Why did I make this list? First, to brag. Second, so I would not forget. And of course to toss you an idea of «what to read».
So the score next to each book is less about how I feel about the literary work and more about how readily I can recommend it to friends. Anything below 5 can be skipped with a clear conscience. The rest, to my mind, is worth a look. Read and enjoy!
| Author | Title | Score | About | |
| 1 | Ian McEwan | The Innocent | 7 | A prelude to the Berlin Wall. Trying to hide a corpse in a suitcase can drive you mad and cost you the woman you love. |
| 2 | Boris Akunin | Hamlet (a version) | 6 | Hamlet opposed his mother’s wedding. In the end everybody died. |
| 3 | Iain Banks | Walking on Glass | 8 | 3 interwoven stories — a lovesick blind man, a paranoid from the traffic police, old men in a castle of books |
| 4 | Christopher Priest | The Prestige | 4 | Illusionists. The film is much better than the book — the fat is cut, the «prestiges» question is polished |
| 5 | Ian McEwan | Solar | 7 | A womanizer (Nobel laureate) and his women |
| 6 | Robert Sheckley | Citizen in Space | 6 | Classic stories. Natives and nature versus Earthmen and civilization |
| 7 | Ian McEwan | The Cement Garden | 7 | Children hide a corpse in the basement. A little incest. |
| 8 | J. K. Rowling | The Casual Vacancy | 9 | Kids snitch on their parents. People do not understand each other. |
| 9 | T. Regge | The Universe: A Brief Introduction | 2 | Pop science. Did not stick |
| 10 | Andrei Shlyakhov | Clinic S | 4 | Everyday medicine — extracting bribes and other corruption |
| 11 | Fannie Flagg | Fried Green Tomatoes | 8 | Women’s lives in Alabama, 1920s–80s. Vernacular speech. Lesbians, racism, funny prices |
| 12 | Robert Galbraith | The Silkworm | 7 | Murder in the writer-publisher world |
| 13 | Sue Townsend | The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year | 8 | To become a messiah, deep depression is enough |
| 14 | Sue Townsend | Coventry Rises Again | 7 | A middle-aged Cinderella finds herself after a murder and a spell of homelessness |
| 15 | Boris Akunin | Another Way | 7 | A scholar finds love on the eve of the purges. Happy ending?! |
| 16 | Paul Parsons | 30-Second Theories | 2 | Did not like it |
| 17 | Victor Pelevin | The Watcher of the Yellow Flag | 5 | Mesmer. A self-sustaining illusion — a virtual world. |
| 18 | Fannie Flagg | The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion | 7 | A clan of women pilots in 1940s America |
| 19 | Erich Fromm | The Heart of Man | 5 | Humanity is sick with necrophilia |
| 20 | Erich Fromm | The Forgotten Language | 6 | Interpretation of dreams |
| 21 | Erich Fromm | Beyond the Chains of Illusion | 6 | Interesting on Marxism and Freudianism |
| 22 | Erich Fromm | The Art of Loving | 5 | You have to learn to love (not wait until it “hits” you) |
| 23 | Umberto Eco | Numero Zero | 4 | A fake newspaper. Fiction comes true |
| 24 | Arthur Hailey | Airport | 6 | A hard day — snowfall, a depressed controller, a terrorist on board |
| 25 | Boris Akunin | Yin and Yang | 5 | Two versions of one murder with a magic fan. |
| 26 | Kurt Vonnegut | Slaughterhouse-Five | 7 | Free wandering in time — the bombing of Dresden, another planet, etc. |
| 27 | A. Malyutin | The Irrational Brain | 4 | Homemade pop science |
| 28 | Dmitry Bykov | Kvartal — Passage | 7 | A quest in the real world |
| 29 | Neal Shusterman | The Schwa Was Here | 6 | An invisible nerd boy orders advertising for himself |
| 30 | Richard Feynman | Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! | 6 | A nuclear physicist dances, draws and flirts |
| 31 | Denis Dragunsky | Interesting Cinema. 90 stories about life | 7 | Warm analog-era stories about Soviet bohemia. Writers’ dachas, famous parents and neighbors. |
| 32 | Boris Akunin | The Valley of Dream | 4 | Fandorin in the Wild West |
| 33 | Boris Akunin | History of the Russian State, vol. 3 | 7 | On the importance of rotating power. Ivan III — Boris Godunov. |
| 34 | Boris Akunin | The Mirror of Saint-Germain | 4 | A Christmas tale about the New Russians |
| 35 | Victor Pelevin | Omon Ra | 6 | Rereading. Who pedaled the lunar rover |
| 36 | Mikhail Elizarov | Burattini | 3 | Is Pinocchio a fascist? |
| 37 | Mikhail Elizarov | Cartoons | 7 | Horror in the Sorokin manner. Raising juvenile criminals with recursive hypnosis |
| 38 | Georges Simenon | The Death of Belle | 6 | Suspicion of murder can ruin an innocent man’s life. Innocent? |
| 39 | Mikhail Elizarov | Syphilis | 4 | Horror like Sorokin. The disease is personified. |
| 40 | Yevgeny Klyuev | The Book of Shadows | 5 | Shadows from Atlantis try to find a common language with people |
| 41 | Nabokov | Lolita | 7 | I liked the chapters about his childhood |
| 42 | D. B. C. Pierre | Vernon God Little | 8 | A simple schoolboy is accused of shooting his classmates |
| 43 | Dmitry Lipskerov | Demons in Paradise | 5 | The devil jokes over the Kremlin. Excellent characters and bios, but a dull ending. |
| 44 | Zakhar Prilepin | Sankya | 6 | A revolt of left-wing radicals in the provinces |
| 45 | Daniel Wallace | Big Fish | 7 | A lot like the film |
| 46 | Boris Akunin | Planet Water | 4 | A boring Jules Verne parody |
| 47 | Malcolm Gladwell | The Tipping Point | 5 | New ideas are spread by especially sociable people |
| 48 | George Friedman | The Next 100 Years | 7 | A forecast of the 21st century. A Japan–US war in Poland. A Mexican invasion. |
| 49 | Aravind Adiga | The White Tiger | 6 | Like Slumdog Millionaire. How to become an Indian mafioso (a taxi driver). |
| 50 | Ian McEwan | Amsterdam | 7 | Former friends murder each other |
| 51 | Andy Weir | The Martian | 8 | Good old science fiction, no aliens |
| 52 | Kirill Eskov | Amazing Paleontology | 4 | Pop science |
| 53 | Lev Gumilev | Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of Earth | 5 | A masterfully inflated text with an answer that always slips away |
| 54 | Oscar Wilde | The Picture of Dorian Gray | 6 | I laughed uncontrollably for the first couple of chapters. At school I took this book far more seriously. |
| 55 | Victor Pelevin | Hermit and Six-Toes | 6 | Reread it to remember the ending |
| 56 | Yu. Perov | The Order of Slyboots | 9 | A director makes his actor friend fall in love so he can shoot reality cinema. Very interesting despite a stale ending |
| 57 | I. Yalom | The Spinoza Problem | 7 | 2 stories — an unwanted theorist of fascism and Spinoza’s expulsion from the Jews |
| 58 | Simon Toyne | Sanctus | 3 | A Dan Brown knock-off. Monks on a rock have captured HER |
| 59 | G. Vladimov | The General and His Army | 8 | A combat general is summoned “on the carpet” to HQ. |
| 60 | Zbigniew Brzezinski | The Grand Chessboard | 4 | Geopolitics again. Britain and Japan are not Players. |
| 61 | G. Edward Griffin | World Without Cancer | 5 | Hydrocyanic acid from fruit pits kills cancer. Kindly eat apples (cherries, apricots, etc.) whole. |
| 62 | Anatoli Boukreev | The Climb | 4 | Nothing but excuses and squabbles with Krakauer. I read it at Everest Base Camp to fall asleep despite altitude sickness |
Last time I managed to compile a list of books I had read back in 2009. Little has changed since. I read about 60 books a year (one every 6 days), of which only one or two are not audiobooks.
