If there is one thing that I have learned in all my years of blogging, it is this:
It’s hard to write a blog post about reading when you haven’t been reading.
That is part of the reason why you didn’t see a Sunday Salon post last Sunday from me. I also went to visit my mother for Mother’s Day. Now this past week, I finally read something, so I can write a Sunday Salon post.
The book I read, yesterday, was Pago Pago Tango by John Enright. It is the first in a series called the Jungle Beat Mysteries, featuring a police officer named Apelu Soifua, in American Samoa. I picked it up for free from Prime Reading, and while it was fairly good, I don’t think I’ll be rushing to buy the others in the series. What made it good was Enright’s knowledge of Samoan culture since he lived there for 26 years. The mystery wasn’t great, but I still would like to read more in the series…eventually.
To be fair, I have been reading, but this is the first book I have finished this month. I DNF-ed three others: Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama, Dove Season by Johnny Shaw, and The Echo Killing by Christi Daugherty. I checked out the first and third on ebooks from libraries and tried the second for free via Prime Reading.
With Six Four, I got bogged down with Yokoyama’s focus on the bureaucracy within Japanese police departments. With Dove Season, the story didn’t develop quick enough for my tastes, and with The Echo Killing, I couldn’t get past the premise of a small-town newspaper having extra staff to assign to one story. I worked for weekly newspapers for more than 15 years and I know that staffing is always being cut, even at larger dailies, with usually one person ending up doing several jobs so I just didn’t find that aspect of the story believable.
Altogether this year I have DNF-Ed five books, with the other two being Don Quixote and IQ by Joe Ide. On the flip side, I have finished 11 books, including The Lord of The Rings trilogy. I won’t lie; I am finding it hard to find what I want to read, plus I allow myself to get distracted by shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime. I am hoping June is a better month for reading for me.
How is your year in reading going? Reading anything good this year so far? From this past month?
Still an unfinished person... 
If I compare this year to other reading years, I am behind but I also feel as if this year I have already read some very good books. So, I am okay with quality over quantity. It is hard to run a book blog though when the reads don’t come fast enough.
King’s new book comes out tomorrow.I plan to have the copy in my hot little hands and Nadia is going to read it with me. I am hoping for classic King. We’ll see what I get.
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I have been hit-or-miss in my reading lately. One or two great books in a row followed by books I can barely finish, if at all. I even DNF’d four books in a row, something I have never previously done. So it seems like there are a lot more duds this year than in years past. That doesn’t stop me though because when I do find a book that I like, it has been outstanding.
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Mostly my rereads have been outstanding. The rest, meh.
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