Books Read in 2010: Part I, January-April

This is a list of the books I read during the calendar year 2010, in the order in which I completed them. Some of them were started during 2009, or possibly even earlier. This post covers the list through my notes for April 2010, meaning books finished in January-April 2010, and books started in January-April 2010, which were completed in the calendar year 2010. This excludes books begun in 2010, but which were completed in 2011.

As you will see, there are novels, histories, biographies, and books on an assortment of topics. There are sixteen books in this list covering four months of literary activity. I have made no attempt to sort or group these books in any particular fashion.

Michael Cox. The Meaning of Night. New York, London: W. W. Norton, 2006. 703 pages. ISBN 978-0-393-33034.2. Read 22 September 2009-27 January 2010.
Michael Jecks. The Malice of Unnatural Death. Great Britain: Headline, 2006. xiv + 399 pages.
Henning Mankell. Faceless Killers. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2003. 280 pages. Read 15-18 January 2010.
Sean Williams. Cenotaxis. Austin, TX: MonkeyBrain Books, 2007. 111 pages. Read 15-21 January 2010.
Jay Lake. Escapement. New York: Tor Books, 2008. 384 pages. Read 29 January-12 February 2010.
Stephen Jones. The Monster Book of Zombies: Tales of the Walking Dead. New York: Metro Books, 2009. ix + 518 pages. Read 12 February-4 March 2010.
David Drake, Eric Flint, and Jim Baen. The World Turned Upside Down. New York: Baen Books, 2004. 743 pages. Read 17-27 February 2010.
Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938-1946. New York: Library of America, 1995, 2001. xxiii + 874 pages. Read 20 February-14 April 2010.
N. A. M. Rodger. The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. 445 pages. Index. Read 5 March-24 April 2010.
Matthew Hughes. Majestrum. San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2007. 247 pages. Read 9-16 March 2010.
Robert Asprey. The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. New York: Basic Books, 2000. xxi + 580 pages. ISBN 0-465-04879-x. $37.50. Read 17 March-8 August 2010.
Robert L. Casey. Journey to the High Southwest: A Traveler's Guide to Santa Fe and the Four Corners of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. Eighth edition. Guilford, CT: Insider's Guide, 2007. xix + 561 pages. Index. Read 13 April-30 September 2010.
Halka Chronic. Roadside Geology of Arizona. Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1983. xix + 321 pages. ISBN 978-0-87842-147-3. $18.00. Glossary. Index. Read 16 April-25 May 2010.
Bernice Brode. Tales of Los Alamos: Life on the Mesa 1943-1945. Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos Historical Society, 1997. 165 pages. Glossary. Glossary of Names. Index of Names. About the Author. Read 17 April-8 May 2010.
David Weber. By Heresies Distressed. 2009. 492 pages. Characters. Glossary. Read 22 April-5 May 2010.
Jo Nesbo. Nemesis. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Harper, 2008. 474 pages. Read 22 April-31 July 2010.

Reading List: December 2010

In December, 2010, I was reading my usual half-dozen books.

The NIV Study Bible, read December 1-31, pages 1725-2172. (Finished)
The Poisonwood Bible, read December 3-5, pages ix-x and 1-66.
Crossroads of Twilight, read December 6-30, pages 267-700. (Finished)
The Koran for Dummies, read December 7-15, pages 24-78.
What Distant Deeps, read December 10-14, pages vii-x and 1-370. (Finished)
The Vampire Archives, read December 19-31, pages 635-809.
The Legions of Fire, read December 18-31, pages 7-76.

Two of these books, What Distant Deeps and The Legions of Fire were written by my friend, David A. Drake. What Distant Deeps is "space opera," another in a series of adventures with the Royal Cinnabar Navy. On the other hand, The Legions of Fire is a fantasy novel set in a close analog of ancient Rome called Carce.

Reading List: November 2010

Some of the books I was reading in October, and even September, of 2010 continued on my list into November. I added a couple, and even read a few books straight through during the month.

The Third Chimpanzee, read November 1-10, pages 225-407. (Finished)
Nixonland, read November 1-6, pages 607-881. (Finished)
Crossroads of Twilight, read November 5-30, pages 7-266.
The Vampire Archives, read November 10-20, pages 555-633.
Mrs. Pollifax Pursued, read November 13-14, pages 1-232. (Finished)
The Janissary Tree, read November 14-30, pages 1-302. (Finished)
The Koran for Dummies, read November 15-30, pages 1-23.
The Spies of Warsaw, read November 18-21, pages 1-266. (Finished)

The Janissary Tree, by Jason Goodman, is a mystery set in the Ottoman Empire. Mr. Goodman is also the author of Lords of the Horizon, a history of the Ottoman Empire. I found it especially entertaining, because of the time I had spent in Turkey.

The Spies of Warsaw, by Alan Furst, is an accomplished book by a very accomplished author of historical fiction. To be precise, Alan Furst has written a large number of books set before and during World War II in various European countries, and he does a great job of evoking the atmosphere of looming disaster.

Reading List: October 2010

In this list, I'm going to skip the details of my reading in the NIV Study Bible. Not very exciting.

So, during the month of October, 2010, I read in the following books:

Nixonland, read September 1-31, pages 174-606.
The Girl Who Played with Fire, read September 11-21, pages 1-724. (Finished)
That Old Cape Magic, read September 12, pages 1-17.
The Third Chimpanzee, read September 16-31, pages 59-225.

October 2010 was the month in which I traveled to North Carolina for a memorial observance for my late mother-in-law, Rosalind Skeuse. After the gathering in North Carolina, we drove to Florida and worked on cleaning out her house. I suffered some serious dental problems while in Florida, the consequences of which are still working themselves out.

A Bad Penny Always Turns Up (Again)

It has been quite some time since I updated this blog. My last post were was in April, 2011, and the previous one may have been in November 2010. Here we are in mid-October, 2011, and a lot has happened in the meantime.

For one thing, my "Current Reading List" is far out of date, and I've read many, many books since I last updated it. If I'm going to pursue this, I need to update that sidebar, and I need to post a number of articles on the reading I've done since the last update.

For another, we're back in another American presidential campaign cycle, which always tends to drain the substance and seriousness out of political conversation.

Finally, 2010 and 2011 have been difficult years, personally speaking, and I will post on some of the events which have made it so.

Welcome back, Glenn!

Welcome back, readers!

And a very good day to us all.

Current Reading at Knight's Castle

I've made some more changes to my Current Reading list on this blog, and I hope that some of you find the additions of sufficient interest to read and comment upon them.

I removed the books that I finished in the first half of December, making room for new stuff. So far in January I've only finished one book: The Malice of Unnatural Death by Michael Jecks. If you like medieval mysteries, Jecks is in your line. He is, however, not as good as either Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter), the late doyenne of that sub-genre, or Bernard Knight, to whose Crowner John mysteries Jecks's work bears a considerable resemblance.

I started reading two new novels on Friday. Henning Mankell's Faceless Killers was a Christmas gift to my wife a couple of years ago, and I'm finally getting around to it. So far, this Swedish murder tale is looking pretty good. A friend gave me Sean Williams's Cenotaxis for Christmas 2009. Williams says that "cenotaxis" means "empty order," but my Roadside Geology books seem to indicate that "ceno-" means "recent," as in the Cenozoic era. I haven't gotten far enough into Cenotaxis to arrive at any judgments, but Williams is supposed to be cutting-edge.

Let me know what you're reading, too. I would welcome comments, recommendations, and reviews.

Best-Laid Plans

August was a low point for this blog, at least in terms of the number of posts. I posted three items in August, after a whopping seven in July. I have excuses. We traveled to Tennessee in July, and we toured parts of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico in August and September. But nobody wants to hear excuses. (By the way, if you want to see pictures from those trips, you can go to http://www.facebook.com/ and look me up.)

So here's another excuse. I had posted 12 pieces in November when, just before Thanksgiving, our computer stopped displaying anything on the monitor. The computer might have been working, but we couldn't see any product. After trying a few things, we took the computer to Staples, and it's been there ever since. Well, the day before Thanksgiving we authorized them to send it to a subcontractor. They said it would ship on the Friday, but it didn't ship until the Monday. They said the subcontractor worked on weekends, but they don't. They said the subcontractor would provide updates; they haven't. And it wasn't back by December 10, so we flew off to Florida not knowing if our computer liveth.

Now I'm in Florida, using my mother-in-law's computer - Windows 98 and a dial-up connection. I have managed to get through my e-mail, and even send a few e-mails to people. I have visited my Facebook account and used the messaging service there, as well as commenting and posting some items. Now, I'm going to see if I can successfully post to my blog from here.

Regards,

Glenn A. Knight