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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. A partial version of the list exists on my Goodreads profile.

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)

AvgAuthorNo. Books
9.76J.R.R Tolkien25
9.63Ken Wilber8
9.50John Boyd2
9.00Robert Johnson2
8.86David Zindell7
8.83Philip Jose Farmer6
8.75Stephen Donaldson4
8.50Jonny Steinberg4
8.50Leonard Q. Ross2
8.50Nicholas Mosley2
8.50Mark Twain2
8.25David Eddings20
8.25Kazuo Ishiguro4
8.14Raymond E. Feist7
8.00Hermann Hesse8
8.00"Margaret, Tracy" "Weis, Hickman"6
8.00Tatamkhulu Afrika3
8.00Barry Miles3
8.00Vladimir Nabokov3
8.00Nnedi Okorafor3

Top authors (quantity)

AvgAuthorNo. Books
7.57Ursula K. Le Guin49
5.81 Various36
9.76J.R.R Tolkien25
7.14Frank Herbert22
8.25David Eddings20
7.69Margaret Atwood13
7.08Isaac Asimov12
6.45Tom Sharpe11
6.90Kim Stanley Robinson10
6.89J.M. Coetzee9
6.56Robert Heinlein9
9.63Ken Wilber8
8.00Hermann Hesse8
7.75Isabel Allende8
6.38Iain M. Banks8
6.38Mongane Wally Serote8
6.13Arthur Conan Doyle8
6.00William Shakespeare8
8.86David Zindell7
8.14Raymond E. Feist7

20 most recent books

TitleAuthorScoreDate read
From Drug Mule to Drug BossMeg Rickards62026-10
A Different Kind of PowerJacinda Arden62026-09
Best of British Science Fiction 2025 Various42026-08
The Essence of Tibetan BuddhismLama Thubten Yeshe72026-07
The Pickwick PapersCharles Dickens62026-07
Nutrition for DummiesCarol Ann Rinzler42026-06
Bodhisattva AttitudeLama Zopa Rinpoche62026-04
Anna KareninaLeo Tolstoy72026-03
Life as We Know it and Other Stories rln62026-01
Still LifeZoe Wicomb62025-11
The Birthday of the WorldUrsula K. Le Guin72025-10
Moral AmbitionRutger Bregman52025-09
Shards of HonorLois McMaster Bujold72025-09
The TellingUrsula K. Le Guin82025-08
The Lathe of HeavenUrsula K. Le Guin72025-08
No Time to SpareUrsula K. Le Guin82025-07
Very Far Away From Anywhere ElseUrsula K. Le Guin62025-06
RadixA.A. Attanasio62025-06
The JungleUpton Sinclair72025-05
The Bee StingPaul Murray72025-05

20 random books

TitleAuthorScoreDate read
FoeJ.M. Coetzee62024-01
The Art of the Good Life Rolf Dobelli52021-12
Children of MenP.D. James52010-07
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their TanksJack, William Kerouac, Burroughs82017-04
Soft Vengeance of a Freedom FighterAlbie Sachs42023-01
The Scarlett LetterNathaniel Hawthorne61995-06
Voices from the Underground Various62022-01
The PromiseDamon Galgut72022-07
Northern LightsPhilip Pullman72016-12
Ecology and Development in the 3rd worldAvijit Gupta21996-11
The BusinessIain Banks42007-08
Beheerkamer OnbemanRobert Heinlein61987-10
Pengiun Book of horror stories Various51987-09
The MartianAndy Weir72022-06
The Faded Sun Trilogy - 2C.J. Cherryh61990-08
The Idiot (1/2)Fyodor Dostoyevsky52015-01
The Last Green TreeJim Grimley82012-04
The Long Way to a Small, Angry PlanetBecky Chambers72019-07
DublinersJames Joyce72019-02
SiddharthaHermann Hesse91997-12