My wife and I are hard at work prepping the nursery for the arrival of Parker in early March?. To my shame, I haven't had time to scrabble together a post. In fact, I took an extra day off work - something I do maybe twice a year - just to finish the painting.
So, here's something I wrote about a month ago but considered too boring to post. Ain't that a great recommendation?
A long time ago I read Louis Lamour's posthumous autobiography, The Education of a Wandering Man. At the end of the book Lamour included a list of every book he read over the course of some of his 'yondering' days.
Although the lists were panned in reviews of the book, I resolved then and there to start taking stock of what books came across my plate. Beginning in 1994 and continuing to this day, I've done just that, jotting down the name and author of every book I've read.
Yeah, I know. It sounds lame to me too.
But I keep doing it. My shortest list was the year I met my wife, when I was too busy to care about heading off to the bookstore. My longest was sometime in the last three years, when I cleared eighty-some odd books.
I keep aiming for the century mark and falling short.
To rationalize my failure a bit, the list is very particular. Not only do I have to complete a book, I have to have read any and all forwards, footnotes, appendixes, and dedication pages. Maybe five books a year fail to make the list for failing to meet one or all of these criteria.
Lamer still, I know.
Anyhow, before I ramble myself into a straight-jacket, here's the list for 2004; and I warn ya, it's a weak one. I was mired in a few monster works of non-fiction for most of the summer that knocked me off pace. In addition I generally don't read other people's work when I'm stressing my own writing.
Floating Dragon by Peter Straub
Koko by Peter Straub
Mystery by Peter Straub
The Throat by Peter Straub
Julia by Peter Straub
Shadowland by Peter Straub
Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga by Stephen Davis
The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, The B.B, and Ritchie Valens by Larry Lehmer
Big Bad Wolf by James Patterson
Bad Business by Robert B Parker
Shall We Tell the President? By Jeffrey Archer
A Marginal Jew Vol. 1 by Joseph P. Maier
If you Copuld See Me Now by Peter Straub
The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub
The Birth of the Messiah: A commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke by Raymond E Brown
Double Play by Robert B Parker
The Enemy by Lee Child
Tripwire by Lee Child
The Possession of Joel Delaney by Ramona Stewart
Hark by Ed McBain
LazyBones by Mark Billingham
Plan of Attack by Dale Brown
Absent Friends by SJ Rozan
Sharpe's Escape by Bernard Cornwell
The Bone Parade by Mark Nykanen
The Madman's tale John Katzenbach
Sudden Prey by John Sandford
Hawke's Harbor by SE Hinton
An Unpardonable Crime by Andrew Taylor ? ?
Scaredy Cat by Mark Billingham
Cold Blood by Theresa Monsour
The Music of the Spheres by Elizabeth Redfern
The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great by Stephen Pressfied
The Godfather Returns by Mark Winegardner
Melancholy Baby by Robert B. Parker
You'll notice I tend to binge on a single authour and then move on.
My favorites? Well, I'll tell you the worst of the bunch - Plan of Attack by Dale Brown and the oldie by Jeffrey Archer. My favorites are harder to sort out, but I must say that I was really drawn to the non-fiction biblical studies this year.
I swear, I get dorkier by the minute.
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