CCR book group:

• The Girls of Atomic City, Denise Kiernan (excellent)
• Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristof
• Those Angry Days, Lynne Olson (very interesting)
• This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, Ann Patchett (articles/essays of varying interest; most good)
• The Opposite of Loneliness, Marina Keegan
• The Burgess Boys, Elizabeth Strout (great book, interesting discussion)
• Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver (fantastic)
• The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion, Fannie Flagg (great story, interesting historical background)
• I gave up on “The Invention of Wings” by Sue Monk Kidd

Books from ‘old’ series:

• The Gods of Guilt, The Fifth Witness, The Brass Verdict (all Mickey Haller), The Burning Room (Harry Bosch) by Michael Connelly
• Designated Daughters (Deborah Knott), by Margaret Maron
• The Charlemagne Pursuit, The King’s Deception (both Cotton Malone), by Steve Berry
• Hardball (V.I. Warshawski), by Sara Paretsky
• His Majesty’s Secret Agent (Maggie Hope), by Susan Elia Macneal

New mysteries:

• The House on Tradd Street, Karen White (1st in a fun ‘ghost’ series set in Charleston)
• Steeped in Evil (Tea Shop Mysteries), by Laura Childs (also part of a series set in Charleston, enjoyable)
• The River of Darkness (John Madden), by Rennie Airth (first book in an incredible series of historical mysteries)
• In the Blood (Jefferson Tayte genealogical mystery series), by Steve Robinson (good fun, interesting genealogy tips)
• Hiding the Past (Morton Farrier genealogical mystery series), Nathan Dylan Goodwin (ok)
• A Deceptive Clarity, A Glancing Light, Old Scores (three Chris Nordgren art historian mysteries), by Aaron Elkins (very enjoyable and interesting)
• Loot, Turncoat (two standalone books), by Aaron Elkins (good stories)
• Anonymous Sources, debut novel by Mary Louise Kelly (excellent)
• Bluffing Mr. Churchill, by John Lawton (I remember this being good, but can’t remember anything about it.)
• Still Life (Inspector Gamache #1), by Louise Penny (I’ve had this on my Kindle since 2009, and finally read it.  Seems like a good series, and I have a couple more.)

Diplomats and Spies:

• An American Spy (3rd Milo Weaver book), by Olen Steinhauer.  (best book in this spy trilogy)
• The Cairo Affair, by Olen Steinhauer (CIA officer with State cover at Embassy Cairo)
• The American Mission, by Matthew Palmer.  Palmer is a Foreign Service Officer, and I enjoyed all the little FSO insider details in the book.  Good fast-paced thriller.

Miscellaneous fiction:

• Inferno (Robert Langdon), by Dan Brown
• An Officer and a Spy, Robert Harris (surprisingly dull novel about the Dreyfus Affair)
• Sycamore Row, John Grisham
• Damage, Felix Francis
• Oath of Office, Michael Palmer.  This is Matthew Palmer’s father; he’s an established author of medical thrillers.  Pretty good.
• The Tears of Autumn, Charles McCarry.  Weird but fascinating 1970s conspiracy thriller about the Kennedy assassination.  I got it at Powell’s bookstore.

Kids’ Classics:  “A Wrinkle in Time”, by Madeleine L’Engel, and “The Westing Game”, by Ellen Raskin.  These are often mentioned by people as ‘my favorite book growing up’ so I decided to read them.

Non-fiction:

• Bossypants, Tina Fey.  I usually avoid memoirs like the plague, but I like Tina Fey and enjoyed her book.
• Scent of the Missing, Susannah Charleson.  Lovely book about training a search and rescue dog, enjoyed it a lot.
• Call the Midwife, Jennifer Worth.  I love the TV series, and the book is very good too.

I’m sure I missed some.  I also fill in nooks and crannies of reading time with old favorite mysteries and looking up stuff in history books.

2014 and 2015 sure went by fast!  I ended 2013 with a firm resolution to keep up with writing about reading, and look what happened.  Or didn’t happen: no posts in two years.  This year, when the annual renewal for the website came around again, the choice was to shut everything down, or get serious about writing.  So I’ll get started and see how long I can go this time.

I’ve been doing almost all my reading on my Kindle.  Between eBooks from the Charleston County Public Library (CCPL), Kindle Daily Deals, Kindle Unlimited and an occasional eBook purchase, I can read a lot without spending a lot.  CCPL’s selection is wildly uneven, but I have been able to borrow an amazing variety of books that I’ve really wanted to read.  Then I’ll hit a dead spot where none of the books I want are available, then I’ll hit another hot streak.  Read a review of a new book, find it at CCPL, borrow it, read it, all without leaving home or spending a dime.  Love Charleston County’s great eBook library, also our fantastic county parks.

The useful thing about Kindle, for my current purposes, is that Amazon keeps a list of all the books I’ve bought or borrowed so I’ve been able to put together a pretty comprehensive roundup of what I’ve read in the last two years.  They don’t keep a list of the books I’ve gotten with my Kindle Unlimited subscription though, which is a shame.  I haven’t read many new books at all in dead tree format, and most of them were memorable non-fiction books that made it into the roundup too.

I did another huge book cull last year, and donated many boxes of books to the Friends of the Charleston County Public Library.  I never go to their giant book sales though; I don’t want to be tempted to buy any of my old books back.

Still have dozens of books on my Kindle that I’ve bought over the years and haven’t yet gotten around to reading.  And even after two major book culls since we moved here, I still have plenty of books on the shelves.  Always nice to have an old Maron or Paretsky or Christie or Gilman at hand when I just want to spend a little time with old friends.