It's true that there's no prize when you die... (updated)

... but I do keep track of all the books I've read.   I rate them on a scale of 0-4+, so that when I get old(er) and (more) demented, I'll know which ones to re-read.

For the past 25 years, here are the 92 books I've rated 4+ (to be honest, it also includes a fair number of 3.5s), out of a total of 700+.

Year	Author	Title
1990 ( of 26)	Ludlum	The Bourne Identity
	Ludlum	The Parsifal Mosaic
1991 (52)	Colin Watson	Hopjoy was Here
	Gerrold	The Man Who Folded Himself
	Marquez	One Hundred Years of Solitude
1992 (63)	Boyer&Nissenbaum	Salem Possessed
	Weisman	Witchcraft, Magic and Religion in 17th century Massachusetts.
	Frederic	The Damnation of Theron Ware
	LeCarre	The Secret Pilgrim
	Warren	Brother to Dragons
	Clarke	Childhood's End
1993 (39)	None
1994 (44)	None
1995 (38)	Dickson	And So To Murder
	Paulson	Winterdance
	Kersten	The Jesus Conspiracy
	Huyghe	Columbus Was Last
	Holand	Norse Discoveries & Explorations in America 982-1362
1996 (28)	Bester	The Stars My Destination
	Fowles	A Maggot
	Guthrie	The Big Sky
1997 (8)	None
1998 (13)	Krakauer	Into Thin Air
	Wahlgren	The Vikings and America
1999 (16)	Jewett	The country of the Pointed Firs
	Faulkner	Absalom Absalom (turgid and gloomy)
	Hardy and Shaffer	The Wicker Man
2000 (4)	Teale, Edwin Way	A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm
2001 (8)	Ryan & Pittman	Noah's Flood
	Lansing	Endurance
	Mowat	The Alban Quest
2002 (19)	None
2003 (36)	Brown	Angels and Demons
	Hosseini	The Kite Runner
	Warren	All the Kings Men
2004 (49)	Menzies	1421 The Year China Discovered America
	Wodehouse	Bertie Wooster Sees It Through
	Brown	Da Vinci Code
	Hoffer	The True Believer
2005 (45)	Whitaker	The Mapmaker’s Wife
	Woodham-Smith	The Reason Why [Crimea, Light Brigade]
	Ferguson	Naked to Mine Enemies, Volumes 1 and 2
	Lapham	Gag Rule.  On the suppression of dissent
	Powell	Bring Out Your Dead
2006 (35)	Grogan	Marley and Me
	Hanson	Confident Hope of a Miracle
	Bamford	A Pretext for War
	Needham	Science and Civilisation in China, Vol IV: 3
	Wright	The Looming Tower; Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
	Ryan	The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
2007 (29)	Harris	Letter to a Christian Nation
	Setterfield	The Thirteenth Tale
	Kinzer	Overthrow. America’s Century of Regime Change (skimmed)
	Fothergill	Planet Earth
	Shorto	The Island at the Center of the World [Manhattan]
	McCarthy	The Road
	Smith	When the Cheering Stopped
	McCarthy	No Country for Old Men
2008 (30)	Hitchens	God is Not Great
	Nouvian	The Deep
	Ballesta & Deschamp	Planet Ocean
	Corrie	Let Me Stand Alone
	Marent	Butterfly
	McCarthy	Blood Meridian
	Weiner	Legacy of Ashes
	Winchester	Krakatoa; the Day the World Exploded
	Schooler	Last Shot
2009 (31)	Wilson	How Jesus Became Christian
	Ehrman	Misquoting Jesus
	Keys	Catastrophe
	Zuckerman	Society without God
	Nasrecki	The Smaller Majority (nature photos)
2010 (49)	Pears	An Instance of the Fingerpost
	Nicholls	Paradise Found: Nature in America at the time of discovery
	Van Allsburg	The Mysteries of Harris Burdick
	Ludlum	The Bourne Identity
	Lester	The Fourth Part of the World
	Gilder	Heavenly Intrigue [Kepler and Brahe]
	Grann	The Lost City of Z
	Holmes	The Age of Wonder
	Bergreen	Over the Edge of the World [Magellan]
2011 (21)	Meldahl	Hard Road West
	Gaiman	Coraline
	Winchester, Simon	The Alice Behind Wonderland
	Severin	The Brendan Voyage
	Seuss	The Bippolo Seed and Other Stories
	Bryson	The Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way
	Cohen	The Tree Army; a pictorial history of the CCC, 1933-1942
2012 (18)	Mann	1491
	Millard	Destiny of the Republic [bio James Garfield]
	Menzies	1434; The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy…
	Moon	Blue Highways
	Feldman	When the Mississippi Ran Backwards
2013 (21)	Peskov	Lost in the Taiga
	Mitchell	Cloud Atlas
	Mitchell	The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet
2014 (21)	Faulkner	As I Lay Dying

Sometimes I post reviews in the recommended books category of this blog.

Please feel free to chime in with a comment about your favorite books.

Addendum November 2021:

(can't remember how I created a table in the post 7 years ago, so I'll just copy/paste the updated info)

Addendum November 2024:

Summarize your life in six words

That is the premise of a book published by the editors of Smith magazine. I had heard the book discussed on the BBC one morning and had to wait months to get it from our library, but it was worth the wait - a delightful read. The editors/authors asked famous and ordinary people to sum up their lives in exactly six words. The results range from humorous to clever to sardonic to frankly poignant. Herewith some of my favorites:

Followed yellow brick road. Disappointment ensued.
I thought I was someone else.
Wanted world, got world plus lupus.
Tragical childhood can lead to wisdom.
I recognize red flags faster, now.
Nothing profound, I just sat around.
Found true love, married someone else.
Macular degeneration. Didn’t see that coming.
As a child, nomadic. Now static.
No words can describe my life.
Afraid of becoming like my mother.
Two boys, my life, conquering autism.
Lost and found, rescued by dog.
Can’t tonight, watching Law and Order.
My life’s a bunch of almosts.
Thought I would have more impact.
At the end of normal street.
Found great happiness in insignificant details.
Still lost on road less traveled.
Everyone who loved me is dead.
The car accident changed my life.
No wife, No kids. No problem.
Boys liked her. She preferred books.
Never really finished anything, except cake.
Cursed with cancer, blessed with friends.
I fell far from the tree.
Alone at home, cat on lap.
Educated too much, lived too little.
Full life; impossible to summarize in…
My second grade teacher was right.
Became my mother. Please shoot me.
Can’t read all the time. Bummer.
I wrote a poem. Nobody cared.
Working with what God gave me.
Same mistakes. Over and over again.
Still trying to impress my dad.
So devastated, no babies for me.
Thank God the suicide attempt failed.
Made labor-saving software: thousands unemployed.
Unfortunately, there was no other way.
Expected prime rib. Ended with hamburger.
Father, son, both hit by cars.
Veni, Vidi, but haven’t vici yet.
I came, I saw, I concurred.
Dead mom watching. I’ll be good.
Type A personality. Type B capability.
Carries flask for unsociable social events.
Polio gave me my happy life.
Loved home. Left to make sure.
There will be no beautiful corpse.

The book is “Not Quite What I Was Planning; Six-word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure.” From Smith magazine (edited by Rachel Fershleiser and Larry Smith).

Addendum:  Found this 2008 post while searching for something else; decided it was worth a bump to the front page.

Reposted from 2020 for the same reason.  Readers feel free to summarize you life in six words in a comment.

"North Woods"

An interesting and enjoyable read, recommended to me by a friend who lives on Cape Cod.  The setting for the book is the northwestern part of Massachusetts, in the Berkshires.  The storyline follows a single parcel of land, the house on that property, and the sequence of inhabitants and visitors from colonial settlement times to the modern era.

Because it is an "impossible to summarize" novel, I won't take the time to do a lengthly commentary, but will instead refer you to this review in The New York Times.  I agree with all the points made in that review, and especially the cover blurb about the author's "polyphony."  The stories from different eras are told in different "voices."  I was especially impressed with a section describing schizophrenia written as though from medical history notes.  To my ear attuned by thirty years in medical schools, the text sounded "real," and I was not surprised later to discover that Daniel Mason is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Stanford.

I always enjoy encountering words and phrases that are unfamiliar to me:

"... the oldest son of the town fence viewer." (67)  There is a Wikipedia entry on fence viewer - a term that dates back to 1661 and was an important duty in colonial America.

"Lovely country, I should say, sleepy grey fields, low walls fretting the swell as far as one can see." (131).  Multiple potential meanings; here presumably "to disturb or cause to ripple" (re the swell of the land).

"P.S. - Ants ate the envelope glue so I hadn't sealed this yet..." (144).  Interesting historical anecdote.

"... an old ash, dead, wearing its loose bark like an écorché figure that holds his own flayed skin." (154)

"And the house, the tumble, the mazy skein of its rooms." (164)  "Like a maze" (presumably archaic) and a tangle, typically of yarn.  A bit contrived IMHO.

"... a fantasy novel she was writing, a gowny, spelly kind of book with so much scrying that Helen had been moved to warn her of the limits on the use of crystal balls in fiction." (285)  Clarified by the last phrase of the sentence.  Related to "descry."

"... stepped back from the cheval glass (c. 1870) and turned with a look of triumph..." (311)  " A classic example of an adjustable mirror is the cheval glass, which the user can tilt."  Lots of examples at Google Images.  Somehow related to horses (?); someone else can figure out why.

"... in a black tuxedo jacket with grosgrain lapels..." (311)  From the French, "coarse grained" referring to cloth (and often silk).

"... the chattering squirrels that gave chase across the catslide roof." (327) 

"A catslide roof is a gabled roof where the slope and eave on one side extends below the eave on the other side. Originally found on Early Modern and Medieval county homes in England, designers used them on Cotswold, Tudor and some Cape Cod Style homes during eclectic era of the 1920s. Although they can be found on any gable roof, they are particularly common on front entries like the example in the photo."

"... there was something in the pool, a muskrat or whistlepig." (353)  A term originally applied to groundhogs, now better known as a premium whiskey.

This was an easy addition to my list of recommended books.  Readers are invited to add their own reviews in the Comments.