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Why do some novels win literary awards?

Why do some novels win literary awards?

Let's see if we can figure out why this paper-thin work of fiction won wide recognition and a literary award for its author. Snow Hunters introduces . . . let's count them: eight characters in 226 pages: Yohan, a North Korean soldier captured by UN forces late in the Korean...

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Explore My “BEST OF the category” selections

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK?

When people ask me that question, I never know what to say. In a lifetime of reading, I’ve read many thousands of books. And I’ve reviewed well over 2,000 of them on this site. Picking just one as a “favorite,” or even a handful of them, makes no sense to me.

The problem is, I read for many different reasons. Perhaps you do, too. And I read many different sorts of books. Mysteries and thrillers. Popular fiction, especially historical fiction. Science fiction.

And nonfiction, history in particular. You’ll find hundreds of reviews in every one of those categories on this site.

Look to the right for a rotating random selection culled from throughout this site.

Happy reading!

 

Cover image of "The Handsome Man's De Luxe Cafe," a novel that sparkles with humor in abundance

Humor in abundance at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

There's humor in abundance in the charming little novels of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, but I have never laughed so much as I did when reading the 15th entry in the series, The Handsome Man's De Luxe Cafe.  Here, for example, is a conversation between Mma Precious...
Cover image of "Death and Judgment," a novel about corruption in Italy

A detective novel that highlights corruption in Italy

Though she has lived in Venice for more than a quarter-century, Donna Leon has insisted that the Commissario Brunetti series of detective novels she sets in Venice not be translated from English into Italian. There's no mystery here. Leon's picture of Italian society is merciless. In numerous...

A murder mystery set in Communist Laos in the 1970s

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes You've never read a mystery novel anything like this. It's 1976 in Vientiane. Communist Laos is in an uneasy relationship with its patron, the Vietnam of Ho Chi Minh. Dr. Siri Paiboun, a long-suffering, 72-year-0ld doctor who has spent much of his life in the...
Cover image of "The Lost Man of Bombay," historical mystery set in Indiaa

A baffling murder mystery in post-Independence India

Some of the most compelling new mystery series have been coming out of India in recent years. They're arriving thick and fast these days. Sujata Massey's Perveen Mistry novels about the first woman lawyer in Bombay. The Wyndham and Banerjee novels by Abir Mukherjee, about an odd couple of police...
Cover image of "Slow Horses" by Mick Herron, one of his novels about Clever British spies

Following Mick Herron’s clever British spies at Slough House

The eleven books in Mick Herron's Slough House series are the best known of the eighteen novels he has written to date. The series follows the screw-ups and misfits of Britain's MI5 who have been warehoused at a location distant from the agency's London headquarters and left in the charge of an...
The Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson

The Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs

A review of Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). This is an authorized biography, but one unlike any other I’ve encountered, since Isaacson leavened his obvious admiration for Jobs as a creative genius and a gifted business leader with unvarnished and seemingly endless anecdotes about his subject’s notoriously difficult personality.

Cover image of "Dark of the Moon," a novel involving a right-wing preacher

In Virgil Flowers’ debut, arson, multiple murder, and a right-wing preacher

Virgil Flowers is a horndog who feels compelled to chase every pretty woman under the age of 50. Though his own faith rejects Jesus, he's "the son of a Presbyterian minister and a professor of engineering, who saw in God the Great Engineer and believed as devoutly as her husband." He's been...
Cover image of "1688: A Global History,"

Viewing humanity as a whole through the lens of history

Sixteen eighty-eight is familiar to many English-speakers as the year of Britain's Glorious Revolution, when William of Orange invaded England and restored the primacy of the Protestant religion in the nation's affairs. But University of Southern California historian John E. Wills Jr. chose the...
Cover image of "Out of Poverty," a book about narrowing global inequities

Narrowing global inequities: a reading list

As I’ve dug more deeply into the subject of global poverty in the course of writing The Business Solution to Poverty with Paul Polak, it has become increasingly clear to me that truly understanding how today’s glaring inequities have come about requires extensive knowledge in a wide array of...
Add Post ‹ Mal Warwick on Books: Insightful Reviews and Recommendations — WordPress

How tea shaped empires and became the world’s favorite beverage

The world is divided between tea drinkers and coffee drinkers. Google Gemini says, "Tea is overwhelmingly preferred in most of Asia, Africa, and parts of Europe (e.g., UK, Turkey). Coffee is the preferred hot beverage in the Nordics, Brazil, Canada, and parts of Europe." But in its impact on the...

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

Weekly book reviews to match your taste!

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Mal Warwick

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…includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.

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