2016 Reading Challenge Update: July 2016

So I haven’t written much about my reading this month. The main reason is that while I have been reading it seems that I have only finished one book, John Verdon’s Think of a Number, this month. Hopefully, I will finish at least one more book before the end of the month.Right now I have finished 29 books this year. My goal for the year is 60 books, so I’m about half the way there.

Currently Reading

Currently, I am reading The Silent Hour by Michael Koryta. the fourth book in his Lincoln Perry series. Over the last few years Michael Koryta has written many stand alone thrillers and while I have enjoyed these books. I have always liked the Lincoln Perry series, too.So far I am enjoying this book.

I am also reading Howard Blum‘s Dark Invasion:1915 Germany’s Secret War and The First Terrorist Cell in America. This is a fascinating book about the chase to catch the German terrorist who were attacking US ships during the year leading up to America’s entry into World War I. I was totally unfamiliar with almost all of the things presented in the book, including bombing of the US Congress.

Hopefully, I will be able to finish this book and the Koryta book before the end of the month. Finishing these books would at least make my monthly total of books read respectable.

2016 Reading Challenge Update

Projected August Reads

As you can see, while I have read enough books to have reached  48% of my goal, over half of the books read are Mystery Series or Thrillers!! If I take the nine books I am over in that challenge away from the totals I have only read completed 33% of the challenge total (20 of 60 books). So I have some work to do regarding the various challenges!! So here is a potential reading list for August.

About The Projected Reads

Life of Pi won the Man Booker Prize and is on many must read lists. It is a book that I have always wanted to read, but somehow have never read.

I picked up The Everything  Book at the library early this week. After reading the following on the jacket of the book and seeing a quote from Christopher Moore on the back of the book, I figured this would be a book I will really like1

2000 B.C.
A beautiful, ambitious angel stands on a mountaintop, surveying the world and its little inhabitants below. He smiles because soon, the last of humanity who survived the great flood will meet its end, too. And he should know. He’s going to play a big part in it. Our angel usually doesn’t get to do field work, and if he does well, he’s certain he’ll be get a big promotion.
And now it’s time . . .
The angel reaches into his pocket for the instrument of humanity’s doom. Must be in the other pocket. Then he frantically begins to pat himself down. Dejected, he realizes he has lost the object. Looking over the Earth at all that could have been, the majestic angel utters a single word.
“Crap.”

I have seen Chelsea Cain name for a while now and The Night Season has been on my TBR pile for far to long. It’s time it was read and I enter the world of Archie Sheridan & Gretchen Lowell. Hopefully, it won’t matter that I am jumping into the series at book #4!

Last year I entered the Polity universe of Neal Asher reading Dark Intelligence book one in the transformation series.Orbus is also set in the Polity Universe but is the third book in Asher’s Spatterjay series. Once again I hope I can enjoy a book in the middle of a series.

My final read for August will be Connectography:Mapping the Future of Global Civilization by Parag Khanna. I have already started this book and it is a fascinating analysis of the global connection of communities. It discuss the ways modern technology is connecting areas beyond the made up borders of countries!!

If finish all of these books I may be back on track to come close to my goal of 60 books and take a little bite out of my Reading Challenges – Wish Me Luck!!0

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A Busy Week – A Trip to Princeton Record Exchange, Two Books Finished and Books added to my Reading Challenges!

Last week was a busy one. My wife has been sick all week, most likely the result of kissing sick babies! Anyway I worked my two weekday and weekend shifts at Target, but since Oliver’s momma was home recovering from thyroid surgery I only babysat  on Friday!

On Wednesday afternoon, Nick and I went to The Princeton Record Exchange, where I bought ten new albums! I have listened to several of them since then and they have all been really good! I wrote a post the other night about five of the albums and will be writing soon about the other five. On Friday three of the albums were the soundtrack for my commute to Paulsboro. They were The Wallace Roney Quintet, the Mack Avenue Super Band Live at Detroit Jazz and the latest release from Ben Paterson For Once in My Life. All three were great. I particularly like the Ben Paterson album its an organ trio album!

So what else has been happening!

I have finished two books in 2016 The first was Linda Fairstein‘s Entombed. This 2005 release is book #7 in Fairstein’s Alexandra Cooper series. It is the first Alex Cooper book I’ve read but it won’t be my last! The book fits into two reading challenges. First its author is obviously a women and secondly it was on a TBR shelf!! The second, which I actually finished this morning was David Guterson’s The Other. I hope to write about them later today or tomorrow.

So to stay on pace to reach my goal of 60 books I need to finish three more books this month. I am almost 40% through In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam by Robert McNamara.and almost half finished Boost Your Brain: The New Art and Science Behind Enhanced Brain Performance by Majid Fotuhi, M.D. Ph.D. Both have been highly enlightening!

The other night as I was looking for new books to read I thought about the Body Farm Series from Jefferson Bass It seems that I’m always reading a new Bill Brockton book in the early months of the year, at least over the last several years. I did a search at the library and found that a new book titled The Breaking Point had been released back in June of 2015. So I requested it at the library and picked it up on Tuesday!

After that I was looking at award winning books and found Preparation for the Next Life  by Atticus Lish which won the Pen/Faukner Award for Fiction so I requested that book also and picked IT up on Friday!

Finally, I spotted an article at Philly.com Report: DASH Diet Best Overall Eating Plan…..

TUESDAY, Jan. 5, 2016 (HealthDay News) — For the sixth year in a row, a panel of health experts has named the heart-healthy DASH diet the best overall eating plan, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2016 Best Diets ranking.

The DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet was designed to lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels by limiting fats, red meat and sugar in favor of healthy grains, poultry, low-fat dairy and nuts, the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute says.

“Our rankings put hard numbers on the belief that no one diet is ideal for everybody, but the best food plans overall are sustainable,” Angela Haupt, senior health editor at U.S. News & World Report, said in a news release from the media company.Read more

Hmm, lowers blood pressure and cholesterol levels sounds good to me…..so it was off to the main branch of my library system to find The Dash Diet for Hypertension: Lower Your Blood Pressure in 14 Days – without Drugs by Thomas Moore,M.D. There are also several ebooks with recipes and eating plans for the diet that are cheap on Amazon that I will be exploring!!

So these are the five books that I will be reading for my reading challenges over the next several weeks……

Hopefully, I can finish three books before the end of the month! Wish Me Luck!……

P.S, Oh, and two nights this week and one afternoon I did a new yoga sequence “New Beginnings” that I found in this month’s Yoga Journal (A subscription to Yoga Journal was a Christmas gift from my wife). For most of the week I have felt really good! Today I feel a little funky but hopefully. I can avoid catching the virus that my wife and daughter caught!!

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