Book Chase: The April 2020 Reading Plan

It is definitely not a good sign that working on a blog post is more interesting to me right now than actually sitting down and reading a book. Not good at all.

Even before the official "Stay Home" order hit my county about ten days ago, we were already staying home and away from people as much as we possibly could. It was just good common sense to do so. My wife would be in very serious trouble if she contracted Covid-19, so I've been the one to go scavenging for the things we need. At first, that meant going to the stores every two or three days, but now I try to get all the necessary shopping done on Friday mornings. The only kicker will probably be those prescription refills that just can't wait until a Friday morning pickup. But that's the plan.

So far no virus problems in the family, but I have succumbed to a reading-virus that seems to be plaguing the whole book blogging world. I simply cannot concentrate on my reading right now. I get two or three pages into a book, only to realize suddenly that I have no idea what I just read from the last half page or so. My concentration is not what it was before the bug invasion, and I find little thoughts popping into my head regularly when they should be minding their own business and waiting for later. What am I missing on the news? Are the big cities in Texas starting to crack at the seams? What will happen to the elderly if hospitals can't keep up with the demand for beds and ventilators? Will I ever see toilet tissue and paper towels on the grocery shelf again?

Consequently, my March reading has been relatively light. But as I look back on my reading plan for the month - ten books plus an audiobook or two - I see that I didn't miss the mark as badly as I feared I might considering all the distractions. I managed to finish seven of the ten books on the list and get through one audiobook. And I'm about one-third of the way through another book on the list, and about 75% of the way through a second audiobook. So I guess it could have been worse.

This is what I have planned for April:

1. Daughter of the Reich by Louise Fein is the one that I'm a third of the way through coming into April. (It's a 530-page ARC.) It's the story of the daughter of a high-ranking Nazi who falls in love with an old Jewish friend of hers and begins an affair with him, endangering both their lives. So far it is not different enough from all the similar books I've read in the last couple of years to make me fall in love with it. I'm hoping there are some surprises ahead that will make that happen because right now it's only about a 3-out-of-5-stars book.

2. The Dead Don't Sleep by Steven Max Russo is an e-ARC that I've been looking forward to for a few weeks, and I'll finally be starting it in the next day or two. This one appealed to me because it features an "aging Vietnam veteran" whose war experiences seem to be coming back to haunt him after he meets a strange man who claims to remember him from the war. Once the vet figures out who the stranger is, he knows that it is time for a final reckoning with the man who  should have never been allowed to come home from Viet Nam in the first place. 

3. LBJ's 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America's Year of Upheaval - Kyle Longley - This is a 2018 ARC that I've had around the house for almost two years and I think I'm finally ready to read it. 1968 was a crazy year for the country - and for me, personally. It's the year I went into the Army, the year I was attacked because of my race by fellow soldiers inside Fort Campbell, KY, after Martin Luther King's assassination, and the year I learned of Bobby Kennedy's assassination via a tiny transistor radio while sitting in a tree in the middle of the night trying to keep an eye on the four or five wild pigs that had me so securely treed. 

4. Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout is one of the last tree-books I bought before all this staying-at-home stuff started. I was a fan of the Olive Kitteridge film on HBO back in the day, and I'm looking forward to this collection of stories focusing on the recent doings in Olive's world as she "touches the lives of everyone around her." As those already familiar with Olive will know, having her touch your life is not necessarily a pleasant experience, so this one should be interesting. (I'm already a big fan of Elizabeth Strout's writing, so why I never got around to reading the first Olive book is a mystery to me.)

5. Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles is an ARC I was hoping to carry with me to the San Antonio Book Festival next weekend for an author signature. Well, we all know what happened to the book festival. Jiles is the author of one of my all-time favorite novels, News of the World, so I'm really looking forward to this one. It's the story of a young musician who is conscripted into the Confederate Army just a few months before the end of the Civil War in 1865. Jiles is a brilliant writer, so I have high hopes for this one..

6. As Good as It Can Be by William A. Glass is an ARC I received courtesy of the author back in late January. The book is all about a military brat struggling to stay out of trouble - and out of jail - who gets drafted into the army almost as soon as he gets out of high school. Now his problem is going to be figuring out how to keep from getting the dishonorable discharge that will ruin the rest of his life. 

7. Westwind by Ian Rankin is back in print for the first time in almost thirty years, and I'm wondering how something like that could happen to an author as popular as Rankin is. He  admits that the book, when published in 1990, was a big flop. According to Rankin, it got only one small review in the Guardian before it disappeared. Rankin was happy enough to forget about it - and then the Twitter world starting asking him about it often enough to spark his interest in republishing the book. He says he polished it up a bit, and I have to say that at first glance it looks pretty good. Should be interesting.

8. Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter is said to be "an exceptional depiction of the suffering caused by the influenza" pandemic of 1918. It seems to be on everyone's list of the best books coming out of the epidemic that killed millions of people in 1918 and 1919. More specifically, it's about a newspaper woman and a soldier who both catch the flu. When Miranda comes out of her delirium, she learns that the soldier is dead and that he most likely caught the flu while trying to nurse her back to health. 

9. Pale Kings and Princes by Robert B. Parker came to mind because of the Porter title, up above, I'll admit. I fell in love with Parker's Spenser books back in the mid-eighties, but I've always been afraid to go back and read one of them again because of the risk that the books are not as good as I remember them to be. And that would be sad. Spenser and Hawk are to this day one of my favorite detective teams (well, Hawk is the muscle and Spenser is the detective) of all-time. I hope they still are after this re-read.

10. The Night Fire by Michael Connelly is the latest Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch novel. I've been purposely holding this one back because I know that as soon as I read it I will have to wait several months for the next one in the Bosh-universe series. It's kind of like having money in the bank; it's comforting to know that it's there waiting for you when you need it most. Well, I think that time has come for me. I can't wait any longer.

So there you have the plan for April. But honestly, the main hope I have for the month is that my reading pace gets back to something resembling my normal pace before the month is over. If that happens, I will be satisfied.