I’ve been tracking my reading on the internet since approximately 2013 more or less continuously, and if you look on my sidebar, you will find 12 pages that are titled Book List with a designated year.
On occasional Thursdays I will use a random number generator to point me to three books from the lists (leaving out 2025), and then I’ll post about them – what I remember (if anything), whether I would recommend them – probably not, if I don’t remember anything about them – and if they have stuck with me in the years since I read them.
2019, Book 105

by Jason Matthews
Rating: ★★★
Series: Red Sparrow #2
Publication Date: June 2, 2015
Genre: espionage
Pages: 480
ReRead?: No
Project: throwback thursday
From the bestselling, Edgar Award–winning author of the “terrifically good” (The New York Times) Red Sparrow, a compulsively readable new novel about star-crossed Russian agent Dominika Egorova and CIA's Nate Nash in a desperate race to the finish.
Captain Dominika Egorova of the Russian Intelligence Service (SVR) has returned from the West to Moscow. She despises the men she serves, the oligarchs, and crooks, and thugs of Putin’s Russia. What no one knows is that Dominika is working for the CIA as Washington’s most sensitive penetration of SVR and the Kremlin.
As she expertly dodges exposure, Dominika deals with a murderously psychotic boss; survives an Iranian assassination attempt; escapes a counterintelligence ambush; rescues an arrested agent and exfiltrates him out of Russia; and has a chilling midnight conversation in her nightgown with President Putin. Complicating these risks is the fact that Dominika is in love with her CIA handler, Nate Nash, and their lust is as dangerous as committing espionage in Moscow. And when a mole in the SVR finds Dominika’s name on a restricted list of sources, it is a virtual death sentence…
Just as fast-paced, heart-pounding, and action-packed as Red Sparrow, Jason Matthews’s second novel confirms he is “an insider’s insider…and a masterful storyteller” (Vince Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author).
This is one of the books that I remember almost nothing about, beyond that I moderately enjoyed it, which is not surprising given that I enjoy spy novels. I read the first book in the series, Red Sparrow, in May of 2018, probably connected to the release of the Jennifer Lawrence movie adaptation. It’s sort of odd that it took me a year to read this one, which was the follow up, and looking at my Goodreads account, it does not appear that I ever read the third book, The Kremlin’s Candidate. I obviously lost interest to the extent that I didn’t bother to finish the series.
2021, Book 59

by Daniel Silva
Rating: ★★★★
Series: Gabriel Allon #7
Publication Date: July 24, 2007
Genre: suspense, thriller
Pages: 385
ReRead?: No
Project: throwback thursday
A terrorist plot in London leads Israeli spy Gabriel Allon on a desperate search for a kidnapped woman, in a race against time that will compromise Allon’s own conscience—and life...
When last we encountered Gabriel Allon, the master art restorer and sometime officer of Israeli intelligence, he had just prevailed in his blood-soaked duel with Saudi terrorist financier Zizi al-Bakari. Now Gabriel is summoned once more by his masters to undertake what appears to be a routine assignment: travel to Amsterdam to purge the archives of a murdered Dutch terrorism analyst who also happened to be an asset of Israeli intelligence. But once in Amsterdam, Gabriel soon discovers a conspiracy of terror festering in the city's Islamic underground, a plot that is about to explode on the other side of the English Channel, in the middle of London.
Interesting that the next one that the random generator handed me was another spy novel – entry #7 in the Gabriel Allon series. I reliably enjoy these, so much so that I’ve read up to book 10 in the series, and plan to continue. Because it’s a long-running series, I often don’t remember which plot goes with which book. I would definitely recommend that this series be read in order, though, because there are a lot of over-arching plot lines that take multiple books to completely resolve, and the characters (and spy teams) change and develop from book to book.
2013, Book 93

by Cinda Williams Chima
Rating: ★★★★
Series: Seven Realms #1
Publication Date: October 6, 2009
Genre: YA
Pages: 506
ReRead?: Yes
Project: throwback thursday
Times are hard in the mountain city of Fellsmarch. Reformed thief Han Alister will do almost anything to eke out a living for his family. The only thing of value he has is something he can't sell—the thick silver cuffs he's worn since birth. They're clearly magicked—as he grows, they grow, and he's never been able to get them off.
One day, Han and his clan friend, Dancer, confront three young wizards setting fire to the sacred mountain of Hanalea. Han takes an amulet from Micah Bayar, son of the High Wizard, to keep him from using it against them. Soon Han learns that the amulet has an evil history—it once belonged to the Demon King, the wizard who nearly destroyed the world a millennium ago. With a magical piece that powerful at stake, Han knows that the Bayars will stop at nothing to get it back.
Meanwhile, Raisa ana'Marianna, princess heir of the Fells, has her own battles to fight. She's just returned to court after three years of freedom in the mountains—riding, hunting, and working the famous clan markets. Raisa wants to be more than an ornament in a glittering cage. She aspires to be like Hanalea—the legendary warrior queen who killed the Demon King and saved the world. But her mother has other plans for her...
The Seven Realms tremble when the lives of Hans and Raisa collide, fanning the flames of the smoldering war between clans and wizards.
I’ve read this one at least three times, on my kindle and as an audiobook. I first discovered it when my daughter was in the middle-school I’ve-finished-Harry-Potter reading stage, and I was looking around for more series that I thought she would enjoy (this would be around 2010’ish, probably) and this one of the series that made it onto my radar. I was reading a lot of YA at that time, to keep up with what she & my son were interested in, so I read it too. Obviously, I enjoyed it for its own sake, because I’ve reread the entire series a couple of times since. It’s high-ish fantasy, with interesting and compelling teen characters.