Monday, June 29, 2020

2020: The Reads, halfway post

Hey look!  The once monthly post!!!!

Here's a quick look at what I've been reading in 2020, which has been a fucking roller coaster of a year.  I'm management at a grocery store, and the Covid rush in March and April pretty much made my attention span worthless--the same thing generally happens around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the first three weeks of our crazy rush in March were like the day before Thanksgiving combined with a Snow Rush every day.  A handful of long days and a shortage of days off left me unable to sit and read much more than 8 or 10 pages at a time.

Things started to edge back toward normal in May.  I think this past month, I've finally begun to relax. 

The last book on the list, Shakespeare for Squirrels, by Christopher Moore, I'm almost done with, and should probably finish by tomorrow, so I'm going ahead and counting it for June.....

Favorites, so far?  It was and is an amazing book.  I was giving The Water Dancer a B or even a B-, but I've kept going back to a couple parts of it, and I think I like it better now with some distance.  Dog of the South was a lot of fun.

I'm really proud of my friend Janet for publishing Salt + Stilettos.  It's not my normal choice of genre, but I dug it.  She does good work, and I'm excited to see what she does in the future.....

January

It by Stephen King
Realityland: True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World   by: David Koenig
The Water Dancer    by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Another Man's Moccasins     by Craig Johnson
Cold Storage    by David Koepp

February

Bucky F*cking Dent   by David Duchovny
I Stooged to Conquer   by Moe Howard
Quincy Harker: Year One   by John Hartness
Dog of the South   by Charles Portis

March

Carved from Stone and Dream: Los Nefilim, Book 2     by T. Frohock
Heart of Darkness   by Joseph Conrad
The Eyes of the Dragon    by Stephen King
Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters     edited by Tim Marquitz and NX Sharps
Ready Player One    by Ernest Cline

April

The Splendid and the Vile     by Erik Larson
Under the Black Hat: my Life in the WWE and Beyond    by Jim Ross w/ Paul O'Brien
The Deep    by Alma Katsu

May

Buzzsaw: The Improbable Story of How the Washington Nationals won the World Series
      by Jesse Dougherty
Ronan Boyle and the Swamp of Certain Death    by Thomas Lennon
Misery    by Stephen King

June

The Game    by Jon Pessah
Salt + Stilettos   by Janet Walden-West
Time's Demon     by DB Jackson
The Stench of Honolulu      by Jack Handey
Dark Tower:  the Drawing of the Three    by Stephen King
Jaws     by Peter Benchley
Shakespeare for Squirrels      by Christopher Moore