A novel by Wilber Smith
📅 Started: March 2025
📅 Finished: June 2025
📚 Format: physical book
Category: Fiction
By David Baldacci
May 2, 2025
📅 Started: April 27, 2025
📅 Finished*:* [date]
📚 Format: (hardcover / Kindle / library loan / audiobook, etc.)
Why I Started Reading It
I had just finished Beach Music and found At First Sight by Nicholas Sparks in my bookshelves. Lunchtime is fiction only, so I started it, but it wasn’t working for me. I saw this book on the shelves in Target, and I always enjoy David Baldacci, so I grabbed it.
My Opinion
Love it …
What Everyone Else Thinks
Post Progress
Vocabulary Quiz
Beach Music
A Novel by Pat Conroy – from the back cover of the book
PAT CONROY, America’s preeminent storyteller, delivers a sweeping novel of lyric intensity and searing truth — the story of Jack McCall, an American expatriate in Rome, scarred by tragedy and betrayal.
His desperate desire to find peace after his wife’s suicide draws him into a painful, intimate search for the one haunting secret in his family’s past that can heal his anguished heart.
Spanning three generations and two continents, from the contemporary ruins of the American South to the ancient ruins of Rome, from the unutterable horrors of the Holocaust to the lingering trauma of Vietnam, Beach Music sings with life’s pain and glory. It is another masterpiece in Pat Conroy’s legendary list of beloved novels.
Housekeeping
Copy right 1995
768 pages + Reader’s Guide
I started this book in early March – I haven’t finished it, but I love this book. Pat Conroy is one of my favorite fiction authors. I still haven’t been able to read The Great Santini, but I loved The Death of Santini.
What Everyone Else Thinks
By Colleen Hoover
Read over about two weeks in late February or early March 2025.
What Everyone Else Thinks
With 108,000+ ratings on Amazon, 58% five stars, and over 400,00 on Good Reads with an overall rating of 4.3 – this is a solidly entertaining novel and an easy and engaging read. You’re not going to learn anything, but it’s fun.
I looked at the 1-star reviews, as is my habit. They weren’t as thoughtless as most of the 1-star reviews are – the criticisms were valid. It’s a little unrealistic (uh, it’s fiction) and not like her typical work; she addresses this somewhere; I can’t remember where I read it at the moment – but it was intentionally outside the scope of what she usually does.
It’s the first of her books that I’ve read, so I’m not attached to her previous style.
First published in 1915. It is considered one of Maugham’s most famous works and is a semi-autobiographical novel that explores themes of art, love, and the human condition.
Or so says the internet – in fact it’s about obsessive love and I could not finish it. It’s a 600 page novel, and obviously it’s a classic but I got over 300 pages into it and just got to annoyed to continue reading.
When I read fiction I want to enjoy – and I was getting really irritated reading this book.
Until about 15 years ago, I finished any book I started – regardless. It was a rule – and I was still in a place in my life when I couldn’t break those kinds of rules. I couldn’t for example cook from a recipe if I didn’t have every single ingredient. I’m over it, (thank you Anne Rice, a story for another day) but maybe that’s why this book irritated me so much – what ever connection I have to my own obsessive-compulsive behaviors.
Author Michael Connelly
Copyright 2021
I started this book March 8th 2023, I have it in hardcover and I probably got it from my dad. I know I didn’t buy it. I do this kind of reading when I eat lunch – so it takes a minute to finish a book.
April 2, 2023
I finished reading this book yesterday. As usual easy and enjoyable read. It has almost 60,000 reviews on Amazon, with an accumulated rating of 4.6 stars. What else needs to be said?
Michael Connelly
Copyright 2017
I read this in early March 2023. One of my favorites so far. I’ve been hung up on Michael Connelly novels for a couple of years. When I had Covid probably Jan 2020 a friend brought me The Lincoln Lawyer, I’d seen the movie but hadn’t thought of reading him. I’ve read five or six of them now.
Again this is not a book review site. Rather it’s me documenting my reading. Something I wish I started long ago.
Author Ken Follett
Copyright 1995
I finished reading this probably the end of January 2024. This is the 6th Ken Follett novel I’ve read.
Michael Connelly
Published in 1993, this is the 2nd of Michael Connelly’s mystery novels. The first The Black Echo, was published in 1992 and won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel. As of this writing he has published an additional 35 novels. Most if not all were best sellers – I wasn’t able to figure that out exactly.
The Black Ice has been reviewed on Amazon almost 11,000 times. I’m not a good enough writer to imagine that I can add anything original to that discussion other than my opinion, such as it may be.
It’s the second in the Harry (Hieronmyous) Bosch series, I love the character and the setting. As a resident of Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley for the last 30+ years his local references are fun, the sense of familiarity they add are – hmm I don’t have a good adjective – but I enjoy it. It’s a quick read, nothing to ponder here.
I watch the television series as well. Unlike most book/tv series combos I’m able to enjoy the show after the book. Typically if I want to enjoy both I have to watch the show first – generally speaking I find television can’t hold up to the book – like the Outlander series. I was obsessed with the books but don’t find the show at all entertaining.
For a quick and engaging read pretty much any Michael Connelly book will do the trick, The Black Ice is no exception. I finished reading this Jan 9, 2023. That note is for my own reference – mostly because I don’t know where else to put it and I want to publish these posts as I finish the books.