Over the last several weeks I have finished reading several books and over the weekend I added several to my “to be read” shelf. Here are the books that I have finished….along with the date finished and the book’s number on my list of books read in 2016……
I always say that I love to read because books take me to places that i will never visit. One such place is the Outer Hebrides islands off of the western coast of Scotland. I have visited these islands four times thanks to the books of Peter May. The first three visits came via May’s Lewis Trilogy. That trilogy is composed of Blackhouse, The Lewis Man and The Chessmen. Each of these books is a terrific read. The last visit was through another of May’s books Entry Island. The setting for the trilogy is modern-day Scotland and features Edinburgh, police detective Fin Macleod. The dual settings for Entry Island are contemporary Entry Island in the St Gulf of St.Lawrence in Canada and the Outer Hebrides of the mid-19th century. The one thing that one gets from all the books is the life is rough in the Outer Hebrides!!
So this month has been an amazing month of reading, With three days left in the month, I have finished seven books and each one of them has been terrific! The first three The Hunting Wind by Steve Hamilton, Off the Grid from C.J. Box and Linwood Barclay‘s Far From True I have written about,But the next four books were finished in a reading blitz with an average of two to four days between books! That means immediately upon finishing one book, I was totally engrossed in the next book and I didn’t wan to stop reading to write about the previous book! Since there are still two more books on my library to be read (TBR) shelf Summit Lake from Charlie Donlea and Chris Kuzneski’s The Secret Crown, I still don’t want to stop to write four reviews! So I am going to do it in two posts! Here’s part one…….
Friday, when I finished Book 18 of 2016 Breaking Wild, by Dianne Les Becquets. I started thinking about how reading let’s one explore the far reaches of the world without leaving the comfort of your home. Via my April reads I’ve visited Antarctica and the jungles of northern Brazil in The 6th Extinction from James Rollins, at one end of the world. While Peter May’s Entry Island has taken me to Entry island located in the Gulf of St Lawrence in the northern hemisphere! .
So my plan was to run again sometime over the last weekend and since I didn’t run Saturday, that left yesterday as my running day! As morning gave way to afternoon, my wife and I went shopping. She went to Home Goods and I went to Barnes & Noble. Knowing that I already have enough on my TBR shelves, I spent the time browsing and writing down the titles of books that peaked my interest. What I typically do after an excursion like yesterday’s, is to first check out the prices of the books at Amazon and then usually checking on the availability of the books at my library! Here are five new mysteries that caught my eye…..
(Book 16 of 2016)
Far From True is the second book in the Promise Falls trilogy from Linwood Barclay and once again Barclay has hit it out of the park! The book picks up where its predecessor Broken Promise leaves off, only now there’s more upheaval in the quiet town of Promise Falls, leaving Detective Barry Duckworth with his hands full! The new trouble starts when a bomb goes off on the closing night of the Constellation Drive-In and its big screen comes tumbling down and wreaks havoc on the town. Two of the people killed are Adam and Mariam Chalmers.The couple were crushed in Adam’s prized Jaguar when said screen came tumbling down.
Soon after finishing The Hunting Wind by Steve Hamilton, I received notice that C J Box’s new novel Off the Grid was available for pick-up at the library. So I hurried over to the library and then I came home and quickly devoured the book! Yes, Off the Grid, book 16 in the Joe Pickett series is a good one! I finished Endangered book 15 in the series last April and it took me a little while to remember what happened in that one but Box as always kept revealing little bits of that storyline, which jogged my memory and brought that story back to me. But while it is definitely better if you know the back story and the relationship between Nate Romanowski and Joe and his family it is not essential to the enjoyment of this book.
One of the things that I have been doing on a fairly consistently this winter and into the spring is reading, I have set a goal that requires me to read books at a faster pace than last year and while i on a pace that is slightly slower than I need it to be, I am still reading at the same pace as last year finishing book 15 of the year just about on the same day as I finished book 15 last year!
The Forgotten Room is the fourth book in Lincoln Child’s series featuring enigmalogist Jeremy Logan. While I have read many of the books in the Pendergrast series, which Child writes with Douglas Preston, this is the first of his solo books, that I have read.
