My Back Pages - August

Are you ready for this? I ripped through 12 books in August. Everything from detective novels, to fantasy fiction to a couple of autobiographies, including - believe it or not - Willie Nelson.

I've yet to come across a detective yarn I haven't liked and that includes the three-book bundle by Janet Ivanovich featuring a woman FBI agent and a high-prize con man who team up to catch the bad guys using elaborate deceptions.

The Two Minute Rule is the first Robert Crais novel I've read not featuring Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. It was enjoyable too.

The rest was quite an eclectic collection of hard-cover and e-book tales but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out two highlights in particular.

The first was the Neil Gaiman collection of essays, addresses and book introductions called The View From the Cheap Seats. This man clearly loves literature; reading it and writing it and it comes through clearly between the covers of this book.

The other great read this month was The Illegal by Lawrence Hill about a marathon runner who escapes, although not entirely, from persecution in his home county. Hill says it took him five years to write this book. Seems a little unfair I whipped through it in two days.

Here's the rest of what I read. If you're interested in a review click on the books icon at the top of my blog.

The Sentry - Robert Crais ****
The Heist - Janet Evanovich ****
The Chase - Janet Evanovish ****
The Job - Janet Evanovich ****
Our Kind of Traitor - John le Carre ****
The View From the Cheap Seats - Neil Gaiman *****
The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury *****
Shoe Dog - Phil Knight ****
The Illegal - Lawrence Hill *****
It's A Long Story: My Life - Willie Nelson ***
The Two Minute Rule - Robert Crais ****
Lud-In-The-Mist - Hope Mirrlees ***

This makes for 37 books I've read this year. Getting closer to my goal of 50 for 2016.

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My Back Pages - November

I know, I know, I know I should have reported in before now. But sometimes real life just gets in the way. I attempted 5 books in November. I say attempted because I slapped a big DNF (did not finish) on Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. I just can't seem to get into this guy. It's the second or third of his I've given up on, Not so the other four, starting with a biography of Stephen Stills called Change Partners. This followed by a hilarious biography of the guy responsible for National Lampoon called A Stupid and Futile Gesture - How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever. I ended the month reading yet another biography, this one of the man behind Rolling Stone magazine,. It was called Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine. A fascinating read. So last month I hit the magic number 50 I'd imagined for myself back in January. If I roll this month into my yearly total I'm at 54 books. And I still hav...

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30 Days of Photos III #4 Sour

Check out Ziva's Inferno for the rest of today's photos.

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