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sandin954's review against another edition
3.0
Collection of essays by members of the International Thriller Association presenting their selections of the 100 best thrillers of all time. Some rather out there picks (I never thought of [b:Summer Lightning|46761|Summer Lightning (Penguin Modern Classics)|P.G. Wodehouse|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170343291s/46761.jpg|1695827] by [a:P.G. Wodehouse|7963|P.G. Wodehouse|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1198684105p2/7963.jpg] as a thriller) but overall an enjoyable read and I added many new books to my TBR. Probably should be either avoided or just skimmed by those who are spoiler sensitive.
bloodravenlib's review against another edition
4.0
Quick impressions: A nice collection of short essays about books in the thrillers genre. From ancient times looking at books such as The Odyssey to The Da Vinci Code, we get short essays on 100 selections. Each short essay is written by other authors in the genre. Morrell, the editor, is the author of First Blood (the basis for the film that went on to spawn the Rambo franchise). There may be one or two titles you may wonder if they are really thrillers, but that is part of the appeal. Overall, a good variety, and it may inspire to go back and look for some titles to read.
(full review on my blog later)
(full review on my blog later)
tbr_the_unconquered's review against another edition
4.0
The overall premise of this book was something I immediately latched on to : a thriller writer recommends one book from the thriller genre that he/she considers a must read. Nothing could shine more light into the inner workings of the genre than having authors with working knowledge of the tradecraft talking about books that inspired, amazed or astounded them. Thrillers are dime-a-dozen in the book market and it is for this same reason that I liked this book for it helps to filter out some of the really outstanding works in the field. These 100 articles run across a wide section of the history of books themselves. The second article is about Homer and the last article is about Dan Brown and all the others follow a roughly chronological timeline.
If you love the thriller genre, this will be a fascinating series of articles to read to get new perspectives on some books that have really been landmarks in this field. Each article is a mix of facts about the book and the author along with the thoughts from the writer about the book. So many different authors mean so many different styles and subgenres too. And so we get to discover chase stories, manhunts, romantic thrillers, whodunits, spy thrillers, action during WWI and WWII, the Cold War era, the post 9/11 era, familial feuds, stranded stories, horror stories, cop stories, the common man as a hero, dirty politics and much, much more.
Two of the essays stood out for their uniqueness – R.L. Stine’s essay on why P.G. Wodehouse’s Summer Lightning is a splendid thriller. The play of words that Stine employs here proceeds to tell us why a comedy can also make a good thriller. The second was Lee Goldberg’s article on Trevanian’s Eiger Sanction which gave me a fresh new pair of lenses to view the story I had read a while back.
Recommended. There is no such thing as a must-read but then these are all books that will really help you to understand how the thrillers in the English language evolved over time.
If you love the thriller genre, this will be a fascinating series of articles to read to get new perspectives on some books that have really been landmarks in this field. Each article is a mix of facts about the book and the author along with the thoughts from the writer about the book. So many different authors mean so many different styles and subgenres too. And so we get to discover chase stories, manhunts, romantic thrillers, whodunits, spy thrillers, action during WWI and WWII, the Cold War era, the post 9/11 era, familial feuds, stranded stories, horror stories, cop stories, the common man as a hero, dirty politics and much, much more.
Two of the essays stood out for their uniqueness – R.L. Stine’s essay on why P.G. Wodehouse’s Summer Lightning is a splendid thriller. The play of words that Stine employs here proceeds to tell us why a comedy can also make a good thriller. The second was Lee Goldberg’s article on Trevanian’s Eiger Sanction which gave me a fresh new pair of lenses to view the story I had read a while back.
Recommended. There is no such thing as a must-read but then these are all books that will really help you to understand how the thrillers in the English language evolved over time.
alexauthorshay's review against another edition
3.0
I was thinking this book would be more of an anthology of listings of titles, like the official 'genreflecting' titles. But this book actually uses reviews from well known authors, more or less asking them what their favorite thriller is and getting them to give a summary of what intrigued them about it. Some of the reviews are helpful, though most of them don't actually describe the plot of the book being reviewed which was the reason why I wanted to read the book in the first place.
I was also thinking the titles would be much more recent--maybe 2000 and onward. But the most recent title in this book is The Da Vinci Code, published in 2003. It goes chronologically by publication date, the very first one listed being Theseus and the Minotaur from 1500 BC. Being that this book was published in 2010, I was hoping for more recent titles, maybe ones that aren't quite as 'well known' as some of the ones in this book seem to be (admittedly I hadn't heard of most of them, but the ones I had heard of were already on my to-read shelf).
I did get a handful of titles from this book, and for someone looking for a sort of evolution of the the thriller genre and little history lessons, this would be the perfect book to read. But I was looking for reading recommendations, and for that it is less than ideal if you're wanting current titles.
I was also thinking the titles would be much more recent--maybe 2000 and onward. But the most recent title in this book is The Da Vinci Code, published in 2003. It goes chronologically by publication date, the very first one listed being Theseus and the Minotaur from 1500 BC. Being that this book was published in 2010, I was hoping for more recent titles, maybe ones that aren't quite as 'well known' as some of the ones in this book seem to be (admittedly I hadn't heard of most of them, but the ones I had heard of were already on my to-read shelf).
I did get a handful of titles from this book, and for someone looking for a sort of evolution of the the thriller genre and little history lessons, this would be the perfect book to read. But I was looking for reading recommendations, and for that it is less than ideal if you're wanting current titles.
tim_worldofsleuths's review against another edition
5.0
You can read my review at http://tims-reviews.blogspot.com/2017/01/book-review-21-thrillers-100-must-reads.html
cleng's review against another edition
4.0
I don't normally read thrillers, but I enjoyed reading about them and even chose a few that I'd really like to try!
armand_rosamilia's review
4.0
Not only are the 100 books interesting and literature I need to read, the authors writing the chapters are as well, offering personal insight about the book and what it means to them as a writer. To me (because I'm a writer) it was the best part of the book.
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