Wednesday, May 29, 2013

I love a good book.  Stories that make you wish the book would never end create a hunger for more.  Books by the same author can quench the hunger with the hope that a familiar author will weave an enthralling tale.  Sometimes an even better choice is to read a series of novels by the same author.  I had never thought much about multi-part stories before a neighbor across the alley gave me a box of science fiction novels when I was 12 or 13.  Mervyn Peake had written the Ghormenghast trilogy and all three books were in the box.  I read the books which were a little too science-fictiony for me, but I loved the idea of the trilogy and have held on to those titles.  Lord of the Rings by Tolkein was a must-read, and while I got tired of the genealogies and the poetry, I enjoyed the books and they paved the way for my enjoyment of the movies, because they were pre-sold by the books.  The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever were really two trilogies about a modern-day leper who goes through long adventures in a Tolkein-inspired land with the protagonist filled with angst about his disease.  I enjoyed them, but by the time I had finished them, my taste for fantasy was more than satisfied.  I really enjoyed the Jack Ryan novels from Tom Clancy and would love to have read more, but I lost my devotion to Clancy when he invited other writers into his stable.  The endless series of Dirk Pitt novels by Clive Cussler has kept me interested for years, but the newer series he has done with other authors have been just as good.  W.E.B.B. Griffin has written several different series, most of which I have read and all of which are good, but he uses similar wording and descriptions and clever sayings which become all too familiar after the 8^th or 9^th book, so I have been less motivated to finish some of the more recent.  I did enjoy The Brotherhood of War and especially, The Corps.  One of the things that drives me a bit crazy when reading series is that I am reading them because I want to know what comes next.  When I get to the 4^th book in a 5 book series only to discover that the next book is a year away, the Harry Potter syndrome strikes me and I walk around frustrated.  That hook is what the author and the publisher want, of course, but unlike the Harry Potter fans that read the whole series again every time a new book came out, I feel like I am wasting my time re-reading because there are so many others that I want to read.  Recently, The Hunger Games and The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo were entertaining, and I have been trapped in detective mode for a while reading James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club and the King and Maxwell books by David Baldacci as well as the Dismas Hardy series by John Lescroart.  Other thrillers that I have recently read and really enjoyed are the Pendergast novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child and the Odd Thomas series by Dean Koontz.  My recollections make me realize that I couldn’t name all that I have read,  but to sneak in a couple more recommendations, the Scarpetta Novels by Patricia Cornwell and the Paul Madriani series by Steve Martini have kept me reading.  OK, OK…I’ll stop….there’s too many.  The last series that I have read and very much enjoyed, not for it’s action but for it’s emotion is The Walk by Richard Paul Evans.  I read a book a day for 4 days and I couldn’t get enough.  And at the end of the 4^th book, I found the line, “The fifth book in The Walk series will be published In April, 2014.”