Search Results for: good book hunting

The 2024 Winter Reading Challenge has a category Outside Your Comfort Zone, and I figured it was finally time to tackle this novel. I bought it sixteen years ago at an estate sale south of Blackburn Park in Old Trees when my oldest was but a toddler. It has languished on the to-read shelves for […]

Ah, gentle reader. I was going to lead off by saying “I’ve already read this book,” but you might remember that. I read it in 2006, which is slightly more recently than I read Blood Relatives. But this 2024 Winter Reading Challenge is proving not only to be a year of Bowlderized (or merely edited) […]

Well, gentle reader, when I bought this book in 2021, I said: I am thinking of giving this to my mother-in-law for Christmas, but we might already have done so. Which might lead me to justifying keeping it for myself. I know you have been waiting in suspense lo these almost three years, but I […]

Ah, gentle reader, of course I did not have to rely on All Quiet on the Western Front for the 2024 Winter Reading Challenge Historical Fiction Outside the U.S. category. After all, I have a bunch of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels (and a couple of one offs) and a stack of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey and […]

I picked up this book last year during the 2023 Winter Reading Challenge, but it did not slot into any of those categories. This year, though, it could slot into either of two categories: Author of a Different Race/Religion Than Your Own (which I already filled with Karate-dō Nyūmon) or Featuring Music. So I have […]

The 2024 Winter Reading Challenge has a category “Author of Different Race/Religion Than Your Own” because of course it does. To a librarian, the common library user around these parts only read Karen Kingsbury, James Patterson, and other white authors (probably Assemblies of God church members at that), so compelling patrons to read something else […]

I said when I bought this book in 2021 that I thought this was a children’s book. It’s an ex-library (Springfield-Greene County Library’s Brentwood branch) book with pouches for cards and no computer markings, so it was likely removed from circulation when I was a boy. But event though the dustjacket, in its protective mylar, […]

You are not mistaken, gentle reader; I have written a book report on this 87th Precinct novel before (in 2006). I picked this copy up at the Friends of the Library book sale in May 2022, and as I noted then, I will pick up mid-career McBains when they’re cheap just in case I don’t […]

I bought this book in May 2008, when I was young and life was good. Little did I know I would be reading it in the hellscape of 2024 almost sixteen years later. Did I say, “hellscape”? Damned autocorrect! I started typing “2024 Winter Reading Challenge.” Originally, I’d planned to use this book in the […]

I picked up this book in Wisconsin last year in 2022. One would have thought I would have picked it up before now, but it was lying atop books double-stacked on a shelf and pushed back. I am pretty sure it resurfaced when I pulled out the books on Brett Favre and Danica Patrick which […]

I got this book at ABC Books at the first (I think) of the writers’ group group signings I went to in November 2022. I don’t mind telling you that those are the expensive book signings, as I buy one or more books from all of the authors present. Plus often other books. So I […]

As you know, gentle reader, the year is winding down, and I tend to cut my annual reading list off the week after Christmas sometime. So I thought that this book, which I purchased in 2021, would make a fitting fin de siècle. However, I have previewed the 2024 Winter Reading Challenge, and it begins […]

I picked this book up right after Brett Favre: The Tribute. Actually I pulled them from the Nogglestead to-read stacks at the same time, which is appropriate: I bought them together in an online order from ABC Books during the big No-No of March 2020. Like the Favre book, this book comes out in what […]

Sports Illustrated must have had this book ready to go, as it was published in that brief period in which Brett Favre had retired as a Green Bay Packer but before he did his little thing and got traded to the New York Jets, for whom he would actually play (unlike his predecessor). Favre announced […]

As you know, gentle reader, I like to read a Christmas novel around Christmas time, and I generally pick them up at various places throughout the year, maybe one or two a year (I bought this one in Arkansas this summer). But when they go into the Nogglestead to-read stacks, well, they’re often lost for […]

It did not take me long (relatively) after reading Sheriff Without A Badge to pick up the fourth Harbison Mystery Western, which was the last of them that I owned at the time. In this installment, Sheriff Harbison deals with a variety of side quests as per the usual, but the main storyline is that […]

Oh, gentle reader. I confused this author with V.J. Schultz, whose book Truth or Dare and Other Tales I read in August. I thought it might be another book by the same author, but it is not. One could perhaps easily make the mistake as both write short stories with a little paranormal twist to […]

I got this book at ABC Books in June 2021 when it must have been fresh off of the presses. Heaven knows that it had numerous typos in it, but that did not really impair my enjoyment of it. This series–I’ve already read Terror Near Town and Tough Times in Grubville–has rather grown on me. […]