Saturday, March 5, 2011

Reading Update: Trying to find time to read in a busy day...

That has been my issue for the past week or so. Simply finding time to read has been a problem.

With my job, the writing project I'm working on, and allergies that seem to be making me sleepier than ususal more often than ususal, it has just been difficult to find time to read when I want to read. And so, it has been a week and a day since I updated.

But, I'm reading two books, more fiction after the Dexter novel, and enjoying both of them. First of all, I'm nearly halfway through Reversal (Little, Brown and Company, 2010; 389 pages), by Michael Connelly. This is the latest in Connelly's series of police procedural/mystery novels featuring police detecctive Harry Bosch, with this novel also featuring Mickey Haller, a defense attorney who mostly works out of the back seat of his car. Only, this time, Haller is working for the L.A. D.A.'s office, prosecuting a susepcted child-killer whose 24-year-old conviction was overturned by the California Supreme Court and sent back for the case to be either retried or dismissed. The District Attorney's office wants to retry the case, but for various reasons, they bring Haller into the case and he, in turn, brings in his first ex-wife, an assistant district attorney exiled to Van Nuys (anyone who has much experience with Southern California knows that this is about like being exiled to Siberia by the old Soviet Union). He also brings Bosch, who is Haller's half-brother, in as lead investigator.

Reversal is very good so far, proving that a really good book can go a long way to make me find the time to read.

The other book I'm currently reading is The Devil's Triangle (Simon & Schuster UK, 2011; 391 pages) by Mark Robson. This one is a YA science fiction novel that I won in a drawing on a science fiction/fantasy website and forum where I'm a moderator. Robson has been a participant on the website ever since he was self-publishing his novels after writing the first one when he was stationed in the Falkland Islands when he was in the Royal Air Force and his commanding officer told him one day to go do something constructive, like write a book. Robson did, and after self publishing a couple of books, recommendations from booksellers led to him being picked up by Simon and Schuster UK.

The Devil's Triangle concerns a family from the UK, a father and twin teenagers. The man's wife and the children's mother disappared in the Bermuda Triangle 10 years earlier, and now the family returns to the Florida Keys every summer so the father can search for the children's mother, who he believes to still be alive...somewhere. But, the man's son and the friend the son brought along to share the vacation themselves disappear after taking the family boat out one day without permission to do some fishing.

That's as far as I've gotten in the book, and I like it so far. Robson's storytelling is keeping me turning the pages, and I'm interested to see where he takes his characters and the story. One note, however: as far as I know Robson's books are not available in the United States. This is a shame. I think he could easily find an audience here, based on what I've read so far.

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