The Book Chase November 2021 Reading Plan

I've been so busy all day that I'm just now at 3:00 p.m. finally sitting down to consider a reading plan for November. In October I ended up reading fifteen books in total, and eight of those were on the nine-book list I began the month with. Eight of nine is an unusually high percentage for me. 

Here's the way I see November shaping up for the most part:

I've become a big Sherman Alexie fan in the last few months, so I was curious about this YA effort that did so well for him. I wondered what the message would be and what insights it would offer into a reservation coming-of-age. I was also wondering why in the world The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian keeps getting banned in a few places. Well, I'm about halfway through the book...and I'm still wondering why that is. The book is irreverent and funny when you least expect it, and even though I'm not much into YA, I'm enjoying this one so far.

This is the first book in Spencer Kope's four-book series featuring a very special FBI tracker called "Steps" Craig. I only found this one after Cathy over on Kittling Books posted about how much she enjoyed the latest addition to the series. Steps pretends to be just another talented man-tracker, but in reality he tracks criminals and lost victims by the distinctive "shine" (their aura) they shed wherever they go. In this first book, he's already feeling burned out, can't sleep at night, and is depressed, so it will be interesting to see how he makes it all the way to four books.

The Silent Sisters is Robert Dugoni's third book in his Charles Jenkins series, a series I happened (for a change) to start with the very first book. Jenkins is an American secret agent who specializes in on-the-ground work in Russia..quite a trick for a large black man to pull off. It's hard to imagine how Jenkins could possibly blend into a crowd whenever he was out on the streets of Russia, and so far he has survived only by the skin of his teeth. The "sisters" are Russian women who were prepared from birth by their parents to work for the Americans, and now the last two urgently need to be extracted.

In Travels with George, Nathanial Philbrick explores the question, "Does George Washington still matter?" My personal opinion is that it would be foolish to "cancel" George, so that's not why I'm reading this one. I'm more intrigued by the way that Philbrick takes a road trip along the same path that Washington took after his election to speak with ordinary citizens in all the former British colonies. Philbrick doesn't pull any punches when dealing with "Washington the Slave Owner," but he shows how the man almost singlehandedly kept the country from splitting apart shortly after its first national election.

I've been a Gerald Seymour fan for right at 30 years now, so I was glad to find this one. This is the story of a British secret service agent who is sent to Saudi Arabia on what he knows is an almost-certain suicide mission. The thing I like most about Seymour's books is that his plots all seem to be torn right out of today's newspaper. He's as good as any thriller writer out there, but his special talent is how real and believable he makes even the wildest plots seem. If you haven't read Gerald Seymour you are missing out on one of the best.

This is the one book on my October list that didn't get read last month. I've had it for a while, but I've been slow to read it because it's still so difficult to get Shaw's books in the US. But a few days ago, I ordered and received Grave's End, the book that follows this one, from Book Depository. Also, I read enough other suspenseful police procedurals in October that I didn't want to finally read Deadland with the risk that I would get its plot details confused with another similar book. This is the month.

It's been kind of hard for me to hide my newfound enthusiasm for Ann Cleeves's novels, so I guess it's no surprise that I plan to read the second book in her Vera Stanhope series this month. This time around, Vera is working a ten-year-old cold case in which a woman was convicted of murdering a fifteen-year-old girl. New evidence strongly indicates that the woman is innocent, and that the real murderer is still out there somewhere. Vera is perfectly willing to open up the can of worms that local villagers would rather keep sealed. 

I picked up The Elephant of Belfast just this morning at the library while I was there returning a few other books. I was determined not to bring any new books home this trip, but I remember one of the bloggers I read regularly (shamefully, I can't remember which one) giving this book a good review, so the title jumped right out of me. It's got a lot going for it: WWII historical fiction, a zoo, a bonding between a human and an animal...and best of all that animal is an elephant. Looking forward to this one a lot.

I'm going to leave it at these eight, realizing that I'll probably only read five or six of them along with five or six others that sneak into November. It's hard even to imagine what those sneakier books may turn out to be, but it always happens that way...so there's only one way to find out. It's on to November.