Choose Book Review Finalists 2024 · Read Scott Alexander

It's time to narrow the 150 entries in the Book Review Contest to about a dozen finalists. I can't read 150 reviews alone, so I need your help.

You'll find the entries in six Google Docs (thanks to a reader for collating them):

Please pick as many as you have time for, read them, and rate them using this form.

Don’t read them in order! If you read them in order, I’ll have 1,000 votes on the first review, 500 on the second, and so on to none in the second half. Either pick a random review (thanks to AlexanderTheGrand and Taymon for making a random-review-chooser script here) or pick whichever seems most interesting to you. List of all books reviewed below.

Thanks! You have until June 1, when I’ll count the votes and announce the finalists.

If you wrote a review, please check to make sure your review is in the document. Currently known gaps: The Tango Of Ethics (we are going to solve this, no action needed from you), and Julie, Or The New Heloise (if this is you, check your email; if you didn’t get an email, email me). If there’s another gap I don’t know about, email me or comment here.

A Canticle For Leibowitz
A Farewell to Alms
A Practical Guide to Evil
A Thousand Ways to Please A Husband
A Visit from the Goon Squad
Against Democracy
Age of Anger
All Systems Red
Alphabetical Diaries
American Nations
Armies of Sand
Asquith
Atlas Shrugged
Babel
Bad Therapy
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
Biophilia
Carpentaria
Cat's Cradle
Catkin
Choosing Elites
Collected Poems by C.P. Cavafy
Consequences of Language
Defining Death
Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will
Discrimination and Disparities
Djinn
Dominion
Don Juan
Don't Make No Waves, Don't Back No Losers
Egypt's Golden Couple
Elon Musk
End Times
Eothen
Eve
Food of the Gods
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Frankenstein
Free Range Kids
Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism
Gnomon
Godel, Escher, Bach
Golem XIV
How Language Began
How the War Was Won
HP Lovecraft
Impossible Histories
In Search of Lost Time
In the Time of the Russias
Invisible Cities
It's Not the Money, It's the Land
Letter to a Christian Nation
Libra
License to be Bad: How Economics Corrupted Us
Little, Big
Making the Corps
Metamorphosis
Mine!
Misbelief
Money Capital
Never Twice in the Same River
Nexus
Nine Lives
Normal Accidents
On the Bondage of the Will
One-Dimensional Man
Paradoxes of Rationality and Cooperation
Passionate Marriage
Patient, Heal Thyself
Piranesi
Politics on the Edge
Practical Ethics
r!Animorphs
Ready Player One
Real Raw News
Red Rising
Righteous Victims
What Came Next
My Thoughts Road of the King
Sadly, Porn
Safe Enough?
Savage Money
Secret Agenda: Watergate
Sense of Style
Silver Age Marvel Comics
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Spring Snow
Stillwell and the American Experience in China
Sudden Glory
Surviving Death
The Art of Happiness
The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa
The Ballad of the White Horse
The Beauties
The Beginning of Infinity
The Body Keeps the Score
The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective
The Case Against Reality
The Complete Rhyming Dictionary and Poet's Craft Book
The Divine Comedy
The Emperor of All Maladies
The Eternaut
The Ethics of Ambiguity
The Family That Couldn't Sleep
The Four Hour Workweek
The Genesis Machine
The Globe: How The Earth Became Round
The Hebrew Bible
The History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe
The Hunt for Red October
The Iliad
The Lady of Shalott
The Land of Milk and Honey / The Lathe of Heaven
The Language Puzzle
The Leopard
The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett
The Master and Margarita
The Meme Machine
The Metamorphosis
The Metaphysical Club
The Mezzanine and the Size of Thoughts
The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion / Win Bigly
The Old Testament
The Oldest Documents of the Human Race
The Pale King
The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention
The Picture of Dorien Gray
The Remains of the Day
The Revelations
The Signal and the Noise
The Sixth Day and Other Tales
The Story of Ferdinand
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The Sunset Limited
The Tango of Ethics
The Treuhand
The Trial
The Unconsoled
The Untethered Soul
The Vegetarian
The Wages of Destruction
The Wheel of Time
The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy
Three Days in Dwarfland
Time Loops
Two Arms and a Head
War and Peace
Warrior's Woman
What Even Is Gender?
When We Cease To Understand The World
Who We Are And How We Got Here
Why Fish Don't Exist
Winnie-the-Pooh / The House At Pooh Corner
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
World Empire Lost
Young Adults