What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happenin'

My apologies for the dearth of posts in May and June. To be honest, those months have not been great for me. At the risk of TMI (this isn't one of those blogs where you get to hear every little detail of my life) let's just say that I've had some health issues. The good news is that the issues are all fixable, and I'm feeling much better than I was. The bad news is that I haven't had the energy for writing or revising, not even movie reviewing.

The good news is that I've had lots of time for reading (and will have more - the upside of having surgery in September is that recovery will give me lots of reading time - I'm already planning a re-read of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series). In fact, at the mid-point of the year I've read over 40 books! I haven't finished them all, but I still think this is pretty good, considering it doesn't even take into account the Harry Potter books I've been reading to Young Master (we've just started book 5, Harry Potter and The Anger Management Issues).

So here's the scorecard for Books Read in 2010:

1. End of Story - Peter Abrahams
2. Looking for Mr. Goodbar - Judith Rossner
3. The Lady in the Lake - Raymond Chandler
4. Now and Forever - Ray Bradbury
5. The Pale Blue Eye - Louis Bayard
6. The Long Last Call - John Skipp
7. Heat Wave - Richard Castle
8. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
9. The Grifters - Jim Thompson
10. The Knitting Circle - Ann Hood **
11. The Preservationist - David Maine *
12. Dawn of the Dreadfuls - Steve Hockensmith
13. Dragon Keeper - Robin Hobb
14. American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
15. Horns - Joe Hill
16. The Cold Six Thousand - James Ellroy
17. Goodnight Nobody - Jennifer Weiner
18. Somewhere in Time - Richard Matheson
19. The Boleyn Inheritance - Philippa Gregory *
20. The Choirboys - Joseph Wambaugh
21. Make Room! Make Room! - Harry Harrison **
22. The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
23. The Brave - Gregory McDonald
24. The Sheik - E. M. Hull **
25. Anno Dracula - Kim Newman
26. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
27. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
28. Fool - Christopher Moore **
29. Strip Tease - Carl Hiaasen
30. The Killer Inside Me - Jim Thompson
31. Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral - Kris Radish **
32. The Last Boleyn - Karen Harper **
33. Push - Sapphire
34. Black Water - Joyce Carol Oates
35. The Fire Gospel - Michel Faber
36. Drood - Dan Simmons
37. Mistress of Rome - Kate Quinn
38. The Removers - Donald Hamilton
39. Molokai - Alan Brennert **
40. The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
41. The Ruins - Scott Smith

* = re-read

** = unfinished

And next up is another of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee stories: A Purple Place for Dying.