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Showing posts from September, 2017

My Back Pages - September

The five books I read in September raised my yearly count to 44 books - 6 away from my anticipated 50 books by the end of the year. I'm sure I'll make it. I started the month out with a new thriller from Michael Connelly called The Late show. It's about a women cop who works the night shift. This is a new character for Connelly who is better known for his Harry Bosch series. Nevertheless this was an enthralling page-turner. I then picked up Mississippi Blood by Greg Iles. This is the third and final book in the Natchez Burning trilogy. Somewhere along the line I missed one of these but was nevertheless able to follow the overall gripping story about race relations in the south. I then moved on to the Rules of Civility by Amor Towles a coming-of-age tale about a mid-twenties woman in New York in the late 1930s. Having enjoyed his second book A Gentleman in Moscow I felt I had to go back to his first novel. I wasn't disappointed. For a change of p

I'll Be Here

Susie had special powers. Or at least she worked at developing them. If she concentrated really hard she could see into the future. This talent was a little off-setting to her friends. But she was determined to perfect this skill. To that end she attended psychic school. It was kind of like high school but without the ladder. Susie never missed a class. Well that's because looking ahead she knew when they occurred on her schedule. Miss Clair Voyent was a good teacher. Always held students' attention. So much so you'd want to run out and buy a lottery ticket. And each class began the same with Miss Clair Voyent calling attention. Sometimes the students would jokingly respond to Miss Voyent's roll call with the response of 'prescient". Get it? Prescient in Psychic class? Yeah. Our prompt for Two Word Tuesday was prescient/psychic this week. Looking ahead to next week I wish I could determine the prompt, but I can't. This week was enough.

My Back Pages - August

I'm slipping. Only four books this month. I've adopted a slower pace in August, at times going several days without reading. Nevertheless those four books bring my year-to-date total to 39 books. I'm sure I can read 11 books over the next four months to reach my projected yearly total of 50. So, August. I read two David Baldacci thrillers. Absolute Power about an immoral President. And Total Control about the ability of computers as well as the U.S's finances. Both, early works by Baldacci, were excellent, I read Burning Bright by Nick Petrie. At the beginning main character Peter Ash reads like a poor man's Jack Reacher. A loner, former military type who wanders here and there taking on difficult cases. But it was a great page-turner. Finally, on the recommendation of Peter at the cottage I read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. It's about a Russian aristocrat sentenced to life, not in prison, but to the attic of a fancy hotel. The concept here as