June Recap / July Jumpstart

 

Not even our massive hailstorms and wind bursts topping 90 miles per hour were able to dampen my mood for long this month. No power for ten hours on a day when the heat index hit about 106 degrees...bring it on. As long as I keep feeling so much better than I have in the last three years, it's all easy enough to handle. It's amazing what a huge difference a little bit more energy can make in a person's life. 

I ended up reading nine books in June and I'm well into four others as July begins:

• Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing - Matthew Perry
• Alone Time - Stephanie Rosenbloom
• My Sister's Grave - Robert Dugoni
• McIlhenny's Gold - Jeffrey Rothfelder
• A World of Curiosities - Louise Penny
• Such Kindness - Andre Dubus III
• The Life She Was Given - Ellen Marie Wiseman
• The Covenant of Water - Abraham Verghise
• The Hero of This Book - Elizabeth McCracken

June Pick-of-the-Month

Heading into July, these are the reads-in-progress:

This is the 2022 republication of S.A. Cosby's first published long-form effort. Cosby had written, and found success with, numerous short stories prior to the original publication of My Darkest Prayer. The novel is set in Virginia, and it is a strong dose of Southern Noir (one of my very favorite crime fiction genres). Nathan Waymaker's day job is working in his cousin's funeral home where his job, as Nathan puts it, is one of "handling the bodies." Loving this one.

Have you ever wondered how the creators of fictional crime fighters like Inspector Morse, Jack Reacher, Harry Bosch, John Rebus, Spenser, and sixteen of the other most loved characters in series crime fiction came up with them? If so, The Lineup may be just the book for you. Editor Otto Penzler gives twenty-one authors about 20 pages each and lets them explain exactly how they came up with the characters that feel so alive to readers today. I've read the first two pieces - and already have found a few surprises.

I'm over 100 pages into this one, and I'm still not sure where it's all leading - or for that matter, why I'm still reading it. My fear is that it is going to turn into some kind of lightweight romance novel at any moment because it's already come dangerously close to crossing that line at least a couple of times. But there's a bit of a mystery involving the origin of a personal diary that suddenly appears in our hero's life that I am really curious to see solved...so I keep reading.

Odyssey's End is not scheduled for publication until some time in October, but when it was offered to me early, I noticed that it's part of a long-running series I am unfamiliar with, and I decided to give it a shot. Turns out that this is Coyle's tenth Rick Cahill novel and that the writer has won some major genre awards in his day. So what have I been missing, I thought. I'm only a few chapters in on the book, but Mr. Cahill, I can tell, has had quite a long history of ticking off exactly the wrong kind of people. He's a bit beaten up by now, but still a formidable forced to be reckoned with, so this one promises to be a lot of fun - and I'm hoping it will become another series for me to follow and catch up on.

And there you have it. July is off to a roaring start for us tonight as we are going to a big Fourth of July BBQ and fireworks celebration at the home of some good friends. Happy Reading to all...