Index (Start Here!)

Your guide to the Lillian Review of Books

Having published 69 posts (nice) and reached 1,360 subscribers, I’ve decided that an index is needed to organize all of the content available to readers of the Lillian Review of Books.

First, a brief introduction, if you’re new to my work. I am the eponymous Lillian! I’m a young millennial Jewish-Korean-Chinese-American writer from Chicago, now living in the Washington, DC area with my husband (Mr. Lillian requests anonymity) and a mini Australian Shepherd (Athena requests belly rubs).¹ If you wanna know way too much about me, check out my interview on The Futurist Letters Show.

The Lillian Review of Books is primarily the home for laidback literary criticism of an eclectic mix of books and media, including but not limited to New Wave science fiction, Jewish literature, and the Classics. I’m less interested in theory and more interested in understanding what grabs me on a visceral level in the books I read and love (or hate). I have a BA in Classical Studies from UChicago but I did not go to grad school or ever read Derrida, so you may encounter some snobby opinions about e.g. the Western Canon, but I can promise you will never find any critical theory jargon in these pages. If you do, send help: I am being held hostage by the Marxists and require immediate extraction.

Other than book reviews, I occasionally post original fiction, personal essays, or scene reports. I will strive to keep this page updated with all future LilRB posts.

Book Reviews

By Author

Sholem Aleichem

• Tevye the Dairyman (micro-review)

Saul Bellow

• Seize the Day

• Humboldt’s Gift

• Dangling Man

• Herzog

Alfred Bester

• The Stars My Destination

Samuel Delany

• Babel-17

• The Ballad of Beta-2

Don DeLillo

• White Noise

Philip K. Dick

• Now Wait For Last Year

• Galactic Pot-Healer & The Man in the High Castle

• The Game-Players of Titan (micro-review)

Colin Dodds

• Ms. Never

John Dos Passos

• The USA Trilogy

Fyodor Dostoevsky

• The Brothers Karamazov

• Notes From Underground

Harlan Ellison

• A Boy and His Dog

Daniel Falatko

• The Wayback Machine

Pat Frank

• Alas, Babylon

Matthew Gasda

• The Sleepers

Harry Harrison

• Make Room! Make Room!

Robert Heinlein

• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Joseph Heller

• Good As Gold

Ernest Hemingway

• In Our Time

John Irving

• The World According to Garp (micro-review)

Kazuo Ishiguro

• A Pale View of Hills

James Joyce

• Ulysses

Ursula K. LeGuin

• Planet of Exile

• City of Illusions (plus overview of Hainish Cycle)

Primo Levi

• Survival in Auschwitz

Eugene Lim

• Dear Cyborgs (micro-review)

Cixin Liu

• The Three Body Problem

• The Dark Forest

Jack London

• The Iron Heel

Ed Park

• Same Bed, Different Dreams (micro-review)

Rainer Maria Rilke

• The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Philip Roth

• Goodbye, Columbus

• Portnoy’s Complaint

W.G. Sebald

• The Emigrants

Robert Silverberg

• Invaders From Earth

Clifford Simak

• City

Cairo Smith

• Scenebux

• Current Affairs (micro-review)

Scott Spires

• Social Distancing

Olaf Stapledon

• Sirius

Aleksandar Tišma

• Kapo

Evan Wright

• Generation Kill (micro-review)

Charles Yu

• How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (micro-review)

Original Short Fiction

• Miss Korea Los Angeles (literary)

• Career Opportunities at Fermented Freight Solutions (sci-fi)

• Stroganoff Sunday at Camp Manifest (sci-fi)

• Not Too Sweet (literary)

• Single Blind (sci-fi)

• Double Blind (sci-fi)

Original Poetry

• Doomsday Prepper Blues

• Funeral Oration for an Eastern Box Turtle

Rec Center

This was a monthly series of miscellanous recommendations that I ran for about a year. I have plans to eventually continue this series, perhaps partially paywalled as an incentive for paid subscribers.

Other (Essays, Announcements, Updates, Scene Reports)

• January 2025 Welcome/Introduction Post

• Finished the first draft of my novel

• LilRB’s First Birthday

• Athena’s Debut

• 2025 Birthday Post: 32 books that shaped me

• My Swollen Appetite (a very personal essay)

• Movies For Airplanes

• Ross Barkan is Dead to Me: NYC travelogue/scene report (Magazine Non Grata launch party)

• Second draft novel update

• LilRB’s Second Birthday (and micro-reviews)

• The Summer Birthdays Writing Prize intro

• I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: A Los Angeles Alt-Lit Travelogue

Year-End Round-Ups

• Emoji Rating Every Book I Read in 2024

• Emoji Rating Every Book I Read in 2025

Elsewhere on Substack

Writing

Futurist Letters

• To a Ghost of Web 1.0 (personal essay)

• Imperial Flower Nails & Beauty (fiction)

• A Riot at Red Plan-It! Park (science fiction)

• Worst Boyfriend Ever review (book review)

Magazine Non Grata

• Recovery (print-only flash fiction)

Synthesized Sunsets

• The Waters of Lethe (science fiction)

The Metropolitan Review

• Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata (book review)

Why Is This Interesting?

• The Monday Media Diet

The Republic of Letters

• Worldbuilding (essay)

Podcasts

Futurist Letters

• S2E1 (co-host)

• S1E29 - Book Club Episode (PKD and JG Ballard)

• S1E17 - Henry Begler (co-host)

• S1E9 - Lillian Wang Selonick (guest)

Synthesized Sunsets

• XXV: Sci-Fi’s Sense of Wonder

• XXI: Is Sci-Fi Suffering from Success?

For the complete list of my publications predating The Lillian Review of Books, see the Published Work page of my personal website.

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I hope this index helps you navigate the offerings of The Lillian Review of Books! Please feel free to leave a comment on any post, send me a Substack DM, or email me with any feedback. I love to hear from my readers.

If you want to buy any of the books that I have reviewed, please consider placing an order through my Bookshop.org affiliate storefront. I’ll receive a small commission.

1. Owl-Eyed Athena, goddess of strategy and sploots: