What I've Been Reading

Boy, have I been reading! At the expense of everything else, it seems. I try to keep a running list of books I've read (actually, it's a digital image folder full of book-cover screenshots), but I've been so busy reading that I got way behind. This morning I had to backtrack through my Kindle page by page to recall the titles that have slipped through my system. 

It's been almost two months since my last book post, so to keep this one from being too long, I'll break the list of most recently read titles into two posts. Here goes:

Love in the Present Tense

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

A Reason to Live
by Matthew Iden

Blueblood
by Matthew Iden

One Right Thing
by Matthew Iden

The Spike
by Matthew Iden

One Pink Line
by Dina Silver

Where the Wind Blows

by Caroline Fyffe

Still Missing

by Chevy Stevens

The Yada Yada Prayer Group
by Neta Jackson

Things We Set on Fire
by Deborah Reed 

Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes
by Denise Grover Swank

Etched in Sand (Non-Fiction)
by Regina Calcaterra

To read a description and reviews of any of these books,

click on its image above.

A few thoughts about some of these books:

• Catherine Ryan Hyde (Love in the Present Tense) has become one of my favorite authors. Read this book or anything else she's written, and you probably won't be disappointed.
• Matthew Iden's crime novels (there are four of them listed above) may not have the power or the punch of those written by, say, John Grisham or Lee Childs, but I liked them enough to keep on buying one after another until I'd read the whole series. His protagonist, Marty Singer, is a retired police detective whom I grew to like in the same way I used to like Peter Falk's Columbo on TV. I'd probably call these books "comfortable reads" rather than "must-reads," but I think you might enjoy them.
• I found Neta Jackson's book, The Yada Yada Prayer Group, when I was writing a piece for my Life Writing class and Googled the phrase "church-goingest," which I wanted to use it in spite of the fact I knew it wasn't proper English. Turns out one of the Yada Yada characters had used those words before I did. Now, if you know me at all, you know I'm not very religious, but my Lord, I loved this book! I wonder how many stereotypes would be broken down and how many prejudices erased if we all had the opportunity to spend time with people as diverse as the women in the Yada Yada Prayer Group. The world would be a better place, I think.
• Maybe it's the influence of the Life Writing class, but lately I've become more interested than usual in autobiographies and memoirs. Regina Calcaterra's Etched in Sand was a good one: interesting and thought-provoking, especially in light of ongoing debates about cost vs. value of social services.