Books I stabbed this month

We’ll see how this blog posts goes, but I thought it might be nice to add some behind the scenes to this whole book review thing. Every month or so, you see the latest book review I’ve posted, and it’s always something positive. Why? Because I only report on the books I enjoyed, because the whole point is to share the joy, not the misery.

English: Stack of books in Gould's Book Arcade...

But what about…the other books? I by no means spend all of my time reading books, but I do spend a good deal more than you might suspect. Some of those are just for me – books that I want to read for some personal interest. Some are sent to me by publishers for review, trigger bouts of anxiety and grief on my part when I have a mound of books leaning over me and nothing I was able to sink my teeth into enough to care.

Here’s the books that have occupied some of my time this last month…

 

  • Half a King – Joe Abercrombie. You haven’t heard from me on this one yet, but you will – it’s not due out until July, and the publisher prefers that reviews be held until just before publication.
  • Chasers of the Wind – Alexy Pehov. It’s tough knowing where the voice of the author and the voice of the translator collided here. Even knowing it’s a translation, I just couldn’t get into this. Something about the story didn’t resonate with me.
  • Murder – Sarah Pinborough. I’m still in the early pages of this book, a sequel to a book (Mayhem?) that I didn’t read, but I’m enjoying it so far.
  • The Deep Blue Good By – John MacDonald. Published in 1964, this is the first Travis McGee novel in the series, and for me. I can definitely see where an entire genre of TV shows, both from the 80’s and current favorites like Burn Notice, got their inspiration. It’s not as dated as you would expect, at least not if you’re already in your mid to late 30’s and don’t feel lost in a world that’s pre-cellphone.
  • Pacific Vortex – Clive Cussler. The first Dirk Pitt novel, I picked this up because I was in the mood for some fun, cheap action, and this book certainly provides that. I don’t know that I would ever confuse this with deep literature, but it’s definitely solid summer action reading. Of course, thanks to Sahara’s film release, I can only imagine Matthew McConaughey – never mind the lawsuit and disagreement between author and film – as Dirk, which both works really well, and ruins the experience a little at the same time.
  • 23 Years On Fire – Joel Shepherd. I feel guilty about this, especially since I’m really enjoying it right now. I got this ARC when this book first came out a few years ago, as well as ARC’s for the subsequent novels, and never had the time to look at them. I saw that there was a new book coming out soon, took a peek, and fell deeply, madly into this future world. I have a lot of reading to do to catch up, I know.
  • The Leopard – K.V.Johansen. I’m trying, but either there’s something wonky in the PDF conversion to my kindle, or the writing in this is just too dense for my brain to contain in spurt reading.
  • Ack-Ack Macaque – Gareth L. Powell. Entirely a guilt free, just for me read. Gareth posted a great blurb on the improbability of being an “aspiring” writer that really opened my eyes this last week. Buying this book was a lame way of saying thank you, plus it really is a fun, pulpy read.
  • To Honor You Call Us – H. Paul Hansinger. Amazon published books are a risky lot, in my opinion. I’ve had some pleasant surprises lately, like with the Garden of Stones. This is not going to be one of them for me. The author has, to me, an awkward way of presenting dialog as if its almost a transcript of a conversation instead of people talking.

The scary thing about this list is that this really only covers the last 2 or 3 weeks.

 

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