Been a while, eh?

 A lot of life has been lived the past few months; fortunately, a few books were read too. Let me hit ya with the highlights.

-- Stephen Hunter's Front Sight -- You should know Hunter from the Bob Lee Swagger series and movie, Shooter, starring Mark Wahlberg. His books are excellent.

Front Sight is a series of semi-connected novellas that feature three generations of Swaggers solving murders: Grandfather, Charles; father, Earl; and son, Bob Lee. They are bloody, not for the feint of heart and titled: City of Meat, Johnny Tuesday; and Five Dolls for the Gut Hook. 

I really like novellas, 150-200 pages each, because they fit my attention span and not just because most of what I've published are novellas. They get to the point, not a lot of fluff, and tell an interesting story relatively quickly.

Amazonians give it a 4.6 of 5 rating. The Haugenometer lands at an 8+ of 10.

-- I also ran across a new author (to me), Scottish writer Ian Rankin. I can't recall how I stumbled across him and his series of 25 novels that feature Inspector Rebus, but it coincidentally happened after I visited Edinburgh, Scotland, in March. That's where Rankin lives. 

I started the series from the beginning, have read the first three and have the fourth on my TBR pile. I really enjoy them but we'll see how it goes if I make it through all 25.

The books I read were: Knots and Crosses, Hide and Seek, and Tooth and Nail. I ranked them all in the 7-8 range, otherwise I wouldn't be continuing.

-- Oddly, and unfortunately, one clunker I read came from my fave author, Dean Koontz. Going Home in the Dark. I struggled to finish it but did. Probably would've quit but just couldn't do it to ol' Dean. After reading 80 or so of his novels, I felt I owed it to him.

The themes were similar for him - the supernatural, good vs. evil - but the new thing that threw me off was throughout the book he'd talk to the reader. Trying to be funny but seldom was. Koontz has a monthly email newsletter that is very clever and funny and it seemed like he tried to incorporate that into this book. It didn't work for me.

And apparently not for many others either as it garnered only a 3.8 of 5 from Amazon readers. I gave it a 5.

Other books I finished included:

-- Transgressions, which featured two novellas, Keller's Adjustment by Lawrence Block, and Forever by Jeffery Deaver.

-- The Crash by Freida McFadden.

-- Lethal Prey by John Sandford

-- A Purple Place for Dying by John D. MacDonald.

My chair, my pillow, my wife - til death do us part

 In its usual stroke of cleverness and whimsy the U.S. government has an agency named the General Accounting Office. Generally speaking, it’s an office that accounts for stuff.

Every year or so a very nice lady comes to our office and counts stuff. She’s very thorough. So far she’s kept us on the straight and narrow and nobody has absconded with any of the 30-year-old file cabinets or desks or the fax machine, which I imagine would be very valuable on the black market.

On her most recent visit she poked her head in my office and read the serial numbers on the back of various stuff and checked them off her list and said to me: “Would you like a new chair?”

I said: “No, thanks. I like my chair.”

She persisted: “Really, we could get you a new chair.”

“Thanks, but I really like it.”

“But it has duct tape wrapped around the arms and you have a pillow on the seat.”

It occurred to me I might have committed a federal crime by bringing duct tape from home and wrapping the arms of the chair because it was cracked and the stuffing was coming through. But, I thought, the government wouldn’t be that stupid would it?

I explained: “It took me years to get a chair I liked, that fit my skinny butt and doesn’t hurt my back. It’s perfect.”

“Okay, fine,” she rolled her eyes, “but here’s my card if you ever want one.”

I lost her card, but I still have my chair.

See, when I find something I like I keep it. Like the pillow on my bed.

I think I’ve written about it before, but my wife keeps threatening to throw it away. Sure, she puts a new pillow case on it every week or so, and I will grant her that the pillow may be an actual government threat due to its toxicity. 

It’s yellow from drool and snot and sweat. It’s actually damp, all the time. I put it out on the deck one super hot, windy summer day last summer to dry it out, and it didn’t. I think it actually seeded the clouds and we got some rain that night.

But, now it’s starting to leak stuffing. Its days are numbered. I keep stuffing the stuffing back into the pillow and fold the pillow case over the end at night so the stuffing doesn’t come out all over the bed and encourage my wife’s anti-pillow attitude.

I’ve come to accept that soon I’ll have to relent and I’ll have to replace it.

But it’s like I told my wife of 37 years, you should be happy that when I find something I like a lot, I keep it around. I don’t trade it in for a younger model. That’s bought me some time.

And the lady from GAO just sent our office an email announcing her retirement. My chair dodged that bullet. We outlasted her.

I don’t think the same will be said for my pillow.