Summer time right? Summer reading – sweaty outside reading, cold beverages, sticky kids putting their hands on your book. They spray the water hose on you. The dogs are panting in the shade. They shed everywhere. Then you get the kids cleaned up and in bed and maybe you get to read for a little while. Bugs on the porch buzzing around the light. Maybe you have a ceiling fan. Try not to kill the bugs with your book. Good times right? Maybe another beverage, or a third. Here’s what I’m reading:
I’ve written about this before. It was the big book at BEA in New York. And Maggie wrote a full blog on it a few days ago. This is a great big summer book. The kind where there is no hesitation about the size. You want it to be big so it never ends. Maybe it lasts all summer. I mean this in a really complimentary way – it’s like when you were in high school and you read a big Stephen King novel or a maybe a couple in a row. I remember one summer I read Misery at the beach. Couldn’t put it down. Anyway, this is like that – a great big book that you read and read. And yes it does have vampires. It’s out today.
The Reversal by Michael Connelly
This is kind of cheating but you know booksellers get to read books before they come out. I’m obsessed with Michael Connelly’s fiction. Two summers ago we scheduled him for a books signing for The Brass Verdict. Between June and November of 2008 I read every one of Michael’s books. Some writers have a niche – and some get lucky – maybe Connelly has both, but if he wasn’t a really good writer – a hard working writer, then I don’t think I could have read every book back to back. It’s like one huge novel to me. This book is like The Brass Verdict as it features two of Connelly’s regular characters. Harry Bosch and his half-brother Mickey Haller. I finished it in just a few days – now Wendy is reading it and I’ve promised it to Mark as soon as she’s done. It’s nice to have a few fellow addicts.
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
Raise your hand if you’ve read Tom Franklin. If your hand isn’t up then you don’t really like Southern Lit. Maybe you say you do – lip service. This is what’s going on in Modern Southern Lit. Poachers is a classic. I liked Hell at the Breach. I loved Smonk so much that I was reading passages out loud to Wendy in the hospital the day that Harper was born. (If you’ve read it then you know what kind of sick dude I am.) Anyway, this may be his best book yet. I’m dead in the middle and I can’t wait to get home and read. It’s like a suspense novel. This is a Mississippi book – duh Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. Please come see Tom in September – if you have a soul that is.
The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie
This book will be getting a lot of attention here and elsewhere this fall. I got my hands on it today and will be starting it tonight. It’s the new book about Dickie Scruggs. Last fall we had Kings of Tort by Alan Lange and Tom Dawson. These books are going to be like companion pieces. Two different books with different perspectives and goals, but on the same subject. You have to read to find out what that means.
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