Sunday marked the halfway point for the Masthead’s second year of reviews! As always, here’s a quick look at the past three months:

Books reviewed: 5
Translated fiction: 2 (from 2 languages, Japanese and French)
New-to-me authors: 5 (all were new!)
Oldest book: Dumas’ The Three Musketeers (1844)
Newest book: Smith’s White Teeth (1999)
Longest book: Dumas’ The Three Musketeers (704 pages)
Shortest book: Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (224 pages)

A pithy recap of each book read and reviewed here since April 15:

White Teeth, Zadie Smith
Smith’s novel of immigrant life in the UK reads like Rushdie but with an extra does of realism.

Kokoro, Natsume Soseki
Fine-tuned. Fulfillment in marriage and loyalty in friendship under the worst of circumstances. The tug and pull of modernism and traditionalism.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
Lightly existential with a nod to Camus’ strain of absurdism, Dick’s novel looks at what it means to be human without taking itself too seriously.

The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
True heart! Dumas’ classic is pure adventure.

1984, George Orwell
Progenitor to every faction’s distortion of it. Didactic but with an ending that’s harrowing.

♠

Browse the Review Archive
2018 mini reviews:
Quarter 1
See previous year’s mini reviews:
Quarter 1
Quarter 2
Quarter 3
Quarter 4