Sunday Salon: Decisions, Decisions

It is hard to believe the year is nearly half over. June is the month my husband becomes a year older than me (well, only when considering the actual age--we're actually 3 months apart birth date wise). My husband's grandmother also officially turns a year older this month. It is also the month my parents will celebrate their wedding anniversary. My brother and his wife too for that matter. I already have the Father's Day presents (they're both getting books) wrapped and ready to go in the mail. I have a promising stack of books sitting here on my desk, and I am hopeful that June will prove to be a worthwhile reading month. Just look at all those glorious books! No, I suppose you can't really see them, can you? I won't get to all of them but what I do get to, I expect will be good.

I spent a good part of the morning lost in Bob Avey's Beneath a Buried House, added the finishing touches to my review of Killing Rommel by Steven Pressfield, which I will post later in the week, played with the animals, and now am turning my thoughts to what I want for lunch. I love a lazy Sunday.

Bob Avey's novel pulled me in immediately, which is always a good way to start off a book. It's a mystery set in Tulsa, Oklahoma with the usual components: murder, a missing suspect, and a police detective determined to uncover the truth. The author is giving little away as his detective follows the leads, connecting the dots. This one may just surprise me at the end, something that is not always easy to do.

I have two books sitting in my shopping cart at Amazon.com right now. I have been good about not selecting that buy option. One of the books is the first in a series by Boris Akunin, called Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog. I came across a later book in the series while browsing through the local Borders store a couple of weeks ago and decided it was an author I wanted to further explore.

I read an article recently about Chuck Palahniuk's novel, Haunted: A Novel, which made me morbidly curious. It now sits in my shopping cart awaiting my decision. I actually wanted to read the book when it first came out, but I got my hands on another of the author's books first and ended up changing my mind about Haunted. I was not too impressed with Diary. I did not hate it, mind you. I just did not especially care for it.

I was mentioning my hesitation in taking on another Palahniuk book to a few fellow readers, and a couple of them advised me not to bother. It isn't that they have read anything by this particular author--they haven't. In their experience, however, if a person has bad luck with one book by an author, a person shouldn't waste his or her time on that author again. A lot can depend on why a person did not like the book he or she read by the author. I imagine there are certain qualities in a book that are an immediate turn off, not to mention are a good predictor of what the author's other books will be like. And yet, aren't there also times when you read one book by an author, love it and then aren't so bowled over by the next? In some cases there's an obvious distinction between the two scenarios, but not so much in others.

I confess that I stopped typing just now to read a little further in my book. I couldn't help it. Detective Elliot just got an e-mail warning him off the case or else. Why do the villians bother? Don't they realize that their attempts to stall a case will only increase the protagonist's resolved to get to the bottom of the mystery? Sheesh.

I guess this means I should go back to my book. Lunch can wait.