Tuesday, August 2, 2011

32 books in 7 months...

Having reached the milestone of 100 posts, I thought I'd reflect back on my last 7 month journey of fictious travel and the 32 books that I've logged. Looking back to last year at this time, I had 61 books read, almost double of what I've read this year. But I started 2011 with the notion of reading more quality than quantity as well as more non-fiction ( slower reads) then fiction ( page-turners)

So with that, we started the first part of 2011 helping Robert Parker's Spenser character solve crimes through the streets of Boston in School Days , Hundred-Dollar Baby and Now and Then . Then jetted off to Sweden to learn more about Steig Larsson in Kurdo Baski's, Stieg Larsson: Our Days in Stockholm then held on tight as Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander torched their way through The Girl Who Played with Fire  . We walked through the The Judas Gate with Jack Higgins, only to hear James Patterson's clock go Tick Tock. Flew out to California as we prowled the streets of Hollywood  with Michael Connolley's character, Harry Bosch in The Last Coyote .

We were time warped back to  the 1800's in rural MN, in Nicole Helget's The Turtle Catcher. While in Minnesota, we rode along with Lucas Davenport in Buried Prey. Then we found freedom in St. Paul in Jonathan's Franzen's Freedom only to become a prisoner of the elements during Shackleton's artic adventure in Alfred Lasings, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage .

The one with the most toys may not always win in Toys by James Patterson and we hunted in Nevada Barr's Track of the Cat. Held on tight with Harlan Coben's Gone for Good and learned of survival in Linda Hillenbrand's Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.

Caught a glimpse of the beyond in Todd Burpo's Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back .


Through the advancement of technology, we re-connected if you will with author Andrew Gross. Gross has co-authored with James Patterson and has a good share of his own books, The Blue ZoneThe Dark Tide and Don't Look Twice which I've read thus far and Reckless and his newest release Eyes Wide Open yet to read. Technology and data mining abounded in Jeffery Deaver's very thought provoking, The Broken Window .

Speaking of new authors, Stuart Woods' Choke and Palindrome and Kate DiCamillo's Tiger Rising were authors I started reading this year. New to me that is, but not to the literary world.

In our quest to learn more about a dog, Alexandra Horowitz taught us valuable insights and lessons in Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know And in mid-May, Jennifer Grant gave us a heartwarming memoir of her father Cary in Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant.

We rounded out the first half of the year back in Boston with Spencer in Robert B. Parker's Rough Weather, recalled a great movie by reading Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys and performed an autopsy with Kay Scarpetta in Patricia Cornwell's, The Scarpetta Factor.

All the while we searched for lost art throughout Europe by way of Robert Edsel's The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History .

Not sure what the next half or I guess five months of the year has in store for us, but if it's anything like the Key West adventure of James Patterson's, Now You See Her, I'm sure it'll be a wild and enjoyable ride!!

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