So yes, as listed under Currently Reading on my webpage, I am still reading Subversives! I am now more than 65% of the way through the book, Reagan just became governor of California, so the battles rages more fiercely! But while reading that, I am still reading mysteries, and just finished Book 14 for 2014, Kings of Midnight from Wallace Stroby.
Through the years one of my favorite mystery series has been Parnell Hall's Stanley Hasting mysteries. Looking at my Goodreads bookshelf I see, that there are 18 books in the series. and I have read all but one of them!! (Note to self read Caper- damn I thought I did??) That is not the case with Hall's Puzzle Lady series, there are 15 books in that series, of which I have read 3.(1,8,&15) No. 15 is NYPD Puzzle and it is book 11 for 2014....
Some writers take many pages to hook you and reel you into the story. In the latest Joe Pickett novel, C.J. Box does it in the first paragraph of the book!! When Nate Romanowski pushes a drift boat in to the Bighorn River and sets sail down river toward the mansion of the man he is going to kill!! Now if this is the first book of the series, you may just like Box's descriptive prose, but if you've read a few of the books or in my case all but one of the fourteen books in the series, you said to yourself "Nate is going to murder someone!" Whoa, this is not going to end well! See Nate is the shadowy friend of Joe and his family, and always seems to arrive on the scene when Joe needs him the most, but he is also on the run from the Feds. Can this be why?? So starts Book 10 for 2014, Stone Cold from C J Box....
Oh Boy! I finally read a book quickly and increased this years book's read total all the way to eight!! (He says with a sarcastic sneer on his face and tone in his voice). The book was Cold Shot to the Heart and is book #1 in the Crissa Stone series from Long Branch, New Jersey native Wallace Stroby. They always say that you should write about what you know and what would a former writer for the Newark Star-Ledger know better mob related crime! (typed with Jon Stewart's mob voice ringing in my ears!)
Ok so I have visited the Ranker site before, but today and yesterday I spent some time on the site looking at various list that would pertain to this blog. The following list is one of them. I am in total agreement that Agatha Christie is the greatest mystery writer of all time, but many of the writers that I have read over the years are not even on the list!! and if they are they are well below where they would be on my personal list of the best mystery writers of all time. So I will break this post down into two posts, this is the first, duh! and in it I am presenting the Ranker listing and would ask for your thoughts or comments! The second list will be the Me, Myself and Mysteries list. But you will have to wait until after my 6 and 1/2 hour break! So for now the question is What Do You Think??? No James Lee Burke??
Next Read?
This year so far has been a slow year for reading. I have spent much more time over the last several months listening to music than reading. I think that I will make it a goal to read at least two books, that are part of a series that I read, per month for the rest of the year. Maybe one can be new one from a series that I am current with, and the other an older book in a series that I am trying t catch up on!
I read the first of James Lee Burke’s twenty novels featuring Dave Robicheaux The Neon Rain in July of 1990. I loved it and I have read almost every books since. I actually finished reading the latest book Light of the World back on the 14th of April, but I am just getting around to writing about it now and for most of those 16 days I’ve asked myself why am I avoiding writing about the book. The truth of the matter is that I really don’t know why except that I just thought that there was just something amiss with the book. It certainly wasn’t the descriptive writing that Burke is so well-known for, because that was still there, although this time he was describing Montana and not the Louisiana bayou. And it wasn’t that Dave and Clete Purcel were not battling some really bad villans because the main one serial killer Asa Surrette was a bad as they come and many of the other characters on both sides of the law were pretty evil, too. So what was it?? I know that at 502 pages this book is the longest of the series, and it took me a long time to get through it. Actually, it took much longer for me to get through the first half of the book than the second. Generally I think that Burke may have tried to force things a little too much, for me it seemed that there were too many bad guys, none on the level of Asa but a couple them, including one police officer came pretty close and the rich folks that Dave and Clete always run up against were no sweethearts either!
So I went to the library today, like I need more to read, anyway. I took two books back that I have read Kent Haruf’s Plainsong and Deborah Hick’s The Road Out– two others I did not have time to read Crossroads a book about BLues and Rock music and Chi Marathoning – running what’s running??? Then I checked three out and we'[l see how I do at reading this set of books:
A few days ago at Socialstudious I wrote a post about Books 3 and 4 for 2014. Those two books are Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann and Plainsong by Kent Haruf, neither of these books are anywhere close to the type of books that I normally read. The genre that I normally read is reflected in the title of this blog. But last month after reading The Road Out by Deborah Hicks. A book about her attempt as a teacher to give a group of at risk adolescent girls a way to see their lives reflected in literature, and realize that there may be hope to attain their dreams, I thought hey am I missing out by not reading literature. So i decided that this year I would read at least one book a month that is considered literature. For the other books (I read about 3-4 books a month) I would include one history and.or political book, and one mystery or thriller. With that being said, because I have been on hiatus from work, due to lack of work, I have finished in addition to the two books already mentioned a third book Theodore Roosevelt and the Assassin.… which I will write about shortly.
