Category: Books-Fiction

Whistling Past the Graveyard and Amazing Grace……

  By

Separated by 30 years but has that much changed…..

Yesterday, i finished Whistling Past the Graveyard, the 48th book that I have read this year! Three more to go to reach my goal of 51! I finished the 47th book Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol a few days prior and as I thought about the books, I began to see similarities between the books. The big dissimilarity is that Whistling Past the Graveyard is a novel and Amazing Grace is nonfiction. The other is that Whistling Past the Graveyard is set in 1963 Mississippi and the children whose lives Jonathan Kozol writes about live in New York City in some of the poorest neighborhoods in our nation. But they both deal with the lives of black Americans. One happens at the time that black Americans were gaining their civil rights and dealing with overcoming deep-seated prejudices and a part of our nation that was being dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century. While the other  views the lives of children in 1993 NYC who may now have those rights but are still fighting for equal treatment in a highly segregated  New York.

Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall is a coming of age story featuring a lovable nine-year old Starla Claudette, who in 1963 runs away from her strict grandmother’s home. She is hell-bent on getting to Nashville to reunite with her mother Lulu who left her and her daddy, when Starla was three to go to Nashville and become a star! Not long after she starts her trek she accepts a ride from a black women Eula. Eula is traveling with a white baby she took from the steps of a church. As the trip continues, both Starla and Eula’s lives are changed forever, as they struggle to survive and Starla learns about the prejudices of our nation first hands as she watches her new friends struggle to gain their civil rights.

Bestselling author Karen White writes this about the book….

“Like Harper Lee’ To Kill a Mockingbird and Katheriyn Stockett’s The Help …… A COMING-OF-AGE STORY AS WELL AS A LUMINOUS PORTRAIT OF COURAGE AND THE BONDS OF FRIENDSHIP….Susan Crandall evokes 1963 Mississippi and its struggles with a deft hand.”

It is a wonderful story with two well-developed characters who you can certainly root for! I really, really enjoyed it!

A couple of my thoughts concerning the connections between the two books. The one glaring connection is that even though we have made great strides in the last 50 plus years, we still have a long way to go and in some ways we haven’t gone very far at all. The Mott Havens and Hunts Point neighborhoods of New York City are all that different from the Bottomlands of Mississippi. While black folks live in those areas of towns in Mississippi that flood, the black communities in New York get waste incinerators!!

Throughout Whistling Past the Graveyard, Eula and the other black women in the book’s strength comes from their religious beliefs and those same beliefs keep many of the mothers and grandmothers in the black communities of New York City  strong!! And it is those strong women like Eula and  Miss Cyrena in Whistling Past the Graveyard and Mrs. Washington and others in Kozol’s book that keep their families together and moving forward.

As I read Jonathan Kozol’s Amazing Grace I  couldn’t stop thinking that the book should be required reading for every Congressman in the United States and then maybe then they would see that every cut they make to the budget or hurdle the place in front of the poor people in this country hurts the children most of all. And realize what they are doing to the future of our country!

So to wrap it up I highly recommend both Whistling Past the Graveyard and Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation. Both will make you think about the status of race relations in our country and that in the end ….. Black Lives Matter!!

 

Reading Challenges – November 2015 Update!

  By

Reading Challenges a November and 2015 Update!

As the end of November approaches, it’s time again to recap the books that I read this month and my reading plan for December.  Even though November has been a busy month, I have still managed to finish three books. First Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore, followed by Patrick Lee’s second book in the Sam Dryden series Signal and most recently Jonathan Kozol’s Amazing Grace:The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation. I finished Amazing Grace this evening, so I will try to write about it tomorrow.

Now to update where I stand on my various reading challenges. Overall I have read 47 books on a lofty goal of 51 (92%) this year. Needing only four more books to reach my overall goal it’s obvious that the only reading challenge that I will beat is the Cloak & Dagger reading challenge. But I will be over 60% om the other three reading challenges, including my TBR reading challenge.  I don’t think that’s too bad for the first year of establishing reading challenges! Next year I want to establish some different challenges to expand the variety of books that I read. One challenge may be a classic literature reading challenge to try to catch up on some of those classics I didn’t read in school!  And maybe a reading challenge that challenges me to read a book from the New York Times bestseller list…. I’ll keep thinking about it, any ideas?

Reading Challenge From TBR Pile Buy/Library Total Goal %complete
2015 Nonfiction Reading Challenge 2 5 7 11 64%
2015 Cloak & Dagger Reading Challenge 7 19 26 23 113%
2015 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2 2 3 5 60%
2015 Science Fiction/Fantasy Challenge 3 5 9 12 75%
No Reading Challenge 1 1 2 0 100%
Totals 15 47 51 92%
2015 TBR Pile Challenge 15 25 60%

So here are my proposed December reads. I have been reading Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and Whistling Past the Graveyard so I should be able to finish those books relatively quickly. In addition, I have started reading and put on hold both Good Omens and The Revenge of Geography so I should be able to finish those books, too. That would get me to 51 books! Finishing the fifth book, Grain Brain may be a reach but we’ll see!! Wish Me Luck,  because I know December will be every bit as busy if not busier than November!! Even if I don’t finish another book this year my total number of books read is the highest since 2009, the year before I started blogging and working part-time at Target!!

Proposed December Reads Challenge From
Dangerously Funny Nonfiction TBR Pile
Good Omens – Terry Practhett Neil Gaiman Fantasy TBR Pile
Whistling Past the Graveyard – Crandell Historical Fiction Library
Grain Brain- Daniel Perlmutter Nonfiction Library
The Revenge of Geography Nonfiction TBR Pile

 

Related articles

Signal – Patrick Lee’s Latest!

  By

Patrick Lee Author of Signal

Signal – Patrick Lee (Sam Dryden # 2) ****

Patrick Lee has a penchant for writing thrillers with a bit of science fiction weaved into the storyline. His last two books Runner and  his current release Signal, both feature Sam Dryden and ex-special forces operative battling forces against advanced technologies. My first encounters with the works of Patrick Lee was the Travis Chase trilogy which included The Breach, Ghost Country and Deep Sky. In that series The Breach sends artifacts and people back and forth through a time portal. In Signal, Dryden confronts a machine that receives signals from the future!

It’s been two years, Sam Dryden has been quietly getting his life back together, after his adventure that was described in the book Runner. He is quietly working on houses and flipping them, when he gets a call from an old friend. He needs to meet her in the Mojave Desert as quickly as possible. When he meets his former friend Claire Dunham, he is taken to a trailer in the desert where a child molester is holding four young girls captive. One captive has just called 911 and the molester has caught her. He is ready to set his trailer on fire when Dryden rushes in and kills the molester. How did Claire know to be there just in the nick of time She had heard about it from a machine in her possession that receives news report from the future!! In the future report the girls had died and the molester escaped!! Now the girls had been saved by these two unknown heroes!! FBI agent Marnie Calvert wants to know who these folks are, she discovers Sam’s identity tracks him. Soon all three are being chased by a third party, who wants this technology all to themselves, so much so that they have wiped out Claire’s place of work. Claire through her boss has the only working copy of the machine which her company created  The machine has now fallen into Sam’s hands. Can Sam, Claire and Marnie stop their enemies from eliminating them and Claire’s machine? Even more importantly can Sam stop the enemy from gaining sole control of the machine to use as they please!!!!

All of Patrick Lee’s books are filled with lots of action, as the highly skilled Sam Dryden, or Travis Chase, fight their battles. Most of the time they need to use both their physical and mental  skills. Here’s what some folks say about Patrick Lee’s Runner.

“An amazing, high-speed, high-octane novel that moves faster than most people read. There has to be a better word than “thriller” to describe Runner. How about thillingest” – Nelson DeMille

“Pure adrenaline rush!” Finally an action packed novel brimming with complete characters as well as genuine heart. Not to be missed!” – Lisa Gardner

Bottom Line – The above quotes can be used for either Runner or Signal. The story moves at a pace that is well non-stop and it has enough twists and turns to keep the pages turning! And the machine itself – is it possible?? Could we receive radio signals through neutrinos from the future? Cue the Twilight Zone music!! Who knows? Anyway, it’s just a flat-out good story so check it out!! Oh and while you’re at it check out the Travis Chase series, too!!!  Book 46 (on a goal of 51) of 2015

Links for the Further Exploration of Patrick Lee

Website
Facebook
Twitter
Amazon
Goodreads

Secondhand Souls – Christopher Moore Grim Reaper #2

  By ,

Christopher Moore may be very near the top of my list of authors that make me laugh out loud when I read their books!! His latest book Secondhand Souls certainly did that in many places! Secondhand Souls is the second book in the Grim Reaper series, that feature Charlie Asher and his daughter Sophie and a crazy cast of characters.

From Goodreads.com…..

In San Francisco, the souls of the dead are mysteriously disappearing—and you know that can’t be good—in New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore’s delightfully funny sequel to A Dirty Job.

Something really strange is happening in the City by the Bay. People are dying, but their souls are not being collected. Someone—or something—is stealing them and no one knows where they are going, or why, but it has something to do with that big orange bridge. Death Merchant Charlie Asher is just as flummoxed as everyone else. He’s trapped in the body of a fourteen-inch-tall “meat” waiting for his Buddhist nun girlfriend, Audrey, to find him a suitable new body to play host. Read More

I really haven’t been able to get into Moore;’s last few books, i.e. The Serpent of Venice and Sacre Bleu, so I was really happy when I saw this book.

I slipped very easily into Secondhand Souls and all the old friends and fiends from the first Grim Reaper book  A Dirty Job. Wow – I just looked back and saw that I read  A Dirty Job back in 2006. I knew it had been a while, but I didn’t think it has been almost ten years since I read the book! I guess that’s why I didn’t remember all the details of the book!!

The Bottom Line

Anyway, the bottom line is that Secondhand Souls is another winner from the warped mind of Christopher Moore. It must be crazy to live with the man! So Check it Out! And I guess I really do have to check out the two previously mentioned books along with Fool that is on my TBR shelves!!

Secondhand Souls was the 45th book that I have read in 2015. That was the number of books that I  had set as my goal in the 2015 Goodreads Challenge. Yeah Me!! I still have 6 more books to read to reach that lofty goal I set back in January of 51 books for 2015!

Links

Author’s Website
Facebook Fan Page
Goodreads
Amazon

 

Snow Falling on Cedars – David Guterson

  By

Snow Falling on Cedars – David Guterson – Pen/Faulkner Award Winner

Snow Falling on Cedars is kinda’ the type of books I read, but well not quite. While the basic storyline is the murder trial of Kabuo Miyamoto there’s a lot more that to it that sets this Pen/Faulkner Award winning novel apart from a typical book in the mystery genre. The novel provides not only a great trial mystery that keeps you guessing until the end of the book, but it provides a glimpse into the lives of Japanese-Americans during World War II and beyond.

The setting Snow Falling in Cedars is San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound in the state of Washington state. The island is the home of a large Japanese population Kabuo and his family arrived on the island in the early 1900s, working first in the mill and then in the island’s strawberry fields They worked hard and were prospering. In the early part of 1942, Kabuo’s father Zenhichi approached Carl Heine,Sr, owner of the farm where they worked to see if he could purchase seven acres of land. Heine agreed and Zenhichi started making payments. Then came December 7th and the lives of the Japanese-Americans on the island were turned upside down, Soon notice was a given that they immediately had to pack up their world. They were being sent to an interment camp called Manzanar.

Hatsue Imada’s life was altered also, for years she had been seeing the son of the publisher of the town’s paper Ishmael Chambers. They would meet each afternoon in the hollow of an old cedar tree. In December of 1942,  she had to make a choice between her Japanese heritage or her love, knowing that her mother could never accept Ishmael, she eventually chose her culture and married Kabuo. Now she was standing by his side at his murder trial, a trial that Ishmael has to cover for his newspaper!!

By 1954, Kabuo was a fisherman who ached to get back the land that his father wanted to buy from Carl Heine, Sr. But when Carl Heine, Jr.now also a fisherman is found dead Kabuo in the waters where Kabuo was fishing. Kabuo becomes a prime suspect for the murder. Snow Falling on Cedars is much more than a murder mystery, as it addresses beautifully the tragedy that befell the Japanese residents of San Piedro Island.

From the Los Angeles Times….

“Haunting… A whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at the same time a mystery, something altogether richer and deeper.”  

As I was reading Snow Falling on Cedars, I thought about my own family. My father’s family was from Germany. His mother Charlotte Meyer was born in Dresden in 1903 and his father’s father came from Germany in 1882. Both Charlotte and her father Herman Meyer became  US citizens in the early 1940s, for obvious reasons. What struck me was that while Japanese-Americans were rounded up and sent to interment camps nothing similar happened to German-Americans! Again the reason is simple German-Americans look like everyone else!! What could have happened of my mother who was English/Irish wasn’t allowed to date a German boy!  Looking Japanese was one of the things that Kabuo had to fight, during his trial. He had to fight not only the evidence but also the jury’s prejudices!

Bottom Line: Snow Falling on Cedars is one of those remarkable books that works on so many levels as a mystery, a love story and a history lesson all wrapped up into one! I loved all of the characters and each level of the book. A few days after finishing the book I found Ed King another of David Gutterson’s books at the Dollar Tree and it now sits on my TBR shelves!! It is certainly a 4 to 5 star okay 4.5 star book for me!!

Book 43 for 2015!

Reading Challenge Update: October 2015!

  By

Reading Challenge October Update

So now I’ve caught up on my running,(well, actually if you consider today’s run I’m not caught up with runs right now!), it’s time to catch up on my reading. Over the last couple of weeks I have finished two books! The first is the Pen/Faulkner winning Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson, and then I finished Gracie: A Love Story written by her partner and husband George Burns!

They were the 43rd and 44th books that I have finished this year!! That leaves only 7 more to reach what I thought was a lofty goal of 51 books for the year!!

Reading Challenge From TBR Pile Buy/Library Total Goal %complete
2015 Nonfiction Reading Challenge 1 5 6 11 55%
2015 Cloak & Dagger Reading Challenge 7 18 25 23 109%
2015 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2 2 4 5 80%
2015 Science Fiction/Fantasy Challenge 3 4 7 12 58%
No Reading Challenge 1 1 2 0 100%
Totals 13 44 51 86%
2015 TBR Pile Challenge 13 25 52%

Proposed November Reading Challenge Books

So I need one more historical fiction read to meet that reading challenge and five each to meet the non-fiction and Science Fiction challenges. Hum that makes eleven books and I don’t think that is happening! The one historical fiction is doable and then maybe three each from the other challenges that would get me to my goal of 51! Additionally, if I were to find all of those books on my to be read (TBR) shelves, well that would get me to 80% of my TBR Challenge goal which would be pretty good!! So excuse me while I look over my shelves for three nonfiction, three science fiction books and one historical fiction book on my TBR shelves!!

Ok so here’s a list of potential November reads.

Currently Reading Challenge From
Dangerously Funny – David Bianculli Nonfiction TBR Pile
A Conspiracy of Paper– David Liss Historical Fiction TBR Pile
Stranger – Simon Clark Science Fiction TBR Pile
Secondhand Souls – Christopher Moore Fantasy Library

Reading the story of Gracie Allen reminded me about how much I liked reading about folks like The Marx Brothers, George S Kaufman and other comedic actors and writers. So while I was reading the book I was thinking about Dangerously Funny the story about The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, one of my favorites!! Seems like a good time to read their story!

Likewise, reading the Richard Laymon book inspired me to pick up Simon Clark’s Stranger which I started yesterday, so far it;s pretty good!

Secondhand Souls was among the books I was supposed to read in October and it’s not due back at the library until the middle of next month so I still have time to read it!! A Conspiracy of Paper was a proposed read a few months ago, I’ll try once more to get into it!!

So there are my proposed November reads. I’ll try to write the reviews for Gracie and Snow Falling on Cedars tomorrow!! I will also try to write about today’s run!

George Burn’s in Gracie: A Love Story describes how one of his favorite movies to make was Damsel in Distress. In the movie, George and Gracie had to tap dance with Fred Astaire! Getting ready for the movie George remembered an old vaudeville act that danced with whisk brooms. George brought one of the dancers to Hollywood to teach he and Gracie the dance. They taught the dance to Astaire and he put it in the movie!! Here they are performing the dance!! And with that I’ll  say – “Good Night, Ed!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMYPfX9Rj_w

No Sanctuary – Richard Laymon

  By

Book 42 of 2015 – No Sanctuary – Richard Laymon a little less than expected….

As I was sitting around over the weekend not feeling well, I spent my time in typical fashion reading!! Did I read any of the three books that I picked up at the library on Saturday? Of course not! I read some in Gracie: A Love Story and then started No Sanctuary by Richard Laymon. I am not sure where I got the book but it has been on my TBR shelves for a long while now. Anyway, on Saturday when I was moving things around I saw the back of the book and read the following

“If you’ve missed Laymon, you’ve missed a treat” – Stephen King and

“One of horror’s rarest talents” – Publishers Weekly….

So by never reading a Richard Laymon novels I’ve missed the treat of reading one of horror’s rarest talents, eh? Ok I’ll bite and I did and this afternoon No Sanctuary became the 42nd book that I’ve read in 2015! Here’s a little background on Richard Laymon for me and you. From Wikipedia Richard Laymon….

was an American author of suspense and horror fiction, particularly within the splatterpunk subgenre. Richard Laymon died in 2001 of a massive heart attack Read More

Since I don’t read a lot of horror books I had to look up what splatterpunk was….

Splatterpunk was a movement within horror fiction in the 1980s, distinguished by its graphic, often gory, depiction of violence and “hyperintensive horror with no limits.”[1][2][3] The term was coined in 1986 by David J. Schow at the Twelfth World Fantasy Convention in Providence, Rhode Island. Splatterpunk is regarded as a revolt against the “traditional, meekly suggestive horror story”.[4] Splatterpunk has been defined as a “literary genre characterised by graphically described scenes of an extremely gory nature.” Read More

Well I certainly think that No Sanctuary fits in the splatterpunk subgenre, especially the end!

But back to  No Sanctuary. There are two storylines running through the book. The first storyline follows Rick and Bert (Bertha) on a camping trip in the remote mountains of California. The other involves Gilliam O’Neill whose addiction is breaking into houses while the owners are away and making herself at home.  What could go wrong in the lives of the protagonists! Plenty!

First, Rick and Bert meet up with three young men on the trail. Rick is convinced that the three are out for one thing and that is to rape and kill his woman and his gory visions confirm his suspicions and create a deadly paranoia! While Gillian discovers that she is in the home of a serial killer!! As each storyline develops it ‘s obvious that at some point the two will collide and there will probably be some blood spilled!!

Bottom line: For me No Sanctuary: was a likable book but not a great book. While both storylines finally meshed,  I thought that there would be some kind of connection between the two other than intersecting in the same woods! Also  thought that there were a couple of portions of the book that I thought could have been eliminated. After reading reviews of the book at Amazon, I see that No Sanctuary may not be Laymon’s best work. So I may read one of his more highly recommended novels. Hell he wrote over thirty of them….let’e see ….. again from Wikipedia….

Flesh was named Best Horror Novel of 1988 by Science Fiction Chronicle, and both Flesh and Funland were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, as was his non-fiction work A Writer’s Tale. He won this award posthumously in 2001 for The Traveling Vampire Show.

Anyone have any thoughts or recommendations?

Reading Challenge Update for Mid-October!

  By

2015 Reading Challenge 41 books down 10 more to go!!

So as I have said many times October has been a busy month especially the last two weeks. But in those two weeks I have finished two books first Broken Promise from Linwood Barclay and most recently Silent Creed from Alex Kava. So where does that put me on my various reading challenges. Well, the addition of these two books have brought the total number of books I’ve read to 41 which is 80% of my goal total of 51 books. Since the goal of 51 books was very lofty, I’m really happy with where I am right now!! So right now I can achieve my goal with 2 more books this month and 4 in each of the following months. But with so much competing with my time over the next few month i.e Eagles football, Sixers basketball and Flyers hockey plus the World Series I don’t know if I’ll reach my goal!! Anyway, here’s a tabulation of my reads!!

Reading Challenge From TBR Pile Buy/Library Total Goal %complete
2015 Nonfiction Reading Challenge 0 5 5 11 45%
2015 Cloak & Dagger Reading Challenge 7 17 25 23 109%
2015 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 1 2 3 5 60%
2015 Science Fiction/Fantasy Challenge 3 4 7 12 58%
No Reading Challenge 0 1 1 0 100%
Totals 11 41 51 80%

This afternoon I picked out several books to read, then I made the mistake of going to the library and now I have three different books to put into the mix!! So throughout the year I have tried to list five book per month that I planned to read. I know that right now I’m in the middle of the month, but here’ the current stack of five!!

I have been reading Jonathan Kozol‘s Amazing Grace and I will continue to read that book. The other night  I picked up George Burn’s Gracie A Love Story and started reading and I love the books, it’s full of typical George Burns humor and a wonderful biography of their life together. Right now I’m about a third of the way through the book. They are just breaking into radio!! Both of these books count towards my nonfiction reading challenge.

The three books that I picked up at the library are ……

Signal - Patrick Lee Reading Challenge BookSignal – Patrick Lee’s second installment in his Sam Dryden series. I love Patrick Lee’s Breach trilogy and the first Dryden novel Runner so I can’t wait to get lost in this adventure!!

 

Spider Woman's DaughterThrough the 80s and 90s Tony Hillerman‘s books were another staple of my reading. I loved Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn so I was intrigued when I saw that his daughter Anne Hillerman had released a new Jim Chee – Joe Leaphorn mystery Spider Woman’s Daughter  This afternoon I spotted Rock with Wings book 2 from Anne and picked it up. Tonight I thought that I should really read Spider Woman’s Daughter first so I requested that book from the library. Since there were no other holds it shouldn’t be long before I get the book. Overall that shouldn’t be a problem since I have lots of other books to read!!

Secondhand SoulsThe last book of the fab five is Secondhand Souls the new release from Christopher Moore. I’ve had a hard time getting into the last few books that Moore has written like Fool and The Serpent of Venice, but I loved his earlier book. Secondhand Souls is a sequel to one of them A Dirty Job!  so Secondhand Souls should be a good one!!

 

Silent Creed – Alex Kava

  By ,

Silent Creed – Ryder Creed #2 – Alex Kava

In the middle of all the chaos last week, I still managed to finish my second book of October — Silent Creed by Alex Kava. It helped that this one was a real page-turner!

This is the second novel featuring K9 handler Ryder Creed, and once again he teams up with FBI profiler Maggie O’Dell. Their first pairing was in Breaking Creed, and it’s been a thrill watching this partnership evolve — Maggie has been one of my favorite characters through eleven thrillers.

The Story

Ryder and Maggie are both called to a government research facility in Haywood County, North Carolina, after torrential rains trigger a massive landslide. Creed is tasked with searching for survivors, but when one of the recovered bodies turns out to be a scientist who was shot, Maggie is brought in to investigate.

Under perilous conditions — from unstable terrain to people desperate to keep their crimes hidden — Maggie and Ryder soon find themselves fighting for their lives.

Real-Life Inspiration

Alex Kava is a self-described news junkie, and she weaves real-world events into her novels. In Silent Creed, she draws from actual search-and-rescue deployments by the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, whose teams have responded to disasters around the world — from the 2015 Nepal earthquake to the 2011 Joplin, Missouri tornado.

Kava also incorporates fascinating historical facts, including U.S. government testing on unsuspecting soldiers, citizens, and even schoolchildren during the 1950s and ’60s. These details add depth and intrigue to the story.

And yes, I still have a soft spot for Grace, Ryder’s little Jack Russell Terrier — she’s as tenacious as ever.

The Bottom Line

Silent Creed delivers an engaging storyline, high stakes, and great characters. The chemistry between Maggie and Ryder continues to intensify, adding another layer to the action and suspense.

If you haven’t yet met Ryder and Maggie, you can start here, but I recommend beginning with Breaking Creed to get the full impact of their partnership. And if you just want to stick with Maggie, her solo series is well worth exploring — she’s faced some of the most dangerous criminals (and situations) in the genre.

Book 41 of 2015

A Post-Birthday Trip to the Library Book Sale!!

  By ,

Five Treasures Found at the Library Book Sale

So October is really zipping by, seems like it was just my birthday (Oct 1), I guess that’s what happens when you’re busy. Anyway, the Cinnaminson Branch of the Burlington County Library had their fall book sale Oct 1-3rd and well since I  needed to take some books back and pickup a book that I had put on hold, I begrudgingly visited the used book sale. Yeah right!

I have discovered that the best way to control my spending at these book sales is to go with a set amount of money to spend! For this sale I had ten dollars to spend. Here’s how I spent my money…..

Think of a Number Book Sale BookFirst up was John Verdon’s Think of a Numb3r.(Dave Gurney #1). From Goodreads….

An extraordinary fiction debut, Think of a Number is an exquisitely plotted novel of suspense that grows relentlessly darker and more frightening as its pace accelerates, forcing its deeply troubled characters to moments of startling self-revelation Read More

I have seen this book  before, but for some reason I have never picked it up. Now is the time!!

 

Next came Last to Die from Tess Gerritsen. I have loved Tess Gerritsen’s Jane Rizzoli since The Surgeon for some reason I have put off reading Gerritsen’s latest book and every time I finish one of them I shake my head and question – why??

The Death Relic Chris KuzneskiBooks from two other authors whose books I have enjoyed and yet don’t seem to read often enough caught my eye. First, The Death Relic from Chris Kuzneski and then Gregg Hurwitz‘s  You’re Next.

When Maria Pelati’s research team disappears in Mexico, Jonathon Payne and David Jones embark on a perilous mission to find the missing archaeologists. The duo quickly finds a link between the group’s work and its recent disappearance. Following the clues left behind, their pair try to solve one of the darkest mysteries of the new world. More

Kuzneski’s books always blend history and action. The Death Relic is book #7 of the Jonathon Payne and David Jones series. I have read books #2 and # 4) in the series and enjoyed them so I know I’ll enjoy The Death Relic!!

Gregg Hurwitz’s You’re Next is a stand alone thriller. I hope that this one is as good as the last Hurwitz novel I read Tell No Lies which was really, really good!

Every Day David LevithanThe final book that I bought was every day by David Levithan

Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.
There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere

It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon Read More

every day is not a book that I would typically read but it sounds really interesting and I’ve been going to get the book from the library for a long time!!

So the final tally at the book sale was two hard backs the first two books and three trade size paperbacks for a whopping $9.00!! Now I just have to find the time to read them all!!