No, that title's not a misprint. I'm not a bibliophile. Dictionary.com describes a bibliophile as: a person who loves or collects books, especially as examples of fine or unusual printing, binding, or the like. For someone who downloads the majority of their books to read on their iPad, I kind of miss out on the print and binding and so on.
No, "bibliofile" is something new for me. I intend to share with you, on a monthly basis, the books I've been reading. So it's my biblio file. Get it?
Last month, February, saw me zip through 7 books. Not a bad feat when at the same time I was writing a daily post to keep up with the writing challenge hosted by Nicky and Mike at We Work For Cheese. Here they are in the order in which I read them:
Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan
Raylan Givens 3-Book Collection - Elmore Leonard
The Moving Target - Ross MacDonald
Live By Night - Denis Lehane
True North - A Life in the Music Business - Bernie Finklestein
The Drowning Pool - Ross MacDonald
Grendal - John Gardner
My favourites of the month were the Elmore Leonard, Dennis Lehane and Ross MacDonald novels. Leonard and MacDonald write about Private Detectives, a genre I find myself revisiting and enjoying immensely. MacDonald's protagonist is Lew Archer and the two books I read of his were the first in this series published in 1949 and 1950 respectively.
The loser of the month was Grendel, a retelling of the epic Beowulf poem form the antagonist, or monster's, point of view. This was strange. Written in 1971, it is described as "dealing with finding meaning in the world, the power of literature and myth and the nature of good an evil" the book made me wonder what the author had been smoking when he wrote it. Either that or he wanted the reader to think he or she had been under the influence.
If you want more information about these books click on my Books page up top there. Clicking on the title under each book picture will take you to a review.
So that's what I was up to in February. I'll try to keep this up on a monthly basis but when golf season swings around (see what I did there?) I'm not making any promises.
How about you? Any of you read any of these books? Just what are you reading? Let me know. I'm always on the look out for recommendations.
Comments
I go through spurts, though. I'll get into a roll where I read a ton. Then I'll go a month or two where I don't read anything. The last book I read (Round Ireland with a Fridge -- well worth the read) was one I actually got at the *gasp* library! I learned quickly that I don't read "regular" books as fast as I do ones on the Kindle. I used to love regular books. Now I find it hard to worry about them when I can just grab the Kindle.
Leonard is a wonderful writer. But I don't know if I can forgive him for writing High Noon II.