Emma Goto - Book Reviews and Notes

2025

James by Percival Everett★★★★★

The Wedding People by Alison Espach★★★★★

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes★★★★★

2024

Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez★★★★

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley★★★★

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera★★★★

Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez★★★★★

Real Americans by Rachel Khong★★★★★

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See★★★★★

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante★★★★★

When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A. Parker★★★★★

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang★★★★★

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry★★★★★

Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond★★★★★

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman★★★★★

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree★★★★★

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers★★★★★

Funny Story by Emily Henry★★★★★

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh★★★★

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo★★★★★

Reign & Ruin by J.D. Evans★★★★★

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed★★★★★

The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins★★★★★

The Will of the Many by James Islington★★★★★

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett★★★★★

Bride by Ali Hazelwood★★★★★

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese★★★★★

First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston★★★★★

Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood★★★★★

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann★★★★★

Weyward by Emilia Hart★★★★★

Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake★★★★★

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano★★★★★

2023

Foe by Iain Reid★★★★★

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros★★★★★

The Future by Naomi Alderman★★★★★

Trust by Hernan Diaz★★★★★

Giovanni's room by James Baldwin★★★★★

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters★★★★★

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver★★★★★

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt★★★★★

Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka★★★★★

A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland★★★★★

Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R. F. Kuang★★★★★

The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston★★★★★

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow★★★★★

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami★★★★★

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman★★★★★

This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay★★★★★

None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell★★★★★

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner★★★★★

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence★★★★★

Spare by Prince Harry★★★★

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett★★★★★

Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson★★★★★

Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross★★★★★

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros★★★★★

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami★★★★★

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy★★★★★

Translation State by Ann Leckie★★★★★

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood★★★★★

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky★★★★★

Atalanta by Jennifer Saint★★★★★

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque★★★★★

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal★★★★★

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami★★★★★

Happy Place by Emily Henry★★★★

Eversion by Alastair Reynolds★★★★★

Columbine by Dave Cullen★★★★★

Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky★★★★★

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo★★★★★

A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon★★★★★

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson★★★★★

Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton★★★★★

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus★★★★★

One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid★★★★★

Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds★★★★★

Honor by Thrity Umrigar★★★★★

Loathe to Love You by Ali Hazelwood★★★★★

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez★★★★★

It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover★★★★★

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi★★★★★

Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love by Amir Levine★★★★★

The Measure by Nikki Erlick★★★★★

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin★★★★★

2022

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara★★★★★

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill★★★★★

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid★★★★★

Reminders of Him by Colleen Hoover★★★★★

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher★★★★★

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds★★★★★

Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell★★★★★

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski★★★★★

The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher★★★★★

Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher★★★★★

Paladin's Hope by T. Kingfisher★★★★★

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers★★★★★

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik★★★★★

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt★★★★★

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri★★★★★

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie★★★★★

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller★★★★★

Constance by Matthew FitzSimmons★★★★★

Paladin's Strength by T. Kingfisher★★★★★

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky★★★★★

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake★★★★★

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel★★★★★

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë★★★★★

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi★★★★★

Book Lovers by Emily Henry★★★★★

There There by Tommy Orange★★★★★

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles★★★★★

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan★★★★★

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy★★★★★

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu★★★★★

Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky★★★★★

How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton M. Christensen★★★★★

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo★★★★★

The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky★★★★★

Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward★★★★★

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu★★★★

Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy★★★★★

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Emmett Grosland★★★★★

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes★★★★★

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston★★★★★

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers★★★★★

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine★★★★★

Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim★★★★★

2021 - year in review

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry★★★★

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid★★★★★

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood★★★★★

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix★★★★★

The Dry by Jane Harper★★★★★

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan★★★★★

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki★★★★★

Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky★★★★★

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse★★★★★

Walden by Henry David Thoreau★★★★★

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano★★★★★

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers★★★★★

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen★★★★★

Year One by Nora Roberts★★★★★

Beach Read by Emily Henry★★★★★

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides★★★★★

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr★★★★★

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune★★★★★

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah★★★★★

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney★★★★

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik★★★★★

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston★★★★

The hating game by Sally Thorne★★★★★

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin★★★★★

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison★★★★★

Frederica by Georgette Heyer★★★★★

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer★★★★★

On Writing Well by William Zinsser★★★★★

Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman★★★★★

Nevernight by Jay Kristoff★★★★★

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie★★★★★

The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller★★★★★

Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell★★★★★

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir★★★★★

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid★★★★★

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher★★★★★

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik★★★★★

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow★★★★★

The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang★★★★★

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro★★★★★

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson★★★★★

The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary★★★★★

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir★★★★★

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine★★★★★

Lord of the Flies by William Golding★★★★★

House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas★★★★★

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett★★★★★

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life by Donald Miller★★★★★

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell★★★★★

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid★★★★★

Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher★★★★★

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig★★★★★

The Passengers by John Marrs★★★★

The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter★★★★★

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens★★★★★

Verity by Colleen Hoover★★★★★

Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah★★★★★

Persuasion by Jane Austen★★★★★

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer★★★★★

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen★★★★★

A Promised Land by Barack Obama★★★★★

Rules of Redemption by T.A. White★★★★★

2020 - year in review

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang★★★★★

The Wicked King by Holly Black★★★★★

Strange Love by Ann Aguirre★★★★★

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black★★★★★

A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas★★★★★

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas★★★★★

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas★★★★★

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini★★★★

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang★★★★★

The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy★★★★★

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab★★★★★

168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam★★★★★

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh★★★★★

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King★★★★★

Billion Dollar Loser by Reeves Wiedeman★★★★★

Going Clear by Lawrence Wright★★★★★

The Checklist Manifesto: the power of the simple checklist by Atul Gawande★★★★★

Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker★★★★★

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi★★★★★

Their Lost Daughters by Joy Ellis★★★★★

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey★★★★★

Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator by Gary Noesner★★★★★

Nudge: The Final Edition by Richard H. Thaler★★★★

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer★★★★★

Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton★★★★★

The Power of Now: 2 actionable takeaways by Eckhart Tolle★★★★★

Habits for Happiness by Timothy J. Sharp★★★★★

Working in Public: how can we solve the problems of open source? by Nadia Eghbal★★★★★

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah★★★★★

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee★★★★★

Becoming by Michelle Obama★★★★★

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller★★★★★

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky★★★★★

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy★★★★★

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn★★★★★

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover★★★★★

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern★★★★★

Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson★★★★★

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel★★★★★

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee★★★★★

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari★★★★★

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker★★★★★

Great North Road by Peter F. Hamilton★★★★★

Starsight by Brandon Sanderson★★★★★

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng★★★★★

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo★★★★★

Normal People by Sally Rooney★★★★★

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin★★★★★

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead★★★★★

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami★★★★★

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes★★★★★

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia★★★★

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo★★★★★

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar★★★★★

The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling★★★★★

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin★★★★★

The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells★★★★★

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell★★★★★

The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne★★★★★

Old Man's War by John Scalzi★★★★★

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami★★★★★

How to take smart notes (as a developer) by Sönke Ahrens★★★★★

The Developer's Guide to Creating a Successful Blog by Flavio Copes★★★★★

American Prometheus by Kai Bird★★★★★

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou★★★★★

Collapse by Jared Diamond★★★★★

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro★★★★★

I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara★★★★★

All Systems Red by Martha Wells★★★★★

My 5 key takeaways from reading the Pragmatic Programmer by Andy Hunt★★★★★

The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe by Robert Steven Gottfried★★★★★

The Essential Paradise Lost by John Carey★★★★★

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich★★★★★

2019 - year in review

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë★★★★★

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë★★★★★

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett★★★★★

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho★★★★★

Circe by Madeline Miller★★★★★

Three Moments of an Explosion by China Miéville★★★★★

Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn★★★★★

The Familiars by Stacey Halls★★★★★

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay★★★★★

She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth by Helen Castor★★★★★

The Power by Naomi Alderman★★★★★

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple by Jeff Guinn★★★★★

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy★★★★★

Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis★★★★★

Provenance by Ann Leckie★★★★★

The Scar by China Miéville★★★★★

The ONE Thing by Gary Keller★★★★★

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen★★★★★

Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear★★★★★

2018

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn★★★★★

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch★★★★★

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini★★★★★

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson★★★★★

Red Rising by Pierce Brown★★★★★

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak★★★★★

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski★★★★★

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie★★★★★

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood★★★★★

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson★★★★★