag. Couldn’t quite get the genre straight. Felt like a porridge of serial killer thriller, horror, conspiracy theory, police procedural… but it was a fast, entertaining read, at least.
39. The Forever War — Joe Haldeman [SF]
A re-read, natch. Well, whaddaya know, this wasn't a re-read after all. Can't believe I hadn't actually read this so far despite having it in dead tree. Superb read!
40. Bones of the Earth — Michael Swanwick [SF]
More confusing than most time travel paradox novels but the dinosaur stuff was good fun. All those alternate/future reality persona meeting their current selves made no real sense.
41. Shakedown- Joel Goldman [Thriller]
Good fun. Much better than the 3rd one, which I read first. The snappy repartee works better and it’s a straight forward thriller, no pretensions to being a mystery (unlike the 3rd one)
42. And Be A Villain — Rex Stout [Mystery]
Outstanding as always. Archie’s in fine form too.
43. Russian Hill — Ty Hutchinson [Thriller]
Quite a fun serial killer thriller with a nice twist. Believable and likeable protagonists and plenty of action. Would be worth pursuing this series.
44. Eternity Ring — Patricia Wentworth [Mystery]
Delightful, cozy, very English mystery. It’s remarkable how these English authors weave together such everyday comfortable situations and people into such dark motives and deeds. Returning to Patricia after my school days, I think. Well worth the wait.
45. An Expert in Murder — Nicola Upson [Mystery]
Featured Josephine Tey as one of the detectives working with a Scotland Yard buddy. Quite nice and a very English mystery but with a strangely complicated serial killer twist.
November 2016
46 to 49. Octavia Butler’s Patternist series of 4 novels: Seed to Harvest [SF]
Dealing with near immortal mutants who breed a mind-reading race of humans, who then go to Proxima Centauri using psionic spaceships and return with an alien microbe that spreads like the plague and creates another race of mutant used-to-be-humans that run on all fours and resemble Sphinxes. The last instalment is naturally about the final confrontation between these two new species (us poor human remnants are referred to as mutes).
Quite entertaining, I must say.
50. The Bat — Jo Nesbo [Thriller]
Very good serial killer thriller. Harry Hole is a tormented detective perhaps overly so, but the books are all good reads.
December 2016
51. The Valhalla Exchange — Jack Higgins [Thriller]
Crackling war thriller a la Maclean but a deal less melodramatic for the most part. Good author to get more of.
52. Very Good, Jeeves — P. G. Wodehouse [Humour]
Outstanding, as always. The man’s a genius. Period.
53. Painting the Darkness — Robert Goddard [Mystery]
Great! Goddard is like Tey channelling Hardy or Dickens. Near the end it looked like a cop out solution- one of those already proposed by the author, but then there was a final twist waiting… very atmospheric and strangely taut yet leisurely. Typical Goddard, in fact.
54. Leviathan Wakes — James Corey [SF]
Goddard is great but needs to be savoured. A slow but enjoyable read. Needed something faster on the side; and I’m watching the TV version of this so…
Jolly crackling space opera. Helped that I also started the TV series simultaneously. I had abandoned the latter after the first episode but reading this helped me get back to that and I ended up enjoying both.
55. Archie in the Crosshairs — Robert Goldsborough [Mystery]
Good fun. A couple of false notes here and there but a crackling good tale all in all.
