Dateline: Bahamas; Re-igniting the Fire

Last year, I was reading at the fairly steady clip of about a book a week (as I wrote about here). I was pretty proud of myself, although such a feat also had the implications of my having to sell some of the lesser favorites on my bookshelf.

But then January came, when my progress slowed considerably. In fact, I was down to about a book a month so far this year; my reading had become sluggish and sporadic. Not good. It’s like all these bloggers suddenly throwing in the towel, all blogged out, or someone who starts finding a steady stream of excuses to not go to the gym. That was how I felt. And I was still buying books, so I had an extremely large pile (ie. ‘back inventory’) begging to be read.

But I’m back now. I’m not sure if it was the selections I had on my night stand, the lengths or subject matter of those I was tackling or just being too utterly tired from work to take on something more. Maybe all, or maybe something else altogether.

This past week, I was in the Bahamas (I have something akin to a tan!). There, I devoured Nelson DeMille’s “Night Fall” – among 2 other books – and it suddenly felt good to be back in the game. This was a novel I’d been eyeing on my nightstand for a while now, licking my chops in anticipation of. I’ve read each of his 11 other novels and this is probably his finest to date, although the ending comes very suddenly—which is the point. If you haven’t tried any of his works, I would definitely recommend picking up one of the books in his canon.

But I’m still trying to find the right words on DeMille’s book. Let me see if I can tackle that in my next post (or not-- I'm itching to talk about Eric Boehlert's "Lapdogs").