Reading

Let's back off a bit and turn to some still serious, but less intense matters. 

How about reading?  I don't watch much television, very very little.  That's how I justify so much time I spend on my computer, sending e-mails, reading opinions, and, yes, blogging.  But I also read a lot.

I'm on pace to read my usual five or six books a month.  I still read some nonfiction, but not as much as I used to read.  Most of my nonfiction now comes from review books.  But I'll still pick up a book, any book, about Lincoln.

I've read about 50 or more books about Lincoln, including two more this year.  Two of my favorites are actually novels about Lincoln's life.  One, Gore Vidal's Lincoln, goes roughly 1,000 pages, with footnotes!  Yes, footnotes in a novel.  Also having footnotes is William Safire's novel Freedom, which leads up to the Emancipation Proclamation.  Because they are novels, the authors can speculate about Lincoln's thoughts, motives, etc.  Thus, they offer insights and food for thought about Honest Abe.

For my money, the best single-volume biography of Lincoln is Stephen Oates' With Malice Toward None.  Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals is terrific, too.  It is a great demonstration of how Lincoln and his personality, his lack of ego, helped him to grow as a President and as a person.  He listened to others and, if their ideas were better than his, he took them.  Father Abraham by Richard Striner is hard to read without being moved by Lincoln's "struggle to end slavery."  There was a reason the former slaves called him "Father Abraham," the Biblical analogy intended.  And there are many other top-flight books.  Maybe I'll explore them later.

If you are interested in nonfiction about the Founders and the early US, pick up any and all of Joseph Ellis's books.  Especially good is His Excellency, the biography of Washington.

Fiction is what I read most now. Daniel Silva, I think, is terrific.  I've read all of his novels with Gabriel Allon as the protagonist, an unbelievable, yet believable Israeli agent.  Silva is a wordsmith of the highest caliber.  Nelson DeMille ranges from good to great.  The first two novels of his that I read were my favorites.  The Gold Coast and its sequel The Gate House were hard to put down. 

I also like spy/adventure novels.  Ben Coes (Dewey Andreas and Rob Tacoma) and Brad Thor (Scott Harvath) stand out, as did the late Vince Flynn (Mitch Rapp).  Lee Child and his Jack Reacher are tough to top.  Not only are the characters very likable, good guys; the writing from these authors is very good.  Their writing is noticeably better than most of the spy/adventure novelists.  There are others, too, who I like and will explore them in a future blog.

The Danish author, Jussi Adler-Olsen, has written some really good crime fiction.  His Department Q novels are well-written and full of suspenseful twists and turns.  I've read about half of the series and look forward to the rest.  Peter May, a Scottish television writer, has also attracted my attention with some good books.

Scott Turow has written some terrific legal thrillers.  His first, Presumed Innocent, might be my favorite.  But it's still tough to top others, such as Identical, Innocent, and Pleading Guilty.  While I'm stuck on Amherst alumni, Harlan Coben is always good reading, especially his Myron Bolitar series.  So is Dan Brown.  Although his noted DaVinci Code is wonderful, I still enjoyed a couple of others even more, especially Inferno.

Perhaps next month I'll post some other authors and their books which I have enjoyed.  I hope these have helped you pick out some good reading.  I think it beats he boob tube hands down.