Books I’ve Read

July 2011:

Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison

My sister in law recommended this series to me a couple of years ago.  I’ve had the sticky note I wrote the book title on floating around my kitchen for ages.  I finally got around to hunting it down at the library.  And then I saw the cover art… and I started to wonder if this book was going to be a little to smutty for my taste.   I’m glad I didn’t let the cover art scare me away.  This book was wonderful!  It’s a fantasy novel that reminds me of a cross between Twilight and Stephanie Plum.  If you didn’t understand that last sentence, it’s about a witch who is a bounty hunter and tracks down rogue vamps, weres, and warlocks.  It’s way cleaner than a Stephanie Plum novel, but just as entertaining. 

 

 

  Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

I was so intrigued by Outliers that I had to listen to another Gladwell book.  It did NOT disappoint.  I don’t know how to explain it well, so here’s a clip from the summary on the Good Reads website:  In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple: the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; New Coke; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing" - filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.

 

  The Spy by Clive Cussler

This is the 3rd book in the Isaac Bell series.  I really enjoyed it.  It was different from the 2nd book because it sends our Detectives into the world of international espionage.  We had everything from European spies to New York mobsters to a cameo appearance by Fred Astaire.  It also spent a chapter or two in my home-turf of Solano County which was kind of fun to read about.  Thankfully, Cussler does thorough research and even made sure the reader pronounced the names like Suisun and Vallejo correctly!  And our hero even subverted an attack on Mare Island.  I just checked on the next book in the series and it comes out in September… hopefully by then I will have cleared my ipod out and will be ready for the next one!