Books

These pages are all about the books I've read. In 1985 I started recording and rating the books I read, perhaps to remind myself not to reread some forgettable trash, or perhaps to honour my first '10', The Lord of the Rings.

I've kept it going more or less continually since then, first on paper, then on Access, and now, more usefully, with a MySQL database. No obsessive compulsive comments please.

You can do all the things the statistician part of me finds exciting - rank books and authors, view average scores for a particular month etc. Use the menu options at the top. I've included a few of the more interesting options below and to the right as a 'front page'. If you don't find them exciting, hit that back button now.

Top authors (at least 2 books)

Avg	Author	No. Books
10.00	Ken Wilber	2
9.76	J.R.R Tolkien	25
9.50	John Boyd	2
8.86	David Zindell	7
8.83	Philip Jose Farmer	6
8.75	Stephen Donaldson	4
8.50	Nicholas Mosley	2
8.50	Leonard Q. Ross	2
8.25	David Eddings	20
8.25	Philip Pullman	4
8.25	Charles Dickens	4
8.14	Raymond E. Feist	7
8.00	Hermann Hesse	6
8.00	"Margaret, Tracy" "Weis, Hickman"	6
8.00	Robert M. Pirsig	3
8.00	Vladimir Nabokov	3
8.00	Barry Miles	3
8.00	Tatamkhulu Afrika	3
8.00	Lewis Carrol	2
8.00	Jonny Steinberg	2

Top authors (quantity)

Avg	Author	No. Books
5.84	Various	31
7.62	Ursula K. Le Guin	26
9.76	J.R.R Tolkien	25
8.25	David Eddings	20
7.08	Isaac Asimov	12
6.45	Tom Sharpe	11
7.40	Frank Herbert	10
6.56	Robert Heinlein	9
6.38	Mongane Wally Serote	8
8.86	David Zindell	7
8.14	Raymond E. Feist	7
6.86	Kim Stanley Robinson	7
6.71	Jack Kerouac	7
6.00	William Shakespeare	7
5.00	L. Ron Hubbard	7
8.83	Philip Jose Farmer	6
8.00	Hermann Hesse	6
8.00	"Margaret, Tracy" "Weis, Hickman"	6
7.67	Ben Okri	6
7.17	A.A. Attanasio	6

20 most recent books

Title	Author	Score	Date read
The Blind Assassin	Margaret Atwood	7	2013/1
One Taste	Ken Wilber	10	2012/12
A Theory of Everything	Ken Wilber	10	2012/12
Adventures of Augie March	Saul Bellow	6	2012/11
Begging to Be Black	Antjie Krog	8	2012/10
Our Sister Killjoy	Ama Ata Aidoo	6	2012/10
Portnoy's Complaint	Philip Roth	7	2012/10
Bodies Politic	Michiel Heyns	6	2012/9
The Children's Day	Michiel Heyns	7	2012/9
Solomon Gursky was Here	Mordecai Richler	6	2012/7
The Virus, Vitamins & Vegetables	Various	5	2012/6
Thin Blue	Jonny Steinberg	8	2012/5
Foreign Affairs	Alison Lurie	6	2012/5
The Dying Animal	Philip Roth	9	2012/5
Into the Wild	Jon Krakauer	7	2012/4
The Last Green Tree	Jim Grimley	8	2012/4
Ravelstein	Saul Bellow	8	2012/4
Popular Music	Mikael Niemi	8	2012/4
Foundation and Empire	Isaac Asimov	8	2012/4
Second Foundation	Isaac Asimov	7	2012/4

20 random books

Title	Author	Score	Date read
Goodbye Dolly Gray	Rayne Kruger	5	2007/6
The Mallorean - 3	David Eddings	4	1992/2
The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald	6	1997/10
Secrets of the Inner Mind: Journey through the mind and body	Editors of Time-Life	6	1997/4
Child Of Storm	Sir Henry Rider Haggard	1	1991/12
The Birthday of the World	Ursula K. Le Guin	7	2012/1
…and the truth shall set you free (1/2)	David Ike	3	2000/6
Restaurant at the end of the universe	Douglas Adams	6	1987/6
The End of the Road	John Barth	7	1997/12
Voodoo Histories	David Aaronovitch	5	2010/1
The Witches Brat	Rosemary Sutcliff	1	1986/5
T'ai Chi	Cheng Man-ch'ing and Robert Smith	6	2006/8
Portofino	Frank Schaeffer	7	2007/1
The Mallorean - 4	David Eddings	4	1992/2
Rumours of Rain	Andre Brink	7	2007/4
Metamorphosis	Jean Lorrah	6	1995/2
Wilderness	Anthony Smith	9	1992/12
Enchanter's End Game	David Eddings	9	1990/1
Travesty	John Hawkes	4	1992/12
Soekie op Hoerskool	E. Spence	4	1987/4