You know when asked on Goodreads at the start of the year just how many books I intending reading this year, I modestly (modest - that's me) indicated 30. As July came to a close I hit the 69 book mark (a bit of a pun there) with an additional 10 volumes in the seventh month of the year.
I actually thought I'd fall off this month, what with the warm weather, the opportunity to golf and the fact that Mrs D started her holidays at mid-month and we spent a lot of time together. But no, I seemed to zip through these books like a house on fire.
Among my reading highlights last month was The Wrecking Crew by Kent Hartman who offers a look at rock and roll recording secrets in Los Angeles in the 60s and 70s. The "wrecking crew" refers to a group of accomplished session musicians that included folks like Glen Campbell and Leon Russell. These guys were called in to lay down music tracks for groups like the Beach Boys, the Association, Union Gap and so on while the group members themselves continued touring, laying down the vocal tracks when time permitted. Turns out many groups through these two decades, if they recorded in LA, went through this practice. A fascinating book.
On the fiction side, I undertook several novels that have just recently come out and pretty much found all of them interesting and enjoyable. Among them I really, really enjoyed The Ocean at the End of the Lane, The Kings and Queens of Roam (by the guy who wrote Big Fish) and The Quarry. The latter was written from the view of an 18 year-old who's father is dying of cancer and his former university friends gather at his place on a weekend. It's kind of like The Big Chill.
And of course, I couldn't let the month go by without a book by my newest favourite story teller, R.J. Ellory, or a couple of "hard-boiled" detective novels. On the latter I read the first book by Henning Menkell and of course, to keep up with my blogging, book-reading buddy, Brian G. Robinson, (you know, Edward G.'s son?) I read Lee Child's 5th Jack Reacher novel. I'm trying to keep ahead of Bryan on this series but boy he's a fast reader.
So here's what I read in July...
- The Wrecking Crew - Kent Hartman
- TransAtlantic - Colum McCann
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman
- Shell Shocked: My Life With the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, etc. - Howard Kaylan
- The Kings and Queens of Roam - Daniel Wallace
- The Other Typist - Suzanne Rindell
- Faceless Killers - Henning Mankell
- A Quiet Belief In Angels - R.J. Ellory
- The Quarry - Iain Banks
- Echo Burning - Lee Child
How about you? What have you been reading lately? I'm looking for recommendations.
Comments
For the record, I've finished the first six Jack Reacher novels so you better get going there, pal. :) BUT I've only read 55 books so far this year and you're beating me in the overall category so I can't pick on you too much...I still can pick on you, but not too much. :)
I'm currently reading 2009's "Sunnyside" by Glen David Gould; historical fiction about the turn of the 19th into the 20th century's teen years with Charlie Chaplin and the movies as the centerpiece. This guy can write. Picked it up because I loved his previous novel, "Carter Beats the Devil".