Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography
Rating: Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by Pamela Smith Hill. South Dakota Historical Society Press (2014), 448 pages. Laura wrote this autobiography in 1930, and tried unsuccessfully for many years to get it...
The Almost Nearly Perfect People
Rating: The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia, by Michael Booth. Picador (2015), 400 pages. As a geography-challenged American, the Scandinavian countries have always been bunched together in my mind into one...
Two Years Before the Mast
Rating: Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea, by Richard Henry Dana. Signet Classics (1840), 432 pages. This book is quite well-known and already has legions of devoted fans; my purpose here is to urge reluctant readers to give...
Stargazing Dog
Rating: Stargazing Dog, by Takashi Murakami. NBM Publishing (2011), 128 pages. Stargazing Dog was first published in Japan in 2008, where it has sold over a half million copies. It’s a relatively short graphic novel that should take about a half hour to...
The Murder of the Century
Rating: The Murder of the Century, by Paul Collins. Broadway Paperbacks (2011), 325 pages. Nostalgia for the past, this book reminds me, is almost always for an imagined past. When I think of how publishing and news “used to be,” I imagine...
Gone Girl
Rating: Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. Crown (2012), 419 pages. Flynn is a writer in the mystery and crime genres—two categories I almost never read. Her latest book, however, was described as a psychological portrait of a marriage—a plot I almost always want...
Dog Boy
Rating: Dog Boy, by Eva Hornung. Viking (2010), 288 pages. I don’t know if there any other novels about abandoned Russian children raised by feral dogs. (If you know of any, please let The Book Shark know!) The fact that Dog Boy may be the only such book...
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
Rating: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson. Random House (2011), 353 pages. I borrowed this from a friend with the understanding that it is a quiet story about two old widowed people falling in love, which admittedly doesn’t sound terribly...
Throw This Book Away
Rating: Time to toss your copy of Zeitoun in your curbside recycling bin; it can land on top of Three Cups of Tea in the corner of the bin reserved for books that don’t even deserve donation to a library because they turned out to be dishonest accounts...About Us
The Book Shark began as an independent book review website created by Cindy Pinto and Donna Long in 2002.
From the beginning our goal was not only to write great reviews, but also to recognize the most well-written books we read each year with an award...
Gustine Awards
The Gustine Awards were named in honor of the main character in one of our favorite books—The Dress Lodger, by Sheri Holman. Awards have been given out yearly since 2002 in three categories: fiction, nonfiction, and memoir...
Cover Art
A book’s cover is as important as the writing within it. We are aware that this may offend some authors who have toiled for years on their books and believe their words are the only thing that matters...
Reader Reviews
What’s the best or worst book you’ve ever read? What’s the most recent book that you’ve had a strong reaction to? Send us your thoughts, and we’ll post them in this spot.