16 reviews 4 YES · 5 DNF · 4 DEPENDS · 3 NO Who this is

• NONFICTION Roundtable Into Thin Air Jon Krakauer · 1997 The book works because it does not turn that responsibility into a clean lesson. The Mountain Was Not the Only Thing That Failed YES
• HISTORICAL FICTION Roundtable Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry · 1985 I can say that the opening did not make me want to spend several more hundred pages in the company of these men. I Had Enough of the Dust and the Talking DNF
• CRIME & THRILLER Roundtable Only to Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Novel Lawrence Osborne · 2018 I would recommend this to readers who want atmosphere, old-school detective talk, Mexican settings, and a Marlowe who is more vulnerable than capable. Marlowe Still Has One More Case in Him DEPENDS
• HORROR Roundtable Swan Song Robert R. McCammon · 1987 I still finished it because the people mattered, and because the question underneath all the explosions mattered more than the explosions themselves. The World Ends, Then the Work Starts YES
• HISTORICAL FICTION Roundtable The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco · 1980 I would recommend it to a reader who wants a mystery that keeps asking what counts as evidence and who has enough patience for long arguments about theology and power. A Murder Mystery With Too Many Circuits DEPENDS
• CLASSICS Roundtable The Razor's Edge W. Somerset Maugham · 1944 That is enough to make this old book still serviceable. A Fine Question, With Too Much Furniture Around It YES
• NONFICTION Roundtable Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig · 1974 Read it if you want a book that treats repair, teaching, writing, fatherhood, and thought as related forms of responsibility. A Good Motorcycle, an Unreliable Map of the Mind DEPENDS
• CRIME & THRILLER Roundtable Unspoken Truths Liz Mistry · 2019 The blind man does more honest noticing than half the sighted people in the book. The book kept finding worse things to show me DNF
• ROMANCE Roundtable His Secret Child Leslie North · 2015 There is no sense in watching someone finish a job when you already know the wiring is wrong. You do not start the trim-out before checking the wiring DNF
• LITERARY FICTION Roundtable May We Feed the King Rebecca Perry · 2026 You can preserve a thing so carefully you save everything but the use of it. The fish had to go DEPENDS
• ROMANCE Roundtable Not Your Average Earl Eliza Lloyd · 2019 If the point was that secrets make a house run poorly, I got it before the birds came apart. I shut it after the feathers DNF
• CRIME & THRILLER Roundtable One Death at a Time Abbi Waxman · 2025 The rest are introduced with a job description and a costume, and they never grow beyond it. A Service Call That Never Finds the Short NO
• ROMANCE Roundtable Shadow Assassin Elle James · 2021 Dane gets her out, but Alex remains an active participant in staying alive. The part that kept me reading was who earned the right to be trusted YES
• CRIME & THRILLER Roundtable The Forgotten David Baldacci · 2012 He keeps the big criminal from answering in a courtroom, where the facts could be tested and the victims' families could see that the system still worked. The Hero Never Pays for Anything NO
• HORROR Roundtable The Gospel of Z Stephen Graham Jones · 2014 That frame is a legitimate ambition, but a frame around an empty house doesn't make the house stand. The Gospel of Z: A Pile of Good Scenes, No Main Breaker NO
• ROMANCE Roundtable Wyoming Cowboy Marine Nicole Helm · 2019 But it moves because the plot needs a scene, not because one thing follows from another. Nobody Called for Backup DNF

RNKD publishes a reader's name, age, photograph and an address that reaches them, and nothing else. There is no biography here because we do not write them. All 15 readers →