Book Chase: The October 2020 Reading Plan (Unlikely as It Is That I Can Stay with a Reading Plan for Long)

 I finally got back into a solid reading groove in August and September, and even closed out the month of September with twelve books read and reviewed. I haven't hit that number in a while, and was surprised to have it happen again this year, of all years. I'm wondering if my flitting from book-to-book may have actually resulted in me finishing more books than I do when I'm reading them only one or two at a time. 

One thing for sure about doing it this way is that there is always a book or two to enjoy no matter what mood I may wake up in on any given day. I try to read very different books when I read several at a time because that's about the only way I can keep them all straight in my mind sometimes, but that said, these are the ones I'm reading going into the month of October:

This is one of several books that I learned about in the last few weeks from reading other book blogs. I'm reading this one via audiobook and enjoying the reader's various voices and accents a lot. She really makes the characters come alive, and makes it easy to keep all of them straight in my head as I listen. This one brings together the daughters of Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Moreau, Mr. Hyde, Dr. Rappaccini, and the young lady put together by Dr. Frankenstein (or maybe by Adam Frankenstein, the monster). They are trying to figure out what their outlaw fathers are doing before it's too late to stop them. It doesn't hurt that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are on the same team.

Despite the rather cheesy cover of this one, I'm finding it to be a largely factual representation of what went on at the Carnton house during and after the Battle of Franklin (Tennessee) during the Civil War. I've visited the house on several occasions, along with the graveyard that sits nearby, and it is very easy for me to picture where the action in the novel is taking place. Most of the main characters are historical figures, and it has been interesting and fun to see how their fictional representations react to the situations in which Alexander places them. Thankfully, this is not a romance-novel version of the Civil War even though there is a real-world romance at the core of the novel. I discovered the book via a video live-stream from Carnton itself.

I'm not much of a Sean Hannity fan, but I bought a copy of this one after I discovered it included what seems to be a pretty good summary of the history of socialism and marxism and how they differ. I'm reading it rather slowly because I really have to be in the right mood for it - and that's not always easy considering the daily bombardment of political propaganda from both sides we have to endure right now. I didn't realize until I got it home that the book has been signed by Hannity, who is turning out to be a better writer than I expected he would be. This is not the first time I buy a book at Target only to discover later that it's a signed copy. Target doesn't seem to be very consistent about labeling signed copies as such.

I've had kind of a strange relationship with this book for a few weeks now. I got hold of a library e-book copy early on but had to return it before I could even read the first page because the queue was so long. I got back at the end of the line and found myself almost two hundred places back. But just when I had given up on ever getting my hands back on the book, I spotted it among four books that were being made available to everyone in the system if they agreed to only a 7-day checkout period. I've had it two days now, and I'm about 25% of the way through it, and liking it a lot. Most of you already know that it's the story of twin very-light-skinned blacks who run away from home at age 15 or 16. One of them decides to disappear to live the rest of her life as white - and the other twin feels abandoned. I do have to pick up the pace or I'm not going to finish it in time - again.

This is the eighth Bruno Johnson book in the series, and I've only read one of the previous ones (I think it was number six). Putnam, though, swears that this works as a standalone, and I'm taking him at his word. I'm only about 20% of the way in, but I'm finding that to be true, and I'm starting to really get into the plot. Bruno is a black former cop who is working a sting operation with the police, and it's such a big secret that he's walking a fine line with his friends still on the force, especially those who disliked him beforehand. Bruno Johnson is a brilliant character, and Putnam keeps adding layers to his make-up. This one is said to be the last of the prequels, so Bruno Johnson number 9 will probably be taking place in the present. That's a lot of prequels, isn't it? (This is a review copy.)

I put off starting this one a couple of days ago when The Vanishing Half so unexpectedly dropped into my lap for seven days. It's going to be the first one I go back to as soon as I get The Vanishing Half to the point where I'm not at risk to have it yanked back to the library before I can finish it. The Birdwatcher features a detective on Britain's Kentish coast who is also an avid birdwatcher. Apparently, he's got a problem with something that happened in Northern Ireland when he was a child. And now, that old problem has followed him to Kent.

I have Well-Behaved Indian Women and a non-fiction title from Philip Roth on the burner already as the next two up as I finish something from up above. But I just got notice from the library that two rather popular titles (Anxious People by Fredrik Backman and Craig Johnson's Next to Last Stand) have to be picked up by Tuesday or I lose my place in line - a recurring problem for me. That means I either need to start reading four books a week pretty soon, or some of these are going to be postponed. But that's a problem I can live with, I think.