shelf.

subscribe to book reviews

If you're interested in getting notified when I write an informal review for one of these, you can subscribe to this dedicated RSS feed.

Currently Reading

Herman Melville

THE ANCIEN RÉGIME AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Alexis de Tocqueville

Read

👓 27 books so far this year.
🗃️ 396 books since I started tracking digitally.

2025

Mary Shelley

THE EMPEROR OF GLADNESS

Ocean Vuong

Chris Ware

Sinclair Lewis

ANARCHY AND CHRISTIANITY

Jacques Ellul

THE HURTING KIND

Ada Limón

WHEN I SING, MOUNTAINS DANCE

Irene Solà

Olga Ravn

JACQUES THE FATALIST

Denis Diderot

THE EYE OF THE MASTER

Matteo Pasquinelli

Ilya Kaminsky

ALISS AT THE FIRE

Jon Fosse

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Miranda Mellis

I WILL DIE IN A FOREIGN LAND

Kalani Pickhart

WHAT HAVE YOU LEFT BEHIND?

Bushra Al-Maqtari

SAINT SEBASTIAN'S ABYSS

Mark Haber

Fredrik Backman

THE SEARCH FOR THE PERFECT LANGUAGE

Umberto Eco

REINHARDT’S GARDEN

Mark Haber

NEW SELECTED POEMS

W.S. Graham

SET MY HEART ON FIRE

Izumi Suzuki

Gina Apostol

HOW TO SAY BABYLON

Safiya Sinclair

STRUCTURALISM AND SEMIOTICS

Terence Hawkes

A FROLIC OF HIS OWN

William Gaddis

Jean Baudrillard

2024

Saadat Hasan Manto

Jacques Ellul

Sarah Rose Etter

Albert Cossery

Philip K. Dick

Kaveh Akbar

Jorge Luis Borges

Munir Hachemi

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Charles Dickens

THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM

Vivian Gornick

Maylis De Kerangal

Olga Ravn

SEEING LIKE A STATE

James C. Scott

Margaret Atwood

GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS

Max Porter

THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Neel Mukherjee

A VERY EASY DEATH

Simone De Beauvoir

WE ALL WANT IMPOSSIBLE THINGS

Catherine Newman

THE DISPOSSESSED

Ursula K. Le Guin

GOD, HUMAN, ANIMAL, MACHINE

Meghan O'Gieblyn

Terry Bisson

Hye-Young Pyun

Han Kang

NONREQUIRED READING

Wisława Szymborska

Benjamin Labatut

HIS MASTER'S VOICE

Stanislaw Lem

Judith Herrin

2023

2022

HAVING AND BEING HAD

Eula Biss

A GIRL IS A HALF-FORMED THING

Eimear McBride

SAGA, VOLUME 10

Brian K. Vaughan

Kate Beaton

WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD

Benjamin Labatut

Neal Stephenson

WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE

Shirley Jackson

A COUNTRY OF GHOSTS

Margaret Killjoy

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Erich Maria Remarque

Edward L. Bernays

Stanislaw Lem

HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES

Carmen Maria Machado

Noam Chomsky

THE MORNING STAR

Karl Ove Knausgaard

DECLINE AND FALL

Evelyn Waugh

THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Paul Tremblay

Honoré de Balzac

EXERCISES IN STYLE

Raymond Queneau

THE ANTHROPOCENE REVIEWED

John Green

FOREVER SOMEONE ELSE

Fernando Pessoa

Geoffrey West

Tomás Q. Morín

Ralph Ellison

Joseph Conrad

CONSIDER THE LOBSTER

David Foster Wallace

BEYOND THE BEYOND

Poul Anderson

AN INVENTORY OF LOSSES

Judith Schalansky

LONG LIVE THE POST HORN!

Vigdis Hjorth

Gwendolyn Brooks

Thomas Pynchon

DANCE THE EAGLE TO SLEEP

Marge Piercy

HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE

Andreas Malm

BLACK LEOPARD, RED WOLF

Marlon James

Frans G. Bengtsson

2021

THE WAYS OF WHITE FOLKS

Langston Hughes

HOMAGE TO CATALONIA

George Orwell

BREAKING THINGS AT WORK

Gavin Mueller

DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD

Olga Tokarczuk

THE BOOK OF TEN NIGHTS AND A NIGHT

John Barth

John Berger

Stanisław Lem

A NATION OF WOMEN

Luisa Capetillo

THE GLASS HOTEL

Emily St. John Mandel

Laurent Binet

ANARCHIST COMMUNISM

Pyotr Kropotkin

BEATEN DOWN, WORKED UP

Steven Greenhouse

Thomas More

THE SOUTHERN QUESTION

Antonio Gramsci

THE PRESENT AGE

Søren Kierkegaard

THE ART OF ASKING YOUR BOSS FOR A RAISE

Georges Perec

THE CITY & THE CITY

China Miéville

FRANKENSTEIN IN BAGHDAD

Ahmed Saadawi

Sinclair Lewis

NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Frederick Douglass

Stanisław Lem

WORK WON'T LOVE YOU BACK

Sarah Jaffe

FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN

Terry Bisson

Zora Neale Hurston

LIFE: A USER'S MANUAL

Georges Perec

Colum McCann

Don DeLillo

PHILOSOPHY AND THE MIRROR OF NATURE

Richard M. Rorty

Jane McAlevey

2020

THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS

Isabel Wilkerson

SOLUTIONS AND OTHER PROBLEMS

Allie Brosh

HYPERBOLE AND A HALF

Allie Brosh

I CURSE THE RIVER OF TIME

Per Petterson

CAPITAL IS DEAD. IS THIS SOMETHING WORSE?

McKenzie Wark

Milan Kundera

MIND OF MY MIND

Octavia E. Butler

James Bridle

William Shakespeare

Jack Vance

SIMULACRA AND SIMULATION

Jean Baudrillard

THE GILDA STORIES

Jewelle L. Gómez

THE FIRE NEXT TIME

James Baldwin

Joseph Heller

Alan Moore

Albert Camus

Richard Wright

Ovid

Blake Crouch

COMMODIFY YOUR DISSENT

Thomas Frank

Karen Russell

Ted Chiang

Thomas Pynchon

THE STAR DIARIES

Stanisław Lem

Morten A. Strøksnes

THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES

Ray Bradbury

Aldous Huxley

FIRE THE BASTARDS!

Jack Green

THE GULF WAR DID NOT TAKE PLACE

Jean Baudrillard

PRIMEVAL AND OTHER TIMES

Olga Tokarczuk

WHO FEARS DEATH

Nnedi Okorafor

THE THIRD POLICEMAN

Flann O'Brien

THE WASTE LAND AND OTHER WRITINGS

T.S. Eliot

THE RECOGNITIONS

William Gaddis

EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM

Hannah Arendt

2019

THE GLASS MENAGERIE

Tennessee Williams

THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD

Margaret Atwood

THE GHOST IN THE SHELL VOLUME 1.5

Shirow Masamune

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

Jonathan Swift

RÉPARER LES VIVANTS

Maylis De Kerangal

THE ICELANDIC SAGA

Brian Wood

BILLY BUDD, SAILOR

Herman Melville

Andrew Sean Greer

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM

Joan Didion

UNDER THE GLACIER

Halldór Laxness

Olga Tokarczuk

Stanisław Lem

TILL WE HAVE FACES

C.S. Lewis

Brian K. Vaughan

Brian K. Vaughan

DEATH OF A SALESMAN

Arthur Miller

THE ALEPH AND OTHER STORIES

Jorge Luis Borges

Naomi Alderman

2018

FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE

Isaac Asimov

Andrew Holleran

A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES

John Kennedy Toole

A COOL MILLION AND THE DREAM LIFE OF BALSO SNELL

Nathanael West

AUTOMATING INEQUALITY

Virginia Eubanks

THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS

Ursula K. Le Guin

Gretchen Bakke

Claire L. Evans

STORIES OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS

Ted Chiang

Herman Melville

THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES

Michel Houellebecq

Sylvia Plath

EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE

Flannery O'Connor

Stanisław Lem

SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE

Guy Debord

Vladimir Nabokov

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

Ron Chernow

THE ART OF THE NOVEL

Milan Kundera

2017

SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD

Orson Scott Card

THE ANGLO-SAXON SAGA

Brian Wood

Bolesław Prus

Aziz Ansari

Orson Scott Card

Margaret Atwood

BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Isaac Asimov

LETTER 44, VOLUME 4

Charles Soule

LETTER 44, VOLUME 3: DARK MATTER

Charles Soule

BARTLEBY AND BENITO CERENO

Herman Melville

Timothy Snyder

THE STARS, LIKE DUST

Isaac Asimov

OPERATION PAPERCLIP

Annie Jacobsen

CONQUEST OF THE USELESS

Werner Herzog

THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE

Haruki Murakami

Blake Crouch

PARADISE LOST & PARADISE REGAINED

John Milton

Brian K. Vaughan

Virginia Woolf

Brian K. Vaughan

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE

Joseph Fink

WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS

J.M. Coetzee

MAKING SENSE OF GOD

Timothy J. Keller

OF MICE AND MEN

John Steinbeck

Brian K. Vaughan

Brian K. Vaughan

Brian K. Vaughan

Steve Inskeep

2016

THE MASTER AND MARGARITA

Mikhail Bulgakov

THE BOOK OF STRANGE NEW THINGS

Michel Faber

David McCullough

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Anthony Burgess

Virginia Heffernan

Michael Lewis

David Mitchell

A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ

Walter M. Miller Jr.

THE HANDMAID'S TALE

Margaret Atwood

Michael Lewis

THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY

Flannery O'Connor

Neil Gaiman

Don DeLillo

Hilary Mantel

THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE

Philip K. Dick

Dan Lyons

John Barth

BUILDING DATA SCIENCE TEAMS

Allen B. Downey

Neil Postman

Chuck Palahniuk

ANALYZING THE ANALYZERS

SOMETHING HAPPENED

Joseph Heller

Flannery O'Connor

THE SIGNAL AND THE NOISE

Nate Silver

LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN

Colum McCann

Stanisław Wyspiański

Frank Herbert

2015

IN THE LAND OF INVENTED LANGUAGES

Arika Okrent

HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE

J.K. Rowling

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

Thomas Harris

David Foster Wallace

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

Milan Kundera

THE DALKEY ARCHIVE

Flann O'Brien

Isaac Asimov

MISS LONELYHEARTS

Nathanael West

A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY

Kurt Vonnegut

A SCANNER DARKLY

Philip K. Dick

THE ENCHANTED APRIL

Elizabeth von Arnim

Jonathan Franzen

ARSÈNE LUPIN, GENTLEMAN-THIEF

Maurice Leblanc

TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE

Mitch Albom

THE SENSE OF AN ENDING

Julian Barnes

THE DAY OF THE LOCUST

Nathanael West

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

Harper Lee

William Gaddis

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Oscar Wilde

2014

THE CRISIS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

Jürgen Habermas

Fyodor Dostoevsky

WOLF IN WHITE VAN

John Darnielle

Charles Dickens

HERBERT WEST: REANIMATOR

H.P. Lovecraft

MERE CHRISTIANITY

C.S. Lewis

THE PROBLEM OF PAIN

C.S. Lewis

Thomas Pynchon

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

Ernest Hemingway

Jeffrey Eugenides

LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE

John Barth

A GAME OF THRONES

George R.R. Martin

John Steinbeck

A HANDFUL OF DUST

Evelyn Waugh

THE CONFIDENCE-MAN

Herman Melville

Alan Moore

THE HOBBIT, OR THERE AND BACK AGAIN

J.R.R. Tolkien

AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS

Jules Verne

BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS

Frank Miller

J.J. Abrams

SO LONG A LETTER

Mariama Bâ

POLITICAL THEOLOGY

Carl Schmitt

L'AMOUR DURE TROIS ANS

Frédéric Beigbeder

Snorri Sturluson

SAD LITTLE BREATHING MACHINE

Matthea Harvey

William Shakespeare

THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION AND HEAVEN AND HELL

Aldous Huxley

BLOOD MERIDIAN, OR THE EVENING REDNESS IN THE WEST

Cormac McCarthy

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

Douglas Adams

Jack Kerouac

EAT, PRAY, LOVE

Elizabeth Gilbert

Don DeLillo

SOMETHING FRESH

P.G. Wodehouse

CONTINGENCY, IRONY, AND SOLIDARITY

Richard M. Rorty

TWO CHEERS FOR ANARCHISM

James C. Scott

SOCIETY AGAINST THE STATE: ESSAYS IN POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Pierre Clastres

VISIONS OF POLITICS, VOLUME I

Quentin Skinner

Peter Adey

JUSTICE AND THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE

Iris Marion Young

2013

THE RAILWAY JOURNEY

Wolfgang Schivelbusch

ON THE INTERNET

Hubert L. Dreyfus

WAR IN THE AGE OF INTELLIGENT MACHINES

Manuel DeLanda

TECHNOLOGY AS MAGIC

Richard Stivers

THE WHALESTOE LETTERS

Mark Z. Danielewski

WINDOWS ON THE WORLD

Frédéric Beigbeder

NOUVELLES SOUS ECSTASY

Frédéric Beigbeder

LIVES IN TRANSLATION

Isabelle De Courtivron

MULTILINGUAL EUROPE

Guus Extra

EN ATTENDANT GODOT

Samuel Beckett

WAITING FOR GODOT

Samuel Beckett

THE ABOLITION OF MAN

C.S. Lewis

August Strindberg

FIESTA: THE SUN ALSO RISES

Ernest Hemingway

DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH

Michel Foucault

THE CRYING OF LOT 49

Thomas Pynchon

THE LESSON OF THE MASTER

Henry James

ILL SEEN ILL SAID

Samuel Beckett

Dante Alighieri

Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

THE CORRECTIONS

Jonathan Franzen

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH

Anonymous

A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING

Dave Eggers

THE NECESSARY MARRIAGE

Dumitru Țepeneag

Vladimir Nabokov

E.M. Forster

David Foster Wallace

Joseph Heller

Philip Roth

GRAVITY'S RAINBOW

Thomas Pynchon

THE SIRENS OF TITAN

Kurt Vonnegut

THE HUMAN STAIN

Philip Roth

THE SOUND AND THE FURY

William Faulkner

EXILE AND THE KINGDOM

Albert Camus

WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD

E.M. Forster

ONLY REVOLUTIONS

Mark Z. Danielewski

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Sigmund Freud

THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY

Erik Larson

Max Brooks

IS THAT A FISH IN YOUR EAR?

David Bellos

AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH

Neil Postman

OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET

C.S. Lewis

David Eagleman

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

Karl Marx

THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL

William Blake

AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS

Flann O'Brien

Samuel Beckett

Aldous Huxley

David Foster Wallace

HOUSE OF LEAVES

Mark Z. Danielewski

Darren Aronofsky

Knut Hamsun

2012