What are you reading?

[Mark Troy]

I'm reading John Burdett's Bangkok 8 about a half-Thai/half-American, Bangkok police officer who investigates a particularly gruesome crime--the murder of a U.S. marine in a car full of poisonous snakes.

Burdett's Bangkok is teeming and atmospheric. He captures the spirit and beliefs of the Thai people exactly.

Next up is Burdett's next book, Bangkok Haunts.

So what are you reading?

[Ann Kellett]

I love finding out what others are reading!

I'm into biographies at the moment--David McCullough's Truman and John Adams. I ordered them both used from Amazon for just a few dollars, and the John Adams book is signed by the author!

I've also gone back to the basics on writing. Just finished re-reading Stephen King's On Writing and am half-way through Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird.

[Mark Troy]

Ann Kellett said:

I love finding out what others are reading!

I've also gone back to the basics on writing. Just finished re-reading Stephen King's On Writing and am half-way through Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird.

King's is an excellent motivator. Some other great books are Sol Stein's How To Grow a Novel and Dwight Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer.

[Lorelei Buckley]

I'm reading The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. It's very entertaining.

[Jacqueline Gramann]

Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear. I am making my way through all of her books, which are mysteries set in England after WWI. She is excellent with details, description.

[Tammy L. Hensel]

Most of the reading I am doing now is research for the book my husband and I are writing together about Christian principles for marriage. I just started reading, "Celebrating Sex in Your Marriage" by Dan and Sandra McGee.

[Mark Troy]

I just started a book by Alex Kava, Split Second. It's a thriller about an FBI profiler named Maggie O'Dell tracking a serial killer. I've heard Kava is good and have wanted to read her books for some time. I almost did not get into it. This book has a prologue. Now there are some agents and editors who say they won't touch a book with a prologue. There are some readers who say they always skip them. I'm not one of those, but I do believe prologues should be used only when necessary and that they are seldom necessary. In the case of Split Second, I believe this prologue is absolutely unnecessary and any reader who skips it will not miss anything. If I hadn't heard great things about Kava, I would have quit the book at the prologue.

One reason why people hate prologues is because the main character of the prologue is usually not the main character of the book. So, just when you have begun to know a character, you lose him/her and have to start with a new one. In Split Second, we do not meet Maggie O'Dell until the first chapter.

Some agents and editors have similar objections to dreams, especially beginning a story with a dream. Dreams can be useful to give a sense of the character's emotional state, but that works best if we already know the character. A dream at the beginning of the story tells us about a character we don't know and can often confuse us about the character. Better to know the character and then show the dream.

Split Second goes from the prologue to a dream. About halfway through the scene, the reader senses that something is not right, that this might be a dream and not reality. At that point I seriously did want to throw the book away. I didn't. I got past the dream and into the story, which is going well, but Kava has two strikes against her and she will lose this reader with another glaring error. I think both the prologue and the dream are completely unnecessary. If you read the book, you can skip them.

[Jacqueline Gramann]

I am rereading some of Mary Daheim's Alpine Advocate mystery series books. Rereading works out when I am rewriting manuscripts to mail out soon. My mind is less engaged with the bedtime reading and ready to write in the morning. And I am thrilled to have tracked down a 1960 copy of Thunder Heights by Phyllis Whitney with cover art by Ezra Jack Keats. Keats would go on to win the Caldecott Medal for children's books. Oh, the joy of an old, smelly library book.

[Tammy L. Hensel]

Just started Mike Hucabee's "Do The Right Thing." It is excellent!

[Jacqueline Gramann]

I just finished Michael Chabon's The Final Solution. Has anyone else read a Chabon book? It is very descriptive. I am now reading John Steinbeck's Travels With Charlie and am enjoying his observations about poodles, Yellowstone, and Texans.