So Many Books

 I'm at an odd point with my third book, "American Dawn." My beta-reading team has the first draft, so I am mostly waiting for their feedback to finish it. I'm poking along at a few things (see picture below) but also looking for other useful things to do. Fear not! American Dawn will be available by Christmas!

One of those things I've been doing in the meantime is to set up my author profile on Goodreads. If you're not familiar, look it up on the internet. One of the things that Goodreads does is, it lets you, the reader, identify books you've read and even review them. In a fit of something, I started going through and checking the ones I've read. 

It was, and is, a fascinating look into myself. From my default non-fiction history books to my new research into fiction, I've read a lot of books! There were books I'd forgotten I'd read and even some I wish I hadn't. I didn't count pure kid stuff, like Dr. Seuss, but I did include some younger books. And I didn't (maybe I will someday) check all of the Louis L'Amour and Edgar Rice Burroughs books I've read, there were just too many of them. My list is well into the hundreds, possibly past a thousand if I could remember them all.

There are folks who read a book a night or more. And folks who may take months to read a short story. Fiction or non-fiction. Modern or classic. American authors or international authors. A thousand different genres. And there are people who get very upset with other people's reading habits. I don't get any of that, I really don't. I believe there are books out there for everyone, it just may take some time to find them. But criticize people? Whatever...mind your own bobber!

Most interesting to me was that there's something to be learned from all of them. Some little nugget is all I ask. I have noticed that now that I'm "an author," I read differently and notice different things. Words I like. Style I like (or don't). Characters I like (or don't). It truly has changed how I read. It would be fascinating to remember what I've learned from all of the books, but maybe not knowing where I learned stuff is part of the adventure? Fortunately for me, there are millions of more books to be read!

Some of my favorites, in no particular order. 

"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee.
"Flags of Our Fathers" by James Bradley
"World War Z" by Max Brooks
"Watership Down" by Richard Adams
"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley
"A Cranberry Thanksgiving" by Wende Devlin
The "All Creatures Great and Small" books by James Herriot
The "Harry Potter" series by JK Rowling (yes, I like the books better than the movies)

Books I didn't like. I don't comment on this much. I know how difficult it is to make a book, even a "bad" one come to life. And like I said, there's something to be learned from all of them. I will say that "Jaws" the movie is infinitely better than "Jaws" the book. After that, to each their own. 

Happy reading all!