Rogue Lawyer - John Grisham - Not bad, but a somewhat disappointing ending
Crimson Shore - the latest Agent Pendergrast from Preston & Child - I liked this more that I have most of their recent efforts.

forgot Ashley Bell by Dean Koontz - This one was okay. Typical Koontz. If you like him, you'll like the book.

like my 16th book about the civil war

nonfiction

it was such a great conflagration

i never tire of stonewall and the rock

Got up to date on one series, started three trilogies, and threw in some baseball besides.

"Dance with Dragons" (George RR Martin) - Fifth and most recent of the Song of Fire and Ice series, basically gets you caught up to the end of Season 5 of the HBO series, though with some plotting differences. (In the books, for example, Jamie does not travel to Dorne to retrieve Myrcella; also, Ramsey Bolton is married to "Arya" in the books (though it is really Sansa's friend Jeyne Poole being passed off as Arya). Happy to be caught up.

"Annihilation" (Jeff VanderMeer) - Book 1 of the Southern Reach trilogy, in which an area of the Southern Coast has been.. "taken over" by some force. The public is told that it is an environmental catastrophe, and the Southern Reach is the government agency in charge of dealing with it. In fact, over time, the area has been remade into a pristine wilderness with no sign of man-made pollutants at all. Various expeditions have been sent into the area, all meeting with some degree of disaster. The first book focuses on the 12th expedition and is told from the point of view of the biologist who takes part. Her husband had been part of the 11th expedition, whose members suddenly returned home one day with little memory of their experience and less of their prior personality. Then they all developed cancer and died. Not surprisingly, the 12th expedition has some problems as well.

"Authority" - Book 2 of the Southern Reach trilogy. This one focuses on "Control', who arrives to take over Southern Reach and figure out what is going on. The previous director, it turns out, had been part of the 12th expedition. Control is primarily interested in figuring out what the director knew and in interviewing the biologist. He soon learns he's got bigger things to worry about.

Both books are pretty short. Not sure we will ever get any answers as to what caused the event but it's an interesting ride so far.

"Fever Dream" (Preston and Child) - Book 1 of the "Helen Trilogy" in the Pendergast series. In this opener, Pendergast suddenly comes to the realization that his wife's supposedly accidental death at the hand of a lion 12 years previous was actually murder, and he sets out to discover who was responsible. He learns that his wife kept a few secrets from him, and soon he is on the hunt for a legendary painting by Audobon. With some help from D'Agosta and Laura Hayward, he helps solve a decade old mystery.

"Mr. Mercedes" (Stephen King) - Book 1 of King's Bill Hodges trilogy. Hodges is a recently retired cop, one of whose last cases involved an unknown assailant who drove a stolen(?) Mercedes into a crowd of people at a job fair and killed a good number of them. When the killer starts contacting him he discovers a new reason to live and starts his own investigation. His timetable suddenly accelerates when it becomes clear that Mr. Mercedes plans to strike again. None of the usual supernatural/horror elements of King's work, a step up from most of his post-accident work.

"The Game" (Jon Pessah) - My dad lent me this one, otherwise I would not have read it. This is basically a history of Bud Selig's reign as commissioner of baseball. The primary focuses are on Selig and George Steinbrenner, with some attention paid to Don Fehr and the player's union as well. The author is clearly not a fan of Selig. He continually provides updates of Selig's salary, and while he places a lot of blame on Selig for the Steroid Era, he essentially excuses Fehr's role. The bits about the Yankees are kind of interesting, at least if you weren't following them closely during that era, but the labor/steroid stuff is all kind of familiar. Readable, but I'm not recommending it.

Book 2 of the Stephen King Hodges series is good, forg. I'll be starting book 3 in the next week or so.

I'm halfway through Helen Book 2 and then Bill Book 2 is next.

I should have probably mentioned that Bill's real name is Kermit William Hodges. No wonder it's so good!!!!

why he is embarrassed about his first name?

It's fiction.

Typee. a travelog with cannibals in the Marquesas
Omoo. life under the forecastle. four page chapters, so it moves right along. much disparagement of the oui-oui in Tahiti

recommended reading: http://youtu.be/0cBsnopTVmo

Mardi. a sailor story gets ambushed by a love story gets ambushed by three kings reflecting on goddaciousness

i think when a guy writes like this he is trying to get it over with by saying whatever comes into his head

padding, so to speak

trying to put it in ink in a hurry and get the big payday because he has a contract



my thinking the whole time i'm reading is Get to the bottom



my thinking the whole time i'm reading is when does the Mob

"Acceptance" (Vandermeer) : Book 3 of the Southern Reach Trilogy, in which we see some flashbacks to time before the event and pieces start to fall together bit by bit. There is no definitive answer, but a lot of plausible sounding speculation by some of the characters. Very short (as were the first two books in the trilogy) and a generally satisfying conclusion. Overall, the trilogy isn't for everyone but it's short enough that it doesn't hurt to give it a try.

"Cold Vengeance"/"Two Graves" (Preston and Child) : Books 2 and 3 of the "Helen Trilogy", which chronicles events that follow from Pendergast discovering that the death of his wife Helen 12 years ago was not accidental at all, but murder. It's hard to summarize the latter parts of the trilogy without revealing some spoilers, but I can say that Corrie Swanson from "Still Life with Crows" plays a part and we see developments in Constance Greene's life as well. Cold Vengeance begins with Pendergast on a hunting trip in Scotland with his brother-in-law, which doesn't really go as planned. Two Graves begins with the arrival of a new serial killer in New York City, whom D'Agosta is hard-pressed to identify (until Pendergast appears). The basic premise of the Helen story is a bit unbelievable, but it'll make a good movie someday.

"Finders Keepers" / "End of Watch" (King): Books 2 and 3 of the Bill Hodges trilogy. Finders Keepers is good, with the main focus on the son of one of Mr. Mercedes' original victims, an aspiring writer who inadvertently becomes involved, 30-odd years later, in the aftermath of the robbery and murder of a Salinger-type author. In End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes returns to wreak more havoc. Personally I found the premise of the third book quite ridiculous, but if you can put that aside it's a good read and a good conclusion to the trilogy.

"Shift" (Hugh Howley) : This is actually the second of a trilogy (of sorts). The first "book", called "Wool" was a series of give stories/chapters which tell about a society living in some kind of post-apocalyptic world, in a huge silo that is mostly buried underground. The air outside is still poisonous, but that doesn't stop people from trying to go outside and escaping their "prison". "Shift" is a set of three stories which are prequels and explain how the silo society came to be, along with some of the characters we met in Wool.

"Killing Kennedy" (Bill O'Reilly and some other dude who I assume did most of the writing): While in Dallas, I figured I'd read this one, which I bought for $1.99 or so a couple years ago. It primarily covers JFK's presidency (though it does tell the PT-109 story as well), and Oswald's activities during that same period. There are allusions to various conspiracy theories but none are directly addressed; the premise of the authors is that Oswald was a lone actor. There's apparently some false claims by O'Reilly as well (he tells a story of arriving to interview a professor who had befriended the Oswalds and had recently been invited to speak to a House committee; O'Reilly claims he heard the gunshot with which the subject took his own life... turns out that O'Reilly was not even in the state at the time). Hard to recommend although it at least has the benefit of not engaging in wild speculation.