Tuesday, July 01, 2008

The Wheels on the bus . . .

. . . go round and round.

I take the bus to work most days. Unfortunately, I have to drive about half the way, then catch the express bus to the Naval Station. Fortunately, that last half is all crowded, unpredictable interstate, and the bus gets to take the HOV lane. HOV is High Occupancy Vehicle, for those of you who happen to have actual drivable highways.

In order to keep my sanity while busing my self from point B to point C, I've taken to reading. Since I took a speed reading course waaaaaaaay back in the second grade, I can read very quickly, and I go through books at a prodigious pace.

Last year, it was military history, including Flags of our Fathers, An Army at Dawn, A Soldier's Story, Flyboys, The Great Raid, Band of Brothers, and a dozen or so others.

This year, I switched to novels. I'm a great fan of James Patterson, Lee Child, Greg Iles, Michael Connelly, John Sandford and Stephen Hunter.

Right now, I'm in the middle of reading my way through a series of books by someone who is generally perceived as an author of "Bodice Rippers" - Nora Roberts. Except, this is her "Death" series written under the nom de plume of J. D. Robb. The novels are about a homicide detective, and are set in the late 2050's. Mild science fiction mixed with procedural mixed with mystery.

As a change of pace, I picked up this book. The name may be familiar to some of you. I haven't had the chance to read past the first page or so, since I'm still romancing Nora Roberts. However, the style seems to be very similar to the blog. Long, multiple sentence paragraphs are definitely in the minority. As to content . . . I'll let you know.


3 comments:

gemmak said...

Lol....yes that name is familiar :o)

How do you do that speed reading thing incidentally?

Jack said...

Jane,

I read whole lines of text rather than individual words. It's done by scanning down the center of the page instead of side-to-side on every line. I can read a typical page in a paperback novel in 20 seconds - about 1,000 words/minute.

They trained us by showing us whole lines of text for shorter and shorter periods of time. I guess I was a lab monkey in the 2nd grade. :o}

dkgoodman said...

We like Lee Child a lot. Have you read any Barry Eisler?