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John Carey's Sunday Best

Description: John Carey's 2022 book "Sunday Best" collects eighty book reviews from his career as chief reviewer at the Sunday Times. These are the books reviewed.

Rank Title Author Added

1

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

16,428 members

462 reviews

4.1

2 Members: anglemark, ahef1963

2

Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle

by Daniel L. Everett

885 members

35 reviews

3.8

2 Members: anglemark, ahef1963

3

No Voice from the Hall: Early Memories of a Country House Snooper

90 members

1 review

3.8

2 Members: anglemark, ManWithAnAgenda

4

The Good Soldier Švejk

by Jaroslav Hašek

3,967 members

72 reviews

4

Member: anglemark

5

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

3,577 members

66 reviews

½ 4.3

Member: anglemark

6

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science

by Richard Holmes

2,999 members

67 reviews

4

Member: anglemark

7

Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood

by Oliver Sacks

2,425 members

58 reviews

4

Member: anglemark

8

The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

by Richard Wilkinson

1,554 members

47 reviews

4.1

Member: anglemark

9

The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier

by Thad Carhart

1,460 members

42 reviews

4

Member: anglemark

10

by Alan Bennett

1,301 members

21 reviews

4

Member: anglemark

11

Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World

by Simon Garfield

968 members

25 reviews

½ 3.6

Member: anglemark

12

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

887 members

8 reviews

½ 4.6

Member: anglemark

13

Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History

732 members

45 reviews

3.9

Member: anglemark

14

by André Comte-Sponville

727 members

8 reviews

3.8

Member: anglemark

15

Shakespeare's Language

by Frank Kermode

721 members

4 reviews

½ 3.7

Member: anglemark

16

Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature

717 members

15 reviews

4

Member: anglemark

17

Shakespeare's Wife

by Germaine Greer

647 members

21 reviews

½ 3.4

Member: anglemark

18

The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

by Stephen Greenblatt

526 members

15 reviews

3.9

Member: anglemark

19

Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett

by James Knowlson

488 members

1 review

4.2

Member: anglemark

20

Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century

by Charles King

478 members

14 reviews

4.1

Member: anglemark

21

Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense

by Francis Spufford

477 members

16 reviews

4

Member: anglemark

22

by Virginia Nicholson

443 members

15 reviews

3.8

Member: anglemark

23

The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe

by Michael Frayn

368 members

11 reviews

3.2

Member: anglemark

24

The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul

by Patrick French

330 members

10 reviews

3.9

Member: anglemark

25

The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution

by Deborah Harkness

320 members

1 review

½ 3.7

Member: anglemark

26

Universe of Stone: A Biography of Chartres Cathedral

290 members

1 review

3.8

Member: anglemark

27

Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution

by Adrian Desmond

258 members

5 reviews

3.9

Member: anglemark

28

Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine

by Andrew Scull

252 members

4 reviews

3.8

Member: anglemark

29

Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England. Steve Jones

250 members

4 reviews

3.9

Member: anglemark

30

Chaucer's Tale: 1386 and the Road to Canterbury

222 members

7 reviews

½ 3.5

Member: anglemark

31

Consuming Passions

by Judith Flanders

213 members

5 reviews

½ 3.7

Member: anglemark

32

by Fiona MacCarthy

201 members

4 reviews

4.1

Member: anglemark

33

Faulks on Fiction: The Secret Life of the Novel

by Sebastian Faulks

175 members

7 reviews

½ 3.5

Member: anglemark

34

Crying: A Natural and Cultural History of Tears

167 members

1 review

½ 3.5

Member: anglemark

35

Laughter: A Scientific Investigation

by Robert R. Provine

159 members

3.2

Member: anglemark

36

Samuel Beckett: the last modernist

by Anthony Cronin

156 members

1 review

3.9

Member: anglemark

37

The Mediterranean in History

by David Abulafia

145 members

1 review

½ 3.7

Member: anglemark

38

The Last Englishman

by Roland Chambers

139 members

7 reviews

½ 3.4

Member: anglemark

39

The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 2: 1956-1963

by Sylvia Plath

124 members

5

Member: anglemark

40

Alamein to Zem Zem

by Keith Douglas

124 members

1 review

4.2

Member: anglemark

41

Running for the Hills: Growing Up on My Mother's Sheep Farm in Wales

by Horatio Clare

124 members

3 reviews

3.9

Member: anglemark

42

Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the Future that Disappeared

by Andrew Brown

122 members

7 reviews

½ 3.5

Member: anglemark

43

Robert Graves: Life on the Edge

by Miranda Seymour

105 members

½ 4.3

Member: anglemark

44

Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt

by Robert Gottlieb

104 members

2 reviews

½ 3.4

Member: anglemark

45

A Thing in Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton

by Kate Colquhoun

103 members

1 review

4.2

Member: anglemark

46

Grayson Perry: portrait of the artist as a young girl

103 members

6 reviews

½ 3.4

Member: anglemark

47

by Rosemary Hill

100 members

4 reviews

4

Member: anglemark

48

Feast: Why Humans Share Food

by Martin Jones

95 members

2 reviews

½ 3.3

Member: anglemark

49

by Mark Haskell Smith

81 members

5 reviews

½ 3.6

Member: anglemark

50

The Clock Mirage: Our Myth of Measured Time

by Joseph Mazur

70 members

1 review

½ 3.3

Member: anglemark

51

Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin

by Pierre Assouline

68 members

1 review

½ 4.3

Member: anglemark

52

Leadville: A Biography of the A40

by Edward Platt

57 members

4.1

Member: anglemark

53

A Great Feast of Light: Growing Up Irish in the Television Age

52 members

1 review

3.8

Member: anglemark

54

Bertie, May and Mrs Fish: Country Memories of Wartime

by Xandra Bingley

48 members

2 reviews

½ 3.5

Member: anglemark

55

by Miriam Darlington

48 members

1 review

½ 3.5

Member: anglemark

56

Orchard: A Year in England's Eden

by Benedict Macdonald

46 members

1 review

½ 3.6

Member: anglemark

57

Robert Graves and the White Goddess: 1940-1985

by Richard Perceval Graves

45 members

4

Member: anglemark

58

The Science of Love and Betrayal

by Robin Dunbar

45 members

2.8

Member: anglemark

59

The Fortunes of Francis Barber: The True Story of the Jamaican Slave Who Became Samuel Johnson’s Heir

by Michael Bundock

43 members

½ 3.7

Member: anglemark

60

Letters to Lily: On How the World Works

by Alan Macfarlane

40 members

3.1

Member: anglemark

61

You're Looking Very Well: The Surprising Nature of Getting Old

by Lewis Wolpert

33 members

3

Member: anglemark

62

The Greatest Shows on Earth: A History of the Circus

33 members

1 review

2.8

Member: anglemark

63

Vauxhall Gardens: A History (Studies in British Art)

by David E. Coke

32 members

5

Member: anglemark

64

The World of Samuel Beckett, 1906-1946

31 members

1 review

½ 3.5

Member: anglemark

65

Betjeman: The Bonus of Laughter

by Bevis Hillier

31 members

1 review

3

Member: anglemark

66

Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History

by Francis O'Gorman

29 members

1 review

3.8

Member: anglemark

67

Swimming with my father

27 members

1 review

½ 4.3

Member: anglemark

68

Ahead of the Class: How an Inspiring Headmistress Gave Children Back Their Future

by Marie Stubbs

27 members

1 review

3.8

Member: anglemark

69

Furious Interiors: R.S.Thomas, God and Wales

by Justin Wintle

24 members

4

Member: anglemark

70

by Tom Maschler

21 members

2

Member: anglemark

71

Bulwer Lytton: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Man of Letters

by Leslie Mitchell

20 members

3

Member: anglemark

72

Eileen: The Making of George Orwell

19 members

1 review

½ 3.6

Member: anglemark

73

by Peter Vansittart

15 members

3.1

Member: anglemark

74

The Spade as Mighty as the Sword: The Story of World War Two's 'Dig for Victory' Campaign

by Daniel Smith

14 members

4

Member: anglemark

75

Gypsies: An English History

by David Cressy

14 members

1 review

3.8

Member: anglemark

76

Private Words: Letters and Diaries from the Second World War

by Ronald Blythe

11 members

Member: anglemark

77

The Short Sharp Life of T.E.Hulme

by Robert Ferguson

10 members

Member: anglemark

78

The Letters of Charles Dickens: The Pilgrim Edition Volume 8: 1856-1858

by Charles Dickens

7 members

5

Member: anglemark

79

IQ: The Brilliant Idea That Failed

by Stephen Murdoch

7 members

4

Member: anglemark

80

Vegetable Gardening

7 members

Member: anglemark

81

Robert Graves: Collected Writings on Poetry

by Robert Graves

3 members

Member: anglemark

82

by Derek Malcolm

1 member

Member: anglemark

About This List

Started: anglemark
March 2023
Type: Unnumbered, Adding restricted

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