The Book Chase September 2021 Reading Plan

Despite my recent difficulties in concentrating on reading as easily as I normally do, it's time for me to take a look at what I have on hand for September reading. Coming in to this new month, I suspect that my reading by the end of the month may bear little resemblance to this list, but here goes anyway:

Beyond Words covers a question I've often wondered about, a tricky question at that: Are animals more like us than we want to admit? Carl Safina, using decades of field observations and some relatively new discoveries about the brain, attempts to answer that question here. I'm about 75 pages into this 411-page book right now (the section on elephants), and I'm fascinated by what I've read so far. The book's subtitle is "What Animals Think and Feel." 

I want to read The Skeleton Road for two big reasons: I've been a Val McDermid fan for a long time, and I've enjoyed other mysteries/thrillers (particularly those of another favorite of mine, Gerald Seymour) using the 1990s Balkan Wars as a backdrop. I realize I'm taking a bit of a chance with this one because it is book 3 in McDermid's six-book Karen Pirie series, but I decided not to wait. I'm hoping it works as a standalone until I can investigate the rest of the series.

Blacktop Wasteland is the novel that made S.A. Cosby's reputation in early 2020. As some will remember, I've recently read and reviewed Cosby's followup to this one, and I really liked it. The plot does sound a little more conventional than that of Razorblade Tears. It concerns a former getaway driver who gets tempted into doing just one more job. He's the "best getaway driver east of the Mississippi," after all. This one got raves last year from everyone that counts in the publishing world.

I've been fascinated by The Hole in the Wall Gang just about forever, and I brought this Butch Cassidy biography home with me from a South Dakota bookstore I visited during my July road trip to the Northwest. There is a whole lot of speculation as to whether Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did or didn't die in a shootout with Bolivian soldiers, but this one focuses on the "character" of the two men as much as anything else. It amazes me that they were still trying to catch Butch well into the first decade of the twentieth century.

I borrowed The Old Man from Amazon Prime a while back but lost it on my Kindle until recently. You can borrow 10 Prime Books at a time with no deadline to return them, so this is not the first time I've pulled this stunt. Thomas Perry is an exceptional writer of spy thrillers, and this one is really good. I'm over halfway through it, and it's the one I'm coming closest to losing myself in right now. It's about an American agent who has been on the run from the US government for decades because someone badly needs a scapegoat.

I'm in the mood for another nostalgic visit to the home office of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, so I've got Not Quite Dead Enough ready to go. This is the tenth book in the Nero Wolfe series. At the same time, I've unearthed an old 1952 hardback by Ellery Queen (without a dust jacket) called The King Is Dead that I might try to work into September also. I have no idea what it's even about, but I can't remember the last time I read an Ellery Queen novel (maybe never), and I'm curious to see what the book is like. 

Another old friend I hope to visit in September is Wyoming's Walt Longmire. Other than the brand new one, this is the only Longmire novel in the seventeen- book series that I haven't read. This one takes place in the general area of Sturgis during that town's annual motorcycle rally. According to the book flap, Bear (maybe my favorite character in the whole series) won't stop repeating (per Arthur Conan Doyle), "There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." I've been saving this one; now's when I need it.

I do have four titles on hold at my library, and I'm hoping that at least one of those turns up in September. The one that frustrates me most is Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro because I had that one on hold for four months prior to leaving on my July trip...and you guessed it. It came in just a couple of days into my drive, and I had to release it to others on the hold list. I'm currently something like number 65 on the list of people wanting it. I also have Christy Lafteri's Songbirds on hold but I started out as number 4 on the list, and a couple of week later I'm still number 4. I also put Louise Penny's new Gamache novel, The Madness of Crowds, on hold, but I'm likely to buy that one well before it becomes available from the library.

The one I'm hoping shows up is The Reading List: A Novel by Sara Nisha Adams. I've made it to number 3 on the list now, so there's a good shot. It's described this way: "An unforgettable and heartwarming debut about how a chance encounter with a list of library books helps forge an unlikely friendship between two very different people in a London suburb." Well, if anyone's heart needs to be warmed right now, it's mine.

So there you have it. I'm cautiously optimistic about my September reading, but only time will tell.