To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Lullaby Town is the third Elvis Cole book, and Crais takes the series in a new, but common direction. No longer does Elvis Cole have to figure out what’s going on, but rather he knows what’s going on and has to get his client out of it. When a famous Hollywood director hires Elvis Cole […]
I read the second Elvis Cole book, my second in 36 hours, so that bespeaks much of how enjoyable these particular novels are proving. This one finds Elvis Cole looking for a a stolen Japanese manuscript, protecting a wealthy businessman’s family, looking for a kidnapped girl who might be complicit in her disappearance, and battling […]
I got this book, and all of Robert Crais’ novels to date, for Christmas, so I started with this book as it’s the first Elvis Cole novel. The book features a private investigator in California who follows well the footsteps of Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer, better than that Moses Wine guy. Elvis has to […]
Because of who is he and what he meant to my youth, I bought this book like all other Robert B. Parker novels at full price, in hardcover, when it became available. Because it’s a Sunny Randall novel, though, I didn’t immediately read it right away. Heather actually read it first, which meant she could […]
I actually ordered Cold Service from Amazon, so I’m a week late in reading it. But I read it in a single night, as is my wont. It helps that the books are thick, but the print is large and the most of the book is dialogue. The plot basically recycles Small Vices and Pale […]
As is my wont, I am cutting off my “annual reading” in this, the week after Christmas, and am starting anew the count. I won’t pick up anything too long this week since the 2026 Winter Reading Challenge starts in January. But I am picking out books and stacking them up for that time period, […]
Well, gentle reader, it has come a time for an accounting. Or a counting. How many books did I read in 2023? Well, I held the accounting period open for a couple extra days, to the end of the year–normally, I call a lid on the counting sometime after Christmas, but I held out to […]
So the Springfield-Greene County Library 2023 Winter Reading Challenge has come to an end. In the end, I only read books in 14 of the 15 categories. I did not read a banned book, as I don’t have many banned books easily at hand, and I’ve read most of the ones I own (I think). […]
Well, gentle reader, as you might know, I like to post a recap of my annual reading to look at some of the trends I discover only at the end. This year, I apparently read about 126 books this year. A little more, a little less–my book year started on December 28, 2019 with the […]
This BRY (Book Reading Year, roughly Christmas to Christmas), I completed, what, 111 books? The Hungry Ocean Linda Greenlaw Death Valley Scotty: The Man and the Myth Hank Johnston Taekwondo Kyorugi: Olympic Style Sparring Kuk Hyun Chung, Kyung Myung Lee, Sang H. Kim Whatever Became Of? Second Series Richard Lamparski You Can Tell You’re A […]
This book is the bread and butter of 1970s and 1980s midlist genre fiction. It’s toward the sixth book of an eight book series where the seventh and eighth books come at a gap of seven and thirteen years when the first six were within a span of thirteen years. The series character, Albert Samson, […]
As you might remember, gentle reader, I tend to run my goal year not so much from January 1 to January 1 but from sometime the week after Christmas to sometime the week after Christmas. Something about the holidays makes me reflective and, increasingly, melancholy about the passage of the year. I didn’t have that […]
Sorry it has been quiet here of late; I spent a bit of a week on vacation in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where warm water flows freely from the earth but Internet connectivity does not. Hot Springs does not apparently have any used book stores, either, so when we wanted reading material, we went to Books-a-Million, […]
On the Facebook (that’s what we old timers call it, “the Facebook,” just like it was originally, although I’m far too old to have been on the Facebook when it was the Facebook), I follow Robert Crais, whose novels I’ve read (what, you don’t believe me?). He posted a link to a blog that posted […]
This book will probably be the last of the Sandford novels I read for a while. I’m tired of them. To recap, the progression kind of followed that of Robert B. Parker’s later work: I bought them new until I couldn’t take the thematic material stretching between the books, then I got them from the […]
In my forthcoming novel, I use the word fuck in a couple of different forms on the first page (and seventeen times throughout the novel according to my aunt and godmother–or maybe that was my first one). This book uses the word tits on the first page. That’s definitely more directly evocative. I think I’ve […]
Oh, spare me. Is there any damn thriller writer operating after 2000 who doesn’t feel compelled to take shots at Republicans and/or President Bush? Because Ed McBain did it, and Robert B. Parker does it, and with this book, Sandford gets his digs in. We’ve got the closeted gay rich former Senator and his circle […]
So I’ve mentioned that I’ve fallen back into the BOMC, buying a handful of the books so I could get some relatively recent titles for less than full price. Well, now. It required the commitment of buying one more book over the course of a year at regular club prices, and I ordered Robert Crais’s […]
To brag, here’s the complete list of books I read in the 2007 goal year: Home Improvement:52 Weekend Projects by Dan Ramsay Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen Dr. Kookie, You’re Right by Mike Royko Grifters & Swindlers Cynthia Manson (ed) Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows by Rod McKuen Kiss by Ed McBain Robert Frost by […]
I picked up this book because I liked its cover and its book jacket flap blurbs. Of course, now that I look more closely, the cover is kinda weird: I mean, there’s a tire with a shiny hubcap on the pavement, and there’s the hot chick (ca 1982) witness to a hit and run reflected […]