October 2017 Reads

Oct	64	Think of a Number	John Verdon
	65	The Defense	Steve Cavanagh
	66	The Burning Girl	Claire Messud
	67	Turtles All The Way Down	John Green
	68	Gun Street Girl	Adrian McKinty
	69	The Uncommon Type	Tom Hanks

Another slow reading month, but the books I read were great.  This time I spent two weeks on a tour of Spain and it was grand, not much time for reading.

Think of a Number is the first time I've read John Verdon and it won't be the last.  This novel starts slow, but hang on to your hat, it really captured me and I had a hard time putting it down.

I love John Green.  His novels are written for young adults, but they are very translatable to all adults.  This may be my favorite of Green's novels.  The title is odd, but you'll need to read the book to find out what it means.  Here are a couple of quotes from John Green about the book, “This is my first attempt to write directly about the kind of mental illness that has affected my life since childhood, so while the story is fictional, it is also quite personal.", and “The great thing about figurative language and symbols and the like in novels is that you don’t have to be conscious of them for them to work."

Gun Street Girl by McKinty is the fourth in the series, and it was great.

Someone else I love is Tom Hanks.  His debut is a short story collection and it is great.  Three of the stories, spread through the book are about the same 4 friends.  I think Hanks should explore making a movie about these four.  I'd go see it for sure.  Read the book and see if you agree.

The Defense is a nail-biter, for sure. Eddie Flynn, one-time con artist, current lawyer, has a problem. The Russian mafia wants him to smuggle a bomb into a courtroom and eliminate the prosecution’s star witness against the head of New York City’s Russian mob. Eddie has vowed never to set foot in a courtroom again, but now he finds he has no choice: the mob has abducted his ten-year-old daughter, Amy.  Read it!

What are you reading?