Reading Q2 2023

 I only read six books in the first quarter of 2023 so I had to read more in the second quarter to get back on track for my yearly goal of 36 books. Last year my goal was 30 and I read 38, so I upped the limit this year. Ten books so far in the current quarter has gotten me back on track.

I have decided to show all the books in a table (you know how much I love data and spreadsheets). Interestingly, of the ten books I did read, five of the books I gave a Grade of 3.0 (Great), and the other five I gave a grade of 2.5 (Good to Great). Also, five of the books were works of fiction and five were non-fiction. It looks like I really am an eclectic reader.

The book Notes on a Wet Cocktail Napkin by Rusty Fischer was just published in 2023. I bought the book at Rusty's Seafood and Oyster Bar in Port Canaveral. I even got the author Rusty to sign it for me. I moved to Brevard in 1979, and Bernard's Surf and Rusty's have been important to Cocoa Beach and the Port, but also the site of much history related to the Space Program and the growth of the area. It is a wonderful story of the area that I drink, eat, and entertain myself. Cousin Jim is currently reading my copy.

Although I own 26 books by Stephen King, I got this one from the library to read, and it was in Large Print. The Outsider was published in 2018. It was a great read. It truly was a King Horror novel. I heard it was made into a miniseries but I never saw it. I am thinking of reading all of King's books, there are over fifty.

Fifty books, well the library had another one, it was a collection of short stories (also in Large Print). The book Just After Sunset has 13 stories and was published in 2008. Some were great and some were just good, but there were a wide-range variety of King type stories.

I saw a story on 60 Minutes about this author named David Grann. It peeked my interest so I checked him out at the library and found this collection of 12 essays, yes it is Non-fiction, where nine of them were first published in New Yorker magazine where Grann is a regular journalist. The book The Devil and Sherlock Holmes was published in 2010. You know, sometimes non-fiction is more unbelievable than fiction. I like how he writes.

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon is a non-fiction book  published in 2009. The book recounts the activities of the British explorer Percy Fawcett who, in 1925, disappeared with his son in the Amazon rainforest while looking for the ancient "Lost City of Z". In the book, Grann recounts his own journey into the Amazon, by which he discovered new evidence about how Fawcett may have died. Grann is a great writer and this story was fun to read.

The Lost City of Z was the basis of a 2016 feature film of the same name which I had heard about but I have not seen. 

Since I had enjoyed the previous two books by Grann, I found another, more current book by him at the local library. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI is a 2017 nonfiction book. The book investigates a series of murders of wealthy Osage people that took place in Osage County, Oklahoma, in the early 1920s—after big oil deposits were discovered beneath their land.

Again, an easy read and very interesting story.

A film adaptation directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Brendan Fraser, and Jesse Plemons is set for release in October 2023. I definitely will go see that. 

Well, I saw that I had this novel on my shelf and I had never read it before. I had seen the 1996 movie adaptation, and I was on a King reading spree, why not?

Thinner is a horror novel by American author Stephen King, published in 1984  under King's pseudonym Richard Bachman. The story centers on lawyer Billy Halleck, who kills an old Romani woman while she is crossing the street due to careless driving, but escapes legal punishment due to his connections. However, the woman's 106-year-old father places a curse on Halleck, which causes him to lose weight uncontrollably. I read that King, who was overweight, created the novel's outline following an annual medical examination. It was a quick read but I found it not as good as King usually is.

This book was #12 on the original list I saved of the Greatest 100 Novels to be read. It ended up as #55 in my list. I found it a pleasure to read. Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman is a novel by Thomas Hardy. It initially appeared in a censored and serialised version, published by the British illustrated newspaper The Graphic in 1891, then in book form in three volumes in 1891, and as a single volume in 1892. I read the single volume that I got at the Melbourne Library. Not sure if I liked the ending but it definitely gave an interesting view of life in late 1800s England.

Found this at the library on the New Books shelf and decided to give it a try. The Matter of Everything by Suzie Sheehy is a nonfiction book published in 2023.  It was a really good read and gave me a great overview of 12 experiments in Physics that have formed a current view of matter in the Universe. Not for the non-scientific reader. Interestingly, the author Sheehy is from Melbourne too, but the one in Australia.

Finally, this book become #56 on my bucket list. Although not on the original 100, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, published in 1854, was recommended by my cousin Marcia so I added it to my list. I have found it on two other lists of top books written. It was a good read and  he makes some interesting philosophical points that still hold true over 150 years later. I did not read  Civil Disobedience because the book was due back at the library. Maybe another time.

My list has 175 books left to read, and there are ten I have marked as already read but I would like to read again. Again, I am always looking for new book suggestions. My cousin Keith just brought me three of his books; I have started the first one.