I went to the library a couple of times last week to pick up books that I had on hold. I of course had to look at the new books, while I was there. One of the new books, Assassin’s Silence by Ward Larsen caught my eye. I had never seen the book before and was unfamiliar with the author. Anyway I picked it up and read the rave reviews on the back and decided that it was my type of book!.
Ok so I do believe that I would be hard pressed to find two months in the last 15 years where I have read more books than January and February of 2017. In January I read books and so far in February I have read three more! Bringing 2017’s total of books read to 11! In order to achieve my 2017 Reading Challenge goal of 60 books, I need to average 5 books per month. I am already above that average in the first week of February!! Goodreads says that right now I am 5 books ahead of schedule! Woo Hoo!
Back in the 70s and early 80s I read a fair amount of science fiction. I read several books by Robert Heinlein, some Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, James P Hogan, Orson Scott Card and others. Since then I’ve read the odd science fiction book here and there. Among my favorites were the books of John Scalzi,, particularly the Old Man’s War series! In 2015 I added a Science Fiction Challenge to my other Reading Challenges. My goal was to read 12 science fiction books. I made it 3/4 of the way there, reading 9 books. Last year I reduced the number of sci-fi books to 6 i guess I figured I could make that goal easily! Wrong! I only read 1 book!
One of the sub-challenges of my 2017 Mystery/Thriller Reading Challenge is to read twelve books written by authors whose work I have never read.The first of those books and the third overall book read in 2017 is The Killing Kind by Chris Holm.
One of my Reading Challenges for 2017 is to catch up on a few of the mystery and thriller series that I am behind on. The series that I had in mind include: Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series, Steve Berry’s Cotton Malone or maybe Alex Berenson’s John Wells series. What I didn’t envision was going back to a series whose last book I read in, oh, 1994! Anyway, that’s what I did this week when I read In the Midst of Death – book number 3 in Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder series. I really didn’t set out to read the book. It just happened to be sitting out on a pile of books in the basement, when I was looking for something. Anyway, I picked it up, and didn’t put it down until I finished it! Lucky for me it was only 246 pages long!!!
So over the last few days I’ve spent a lot of time looking forward to what I want to read and back at what I’ve read. What I have actually missed though is to write about the book that I just finished. Actually, I read the majority of the book in 2016, but I didn’t finish it until New Year’s Day! So it is Book #1 of 2017! Anyway the book was The Critic by Peter May. It is the second book in May’s Enzo Files series featuring Scottish exile and former forensic specialist Enzo Macleod.
So now that the Holidays are over and I wait to see if Clemson can somehow upset mighty Alabama, Hey I attended both the University of Florida and the University of Georgia, so while I am not a big fan of Clemson, I certainly would prefer that they win the National Title!
Ok, so who amongst you has ever encountered this problem. It is actually something that happens to me quite often. You go to the library, either to pick something up or return something. While you’re there you know you have to look through the new releases shelves. Of course , as you scan the books several look interesting and maybe even a book you had seen, say in a book store . So you end up leaving the library with not only the books you came for but a few that you really didn’t need! Yes I always think I can read just a little bit more than I can!!
