Quarterly Reading Update - 1st Quarter, 2010

What a crazy three months! Had a broken arm, packed the house (Or "supervised" my wife anyway) moved to Maine, lived in a slumlord's motel, moved to a new house, worked in four different stores and a district office as an admin, drove 3,000 miles to get our pets.... I can't wait for things to settle down!

I did get a pretty good amount of reading done though, likely a lot more than the next quarter, when I'll hopefully be spending some time working on my book and exploring Maine.

The list -

THE SECRET OF PLATFORM 13
by Eva Ibbotson

THE BURGLAR IN THE CLOSET
by Lawrence Block

IN THE MIDST OF DEATH
by Lawrence Block

HEAVEN'S PRISONERS
by James Lee Burke

THE MOURNER
by Richard Stark

UNDER THE LAKE
by Stuart Woods

NEW YORK DEAD
by Stuart Woods

THE TOMB
by F. Paul Wilson

HEART-SHAPED BOX
by Joe Hill

THE TEMPLAR LEGACY
by Steve Berry

BLOOD AND BONE
by William Lashner

THE THIEF WHO COULDN’T SLEEP
By Lawrence Block

CHERRY BOMB
By J.A. Konrath

THE OUTFIT
by Richard Stark

NIGHT FALL
by Nelson DeMille

A WALK IN THE WOODS
By Bill Bryson

BITTER TRUTH
By William Lashner

KILL NOW, PAY LATER
By Robert Terrall

THE CAMEL CLUB
By David Baldacci

TIME TO MURDER AND CREATE
By Lawrence Block

I’M A STRANGER HERE MYSELF
By Bill Bryson

THE NEON RAIN
By James Lee Burke

THE HUNTER
By Richard Stark

THE SOUR LEMON SCORE
By Richard Stark

GO-GO GIRLS OF THE APOCALYPSE
By Victor Gischler

THE NIGHTMARE PEOPLE
By Lawrence Watt-Evans

FATAL FLAW
by William Lashner

HOSTILE WITNESS
by William Lashner

 PAST DUE
by William Lashner

ALTAR OF EDEN
by James Rollins

POINT OF IMPACT
by Stephen Hunter

That's 31 books, 11,530 pages, or an average of 128 pages per day.

It was also the first quarter where my reading was done largely on the nook, my new ebook reader. I don't really have a scale for whether it increased my reading or not, but I do enjoy it quite a lot. 

As far as the actual books, a few favorites. I enjoyed Heart-Shaped Box quite a bit, and I discovered William Lashner, who is an excellent author. There were also new book by J.A. Konrath and Victor Gischler in there, both super awesome, and I re-read some old favorites, like Lawrence Watt-Evans' unique horror novel and Bryson's works.

What am I looking forward to in the next quarter? A ton of great new books, that's what! 

Mister Marshall Karp has a new book coming on June 8th called CUT, PASTE, KILL, about a scrapbooking serial killer. That's right, a scrapbooking serial killer. Everyone should pre-order that NOW. He also just released a softcover version of Flipping Out, which was my favorite book of last year. He also has an adorable dog.

If that wasn't enough, Victor Gischler has a new novel that should be in stores any day now, THE DEPUTY, a western flavored, hard-boiled crime novel.

And as the icing on a sweet cake of books, Donald Westlake, the author of so many awesome crime novels it makes my brain hurt, including my beloved Parker series (Writing as Richard Stark) has a posthumous novel just released by Hard Case Crime! Entitled MEMORY, it looks like a great read. You can order it HERE, and then join HCC's book club and have the rest of their books delivered to your door when they're released!