Reading Day

A lovely letter came through today from a blog reader who said she was going to purchase the last four books I’d mentioned. I looked back to see what they were. Okay, very good, but one blog contains an error to correct right here. Felix Francis’s book Even Money, written with his father Dick Francis, came out in hardcover last year. This new ad was just for the soft cover edition. I’d already read it.

In The Rembrandt Affair, I’ve just reached the halfway point, for other duties have preoccupied my time. It has only 484 pages, you see. It will doubtlessly make a great movie but with numerous challenges in the process. It may take a while.

Barnes & Noble is currently offering on your computer 40%-off coupons (good through August 23) for certain books. Then if you have a membership there, you get another 10% off. And that makes the price about the same as the price at CostCo. The two I hope to get tomorrow on my day out are James Patterson’s The Postcard Killers and Frederick Forsyth’s The Cobra. One of the best plots I’ve ever read is a novelette by Forsyth called The Veteran, published under that title and including a few shorter stories. The Veteran is not great literature, but, as I said, has an intriguing plot. While I’ve given away several hundred books by this time, perhaps a thousand, The Veteran is still on my shelves.

One day I saw another famous American writer on the telly, running down the writing of Forsyth. I was amazed. Writers do not usually attempt to destroy other writers that way on television. So, I decided to read one of the attacker’s novels to make a comparison. He was at that time a highly popular author, whose novels men enjoyed perhaps more than women did. I haven’t heard anything of him in recent years. I can’t think of his name at the moment, but when I began to read the book chosen, I discovered in the first few pages he was only telling, not showing. A good writer mixes the two, showing and telling, and several pages of just telling, without any showing, didn’t keep me reading. I’ve never had that problem with Forsyth.

Of course, I read other types of writing, not just suspense, international intrigue, and plain murders. But is any murder ever just plain? I enjoy figuring out problems of this type. Since it’s all fiction, it’s a mental game that exercises the brain. And you know what? That brain activity takes off some calories. Happy sleuthing!

P. S. I remembered that author's name. It's Tom Clancy, who wrote The Hunt for Red October and other big hits. My comment holds.

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