Tag: Rex Stout

My Library Checkout – April 2017

librarycheckout2 Have you been using your library over the past month? What did you read? What didn’t you read? What are you waiting on? The linky goes up the last Monday of every month, and will stay open through the 15th, so click the button at left to go to Charleen’s post for this month to add your Library Checkout post to the Linky there.

Read

  1. Fer-de-lance, the first Nero Wolfe, by Rex Stout
  2. The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Abrams
  3. Knots and Crosses, the first Inspector Rebus, by Ian Rankin
  4. Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction by Eric Foner

The best of the quartet was The Book of Joy, which was highlighted in my new feature Book of the Month yesterday. I also have started two other new features: Album of the Month and Movie of the Month, with the first Movie of the Month being Lion, and the first Album of the Month still to be decided and written about.

Currently Out/On Hold

I only have one book out: The League of Frightened Men, the second Nero Wolfe, by Rex Stout, and only two on hold: Hide and Seek, the second Inspector Rebus, by Ian Rankin, and Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones. I am rereading the Nero Wolfe mysteries, most of which I have read previously, and always wanted to red the Inspector Rebus series, but for one reason or another, I never got around to them. Now I am.

What did you check out from the library this past month, put on hold? Click on the button above to go to Charleen’s post to add your own post, or comment there — and here, if you’d like.

Starting this Wednesday, May 3, and running every Wednesday in May, my wife Kim and I will be doing a series on our favorite Netflix and Amazon Prime TV shows Wednesday, alternating among mine, hers, and ours. Tune in this Wednesday.

A new course of action with my reading

After abandoning two more books,

  1. My Family and Other Animals, The Corfu Trilogy Book 1, by Gerald Durrell
  2. My Jesus Year: A Rabbi’s Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith by Benyamin Cohen,

arrow-1314517_960_720I have decided on a new course of action with my reading. From now on, I’m planning on reading one fiction, one nonfiction at a time, and putting others on wishlist in Overdrive.

To that end, I’ve let go of two others I’ve had out,

  1. Hell Before Breakfast: America’s First War Correspondents Making History and Headlines, from the Battlefields of the Civil War to the Far Reaches of the Ottoman Empire by Robert H. Patton
  2. The Moving Target, the first Lew Archer, by Ross Macdonald,

and I’ve removed the holds on eight other books. Some I might put on the wishlist. Others, I might not.

77604I’m left with focusing on one fiction, Fer-De-Lance, the first Nero Wolfe, by Rex Stout, and one nonfiction, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Abrams. I think this way I can focus on the actual reading and not the talking about, and writing about, theoretical reading.

March 2017 in review

Reading: Finished five books to bring total for 2017 to 17. Check this post to see what the five books were, and which was my favorite for the month.

Watching: The Returned. See short review here.

Listening: The big album this past month was Drake’s More Life, which while better than his last one, wasn’t what really caught my ears. Instead, my ears  were toward toward three female twenty-something musicians, 28-year-old Welsh singer and producer Kelly Lee Owens on her eponymous debut, 24-year-old Cameroon-born New Yorker Lætitia Tamko’s Vagabon project Infinite Worlds, and 22-year-old Oakland multi-instrumentalist Melina Duterte’s Jay Som project Everybody Works.

Here are all three albums via a playlist in Spotify:

 

So how was your March? Favorite read, TV show/movie watched, album listened to?

My Library Checkout – March 2017

librarycheckout2 Have you been using your library over the past month? What did you read? What didn’t you read? What are you waiting on? The linky goes up the last Monday of every month, and will stay open through the 15th, so click the button at left to go to Charleen’s post for this month to add your Library Checkout post to the Linky there.

Read:

  1. Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding The Church by Rachel Held Evans.
  2. Gone, Baby, Gone, the fourth Kenzie & Gennaro, by Dennis Lehane
  3. Prayers for Rain, the fifth Kenzie & Gennaro, by Dennis Lehane
  4. Moonlight Mile, the sixth Kenzie & Gennaro, by Dennis Lehane
  5. The Dain Curse, the second Continental Op, by Dashiell Hammett.

The best of the five was the book by Evans.

Returned Unread:

  • Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living by Shauna Niequist
  • Simply Tuesday: Small-Moment Living in a Fast-Moving World by Emily P. Freeman
  • Hurry Up and Meditate: Your Starter Kit for Inner Peace and Better Health by David Michie
  • Surprised by Hope Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N. T. Wright
  • Hardwiring Happiness:The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence
    by Rick Hanson
  • Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun, and Be Your Own Person
    by Shonda Rhimes
  • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
    by Mark Manson
  • A Killing in China Basin, DI Ben Raveneau Series, Book 1, by Kirk Russell
  • Death Along the Spirit Road, the first Manny To mystery, by C. M. Wendelboe.

I had a bunch of these picked out for Lenten reading, but those didn’t work, for one reason or another, mainly because I couldn’t relate to the author.

Checked Out:

  1. My Family and Other Animals, The Corfu Trilogy Book 1, by Gerald Durrell
  2. My Jesus Year: A Rabbi’s Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith by Benyamin Cohen
  3. Hell Before Breakfast: America’s First War Correspondents Making History and Headlines, from the Battlefields of the Civil War to the Far Reaches of the Ottoman Empire by Robert H. Patton
  4. The Moving Target, the first Lew Archer, by Ross Macdonald
  5. Fer-de-Lance, the first Nero Wolfe, by Rex Stout.

I’m reading the Durrell right now and enjoying it so far.

On Hold:

  • IQ by Joe Ide
  • Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama
  • Two Days Gone by Randall Silvis
  • The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck by Sarah Knight
  • Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
  • Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace by Anne Lamott
  • Crocodile on the Sandbank, the first Amelia Peabody, by Elizabeth Peters
  • The Deep Blue Good-by, the first Travis McGee, by John D. MacDonald.

I guess I really, really want to not give a f*ck, but still do, I think.

What did you check out from the library this past month, put on hold? Click on the button above to go to Charleen’s post to add your own post, or comment there — and here, if you’d like.