Below is a list, alphabetical by author, of the books reviewed on The Second Pass. Full reviews come first (an asterisk denotes a piece from the Backlist section). Following that is a separate list of books that have been reviewed on the blog or in the Shelf section. Click on any title for the original review.
Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch
Eight White Nights by André Aciman
Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible by Robert Alter
The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis
The Accordionist’s Son by Bernardo Atxaga
Eve’s Hollywood by Eve Babitz*
Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn*
How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell
Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown*
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess*
Jurgen by James Branch Cabell*
Parrot & Olivier in America by Peter Carey
Cooperstown Confidential: Heroes, Rogues, and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame by Zev Chafets
Exley by Brock Clarke
The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley
The Passage by Justin Cronin
Four Freedoms by John Crowley
Forever Blue: The True Story of Walter O’Malley, Baseball’s Most Controversial Owner, and the Dodgers of Brooklyn and Los Angeles by Michael D’Antonio
Rose Alley by Jeremy M. Davies
The Privileges by Jonathan Dee
Point Omega by Don DeLillo
Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius by Colin Dickey
The Hypochondriacs by Brian Dillon
The Old Man and Me by Elaine Dundy*
Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer
Belinda by Maria Edgeworth*
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
The Lifted Veil by George Eliot*
The Possession, Happening, and Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux*
Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations by Henry Fairlie
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of WASP Splendor by Tad Friend
Don’t Cry by Mary Gaitskill
Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century by Masha Gessen
Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch
A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Selected Poems by Thom Gunn
Alice in Jamesland by Susan E. Gunter
Laughing Torso by Nina Hamnett*
Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne C. Heller
The Believers by Zoë Heller
Love and Obstacles by Aleksandar Hemon
Dispatches by Michael Herr*
Rat Girl by Kristin Hersh
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban*
The Congressman Who Loved Flaubert by Ward Just*
Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece by Declan Kiberd
Danse Macabre by Stephen King*
The Square Sun by Stefan Knapp*
La Culture en clandestins. L’UX by “Lazar Kunstmann”
The Thieves of Manhattan by Adam Langer
It’s Beginning to Hurt by James Lasdun
Independent People by Halldór Laxness*
Why Us? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves by James Le Fanu
The Long Song by Andrea Levy
The Wife of Martin Guerre, The Trial of Soren Qvist, and The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron by Janet Lewis*
The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
Subways Are for Sleeping by Edmund G. Love*
Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes*
Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deirdre Madden
The Illusionist by Françoise Mallet-Joris*
Yours Ever: People and Their Letters by Thomas Mallon
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Gabriel García Márquez: A Life by Gerald Martin
C by Tom McCarthy
Essays by Leonard Michaels
Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgrom
Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, The Luck of Ginger Coffey, and The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Brian Moore*
All the Living by C. E. Morgan
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov*
Nothing Right by Antonya Nelson
The Fall of the House of Walworth by Geoffrey O’Brien
The Ambassador by Bragi Ólafsson
The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History by John Ortved
This Was Racing by Joe H. Palmer*
Once a Runner by John L. Parker, Jr.
Cult Movies by Danny Peary*
Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing by Lydia Peelle
The Way Home by George Pelecanos
The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys by Lilian Pizzichini
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams by Sylvia Plath*
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
Lay the Favorite by Beth Raymer
The Only Game in Town: Sportswriting from The New Yorker edited by David Remnick*
The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 by Thomas E. Ricks
That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan*
Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre*
Stolen Spring and The Missing Bureaucrat by Hans Scherfig*
The Culture of Defeat by Wolfgang Schivelbusch*
Essays in Disguise and Max Jamison by Wilfrid Sheed*
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty by Peter Singer
Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life by Carol Sklenicka
In the First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn*
Man in the Woods by Scott Spencer
The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr
Rules of the Game: The Best Sportswriting from Harper’s Magazine edited by Matthew Stevenson and Michael Martin*
Thy Neighbor’s Wife by Gay Talese*
Saul Bellow: Letters edited by Benjamin Taylor
Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas
Do Not Deny Me by Jean Thompson
Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany*
Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
Hadji Murat by Leo Tolstoy*
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
Love and Summer by William Trevor
The Finger by Angus Trumble
Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler
Infinite Jest and nonfiction by David Foster Wallace*
As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires by Bruce Weber
Waiting for God by Simone Weil*
Cardboard Gods by Josh Wilker
Lowboy by John Wray
The Private Lives of Trees by Alejandro Zambra
Blog and Shelf listings:
Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende
You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin
A Stroll with William James by Jacques Barzun
Beauty Salon by Mario Bellatín
Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
Black Hole by Charles Burns
It’s All Right Now by Charles Chadwick
Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records by John Cook with Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance
If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
William Golding by John Carey
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
Witz by Joshua Cohen
Salvation on Sand Mountain by Dennis Covington
Log of the S.S. the Mrs Unguentine by Stanley Crawford
Collected Stories by Lydia Davis
Room by Emma Donoghue
The Autobiography of an Execution by David R. Dow
The Dead Republic by Roddy Doyle
The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg
Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis
The Hilliker Curse by James Ellroy
Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich
At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman
The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo
The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert
Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits by Linda Gordon
The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. IV edited by Philip Gourevitch
Beg, Borrow, Steal by Michael Greenberg
Mentor by Tom Grimes
Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff
The Story About the Story: Great Writers Explore Great Literature edited by J. C. Hallman
Don Juan: His Own Version by Peter Handke
Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
One Million by Hendrik Hertzberg
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt
Next by James Hynes
Thucydides by Donald Kagan
Lit by Mary Karr
The Conqueror by Jan Kjaerstad
Jessica Z. by Shawn Klomparens
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin
Mathilda Savitch by Victor Lodato
Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre
A Brilliant Darkness by João Magueijo
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
Reporting at Wit’s End by St. Clair McKelway
Ad Nauseam: A Survivor’s Guide to American Consumer Culture by Carrie McLaren and Jason Torchinsky
Lonelyhearts by Marion Meade
The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand
Jarrettsville by Cornelia Nixon
Last Call by Daniel Okrent
The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter
Drift by Victoria Patterson
The Turnaround by George Pelecanos
I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson
The Mighty Angel by Jerzy Pilch
A Thousand Peaceful Cities by Jerzy Pilch
The Wagon by Martin Preib
Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People by Tim Reiterman
The Manner Music by Charles Reznikoff
Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross
The Humbling by Philip Roth
Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel
The Blindfold Test by Barry Schechter
A Curable Romantic by Joseph Skibell
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Private Life by Jane Smiley
44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Muriel Spark: The Biography by Martin Stannard
Trailer Girl and Other Stories by Terese Svoboda
Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor
Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout
Mad Men Unbuttoned by Natasha Vargas-Cooper
Role Models by John Waters
The Listener by Allen Wheelis
Disappearances by William Wiser
Jews and Power by Ruth R. Wisse
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin