I’ve been on a good reading stretch lately. Here are some blurbs. The Mercenary – Paul Vidich Vidich gets a lot of critical acclaim for his espionage novels. I wasn’t crazy about his first book I read, The Good Assassin. It was so noir-y that I felt no warmth towards or connection with any of the characters. Despite that, I…

Damascus Station – David McCloskey I believe this is my third espionage novel written by a former CIA employee in recent months. And it was, by far, the best of that bunch. Set in, wait for it, Damascus, Syria, it is the story of an American CIA officer who recruits a member of the Syrian intelligence service and gets pulled…

Anthem – Noah Hawley Hawley can spin a story. Here he takes a little bit of everything going on in the world today and mixes it together: Covid, our former president, climate change, toxic discourse on social media, the Insurrection, and even Joe Rogan. He whips that up into the biggest possible mess. There is a total breakdown of society…

Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir Officially a 2021 book, I finished this over New Year’s weekend. It was my 53rd book of 2021, just getting me over book-a-week pace for those 12 months. This treads similar territory to Weir’s excellent The Martian, again focused on a man who is stuck in space alone. This time, though, the stakes are…

Only about six weeks behind on these, no big deal. If you got a gift card for Christmas maybe you’ll find something in here to use it on. The Last Tourist – Olen Steinhauer My latest entry from a recent list of best espionage novels. I knew this came from a series, but it got tremendous reviews so I figured…

Cloud Cuckoo Land – Anthony Doerr When you win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, as Doerr did for his wonderful All The Light That We Cannot See, it can be a bitch to follow it up. So why not build a story around five main characters who occupy 700 years of time? If nothing else, the sheer scope of the…

Good grief am I behind on these. That makes total sense, though, because my reading pace has slowed to a level not seen in years. I’ve finished just one book in the past four weeks. I went nearly three weeks without starting my next reading project. Normally I break out in hives if I don’t immediately start a new book.…

After a six-week-ish lull, my pace of knocking out books has picked back up. I’ll likely finish another book later today, but wanted to go ahead and get this out. Missionaries – Phil Klay Klay’s second work about modern warfare is his first true novel; Redeployment was a series of short stories based loosely on his service as a Marine…

My goodness, I am so far behind in sharing my recent completed reads. I imagine a few of these will be crappier than normal since I’ve put them off so long. A Spy In The Struggle – Aya de León I’ve been working through a list of good, recent espionage novels that this and the next book both were on.…

I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll (Except When I Hate It) – Brian Boone Between both switching to the smaller, satellite Indy library near our house from the larger Carmel library and Covid, I don’t just go wonder the library stacks very often, surprising myself with books that speak to me as I pass them. That is how I found this…