Henry James - The American. This book is about an American who'd made his fortune in business and goes to the old world looking for a wife, so it goes into differences of capitalist vs. aristocratic worldviews. The main character is a bit of a Mary Sue and the author later repudiated his work as being sentimental, but it was surprisingly engrossing. 5/5
The Red and the Black - Stendhal. This book was superbly entertaining. It is written by Stendhal who is the father of realist literature. It is similar to Dostoevsky, but takes a more light-hearted tone. If you are an introvert like me but curious about what makes people tick, you too will find fascinating the same penetrating passages into human psyche as Dostoevsky, but not as much philosophy. I loved this book. 5/5
The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal. This book is very similar to the previous one, except it's about Italians instead of the French. Read it if you're a Dostoevsky fan or if you enjoyed the previous book. This book is about the adventure of an Italian aristocrat who falls in love with Napoleonic ideals and travels to France only to see the French defeated at Waterloo. Then he spends the rest of life wondering whether he contributed to the French cause. 5/5
E. E. Cummings - The Enormous Room. This book is based on a real story of the author's actual experiences as someone who volunteered for WWI as a medic on the allied side only to be wrongfully arrested by the French police and interned in a giant room with several dozen others for over a year. There are many colourful characters, but I didn't enjoy this one so much. 3.5/5
John Steinbeck - Cannery Row. This book is about a poor community in Monterey, Califor ia during the Great Depression. I didn't like this book as much as Grapes of Wrath, but there are some memorable parts near the end. 4/5
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day. This book is about the reminiscences of a butler who in his younger days served a respected aristocrat, and gets clues that his master's reputation has come become suspect. He questions whether his life's work was worth it in the end. This book wasn't very engrossing, but I liked the part about the romance. 4/5
David Kushner - Masters Of Doom: How Two Guys Created An Empire And Transformed Pop Culture. I read this book after someone wrote an excerpt on HN. It was fun to read about how two Johns created a revolution in video games and fun to learn tidbits about a legendary 100x dev like Carmack. 4.5/5
Josef Lhevinne - Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing. I like how he drew differences between quarter, half and three-quarter staccatos. Learning about distinctions like this can definitely make you a better piano player. 5/5
[1] http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/ernest_hemingways_reading...