Books I've read

I've been keeping track of all my leisure reading for a while.  Like, 20+ years.  It started out on paper, then was a text file for a long, long, time, then I considered putting it in a database and making a PHP project out of it for while, and finally it's a public Google spreadsheet.

Please note:

1. All dates of completion prior to 2004 are highly approximate -- that means I made them up.  All I recorded prior to 2004 was the order in which they were completed.  Also note that sometimes I'm reading two books at the same time, or avoiding reading one book (hello, Gargantua!) while completing several others.
   
2. I've also probably forgotten to record some books along the way, and been inconsistent about recording the reading of chapter books to the kids, largely because the reading often gets split between me and Sarahmac.  The books listed here that are noted as read to the kids were read entirely by me, I think.
   
3. Regarding my "ratings", this is a half-assed attempt to mark books I recall liking or stood out in some way (*), books I really liked (**), books I loved (***), books I hated (-), and Shadow Moon (--).  I spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether I needed a two-pronged rating to show the difference between books I liked on technical merits versus those I was merely fond of, or whether to add a "recommended" tag in addition to the rating, and instead simply spent an evening throwing stars on the spreadsheet.  I've likely mislabeled some books in there.
   
4. Regarding my notes on books, I've found that the same book can elicit vastly different responses from people who are equally well read (including myself at different times).  If you disagree with any of my opinions, that doesn't make either of us better or worse than the other, just different.  In many cases (and more regularly beginning in 2004), I've tried to express (often badly) why I liked or disliked a book.  Feel free to tell me why you (dis)agree.
   
5. Also, I'm much more forgiving of books that are shorter.  I don't think it's an attention deficient problem; more of an impatience with many writers who can't (or won't) hone their words to say what they want to say and be done with it (okay, maybe that's an attention deficit problem). 
   
   Gravity's Rainbow, for example, is a work that I would likely more greatly enjoy if the ghost of Ezra Pound had taken his blue pencil to it.  There are many wonderful passages in this novel, but too much of it is "other stuff" that marks time between the beautiful prose.   
   
6. Why so many SF/Fantasy books?  Because I took the Nebula Awards finalists list and started reading; not in any particular order.