A Is for Abbott: 'Collision' by Jeff Abbott

Starts strong with a blast of adrenaline. Ben and Emily are wrapping up their honeymoon in Hawaii; he slips into the shower, and Emily slips onto the kitchen floor -- shot. Dead. Fast forward a couple of years to a sniper scene in Austin and a hired assassin bumbles his assignment. Suddenly Ben and a former CIA agent are unlikely partners ... and the plot turns all kinds of crazy ways.
My friend David summarized it perfectly in his review for Booklist:
"The dialogue: smart, unobtrusive. The plot: packed, convoluted, head spinning. The everyman angle borrows from Abbot's hardcover debut, Panic (2005); neither book is memorable, but it hardly matters: if it is unbridled action you crave (or if you're just killing time till the next Lee Child comes out), Abbott's your man." (Reviewed by David Wright, Booklist, 5/1/2008)

My coworker Jeff said: "Quentin Tarantino meets Die Hard as the lives of two men literally collide" in his review for Library Journal. Snappy and memorable tagline.

I'm glad I tried this book and know more about Abbott, who also wrote a series in the 1990s starring a librarian/sleuth named Jordan Poteet (Promises of Home, Distant Blood).

Recommend to readers who like: James Patterson's stand-alone thrillers, David Baldacci, Stephen Cannell, James Grippando, and maybe to Lee Child fans.

Reading through the alphabet

Maybe if I say this out loud (or type it quietly) I'll have to actually follow through with something: I'm going to read a new author each week, for 26 weeks, right through the alphabet.

There are a few rules, and I'll make up more as I go along (and as I break the ones I already made):

1. Read consecutively through the alphabet, by last name.
2. Limit authors to the "Mystery" section of the library
3. I must select a book that is available at the library where I work.
4. It's best if the author has several titles.
5. It's okay to read bestsellers.
6. The author must be someone I haven't read.
7. I don't have to finish the book if I don't love it.
8. If I don't finish a book, I will have at least done the Joyce Sarricks' style of getting to know a book. (More about that later. Joyce Sarricks is a librarian, author, book reviewer and guru of good librarians.)
9. I do have to find good things to say about the book and/or author.
10. I will not be deterred from my alphabetical mission if someone should say something snarky, such as "What??? You haven't read THAT yet?"

Hmmm ... I'm going to work on those rules so they're a bit snappier.

Anyway, I'm doing this because I think I'm recommending the same mystery authors again and again to readers at my library. I feel only 38 percent confident when I recommend a book/author I don't know that much about; I always feel like I'm really talking out of my butt because I have no idea since I haven't actually read the book. My intent with this is to explore mysteries I might not usually read -- with the ultimate goal of being a better readers advisory librarian.

Oh, look at that! I just used library jargon. We talk about readers advisory a lot, and it's what we do all day (or at least most of the day) in the Fiction Department at my library. I kind of hate that I just dropped that term into a blog post. Let me rephrase: I want to do a better job of connecting people with books that they have a high likelihood of enjoying.

Stupidest tagline ever?
This seriously upsets me. I know that on one level the progression of fun-funner-funnest makes sense (think about the dumb-dumber-dumbest copywriters who worked on this ad), but come on! "Funnest" isn't a word.

My favorite books of the year ... so far

One of my book groups compiles a list of each reader's top ten books of the year. Although we don't do this until early January, someone already brought it up at one of our September meetings. Although books in the Top Ten don't have to be published in 2008, there have been so many great books this year that I might make my list all 2008 pub dates. Yes, I know there are still three months of reading to be done. But here are five guaranteed to make my end-of-year best books list:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson
Attack of the Theater People by Marc Acito
Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos

I'm not even half way through The 19th Wife, but it has me completely hooked. Ebershoff also wrote one of my ALL-TIME favorite books, The Danish Girl.

Hannah West on your iPod ... or even iPhone.

My friend Terry emailed me yesterday to tell me that she came across my middle-grade mystery series, Hannah West, available on audio. Had I forgotten to mention it to her? There was no forgetting -- BECAUSE I DIDN'T KNOW! Ay caramba. How does that happen?

I'm thrilled that any book of mine is an audio book (although I wish someone had told me that was in the works). I was especially excited to see this little bit of promotional copy: "Use your own iPhone, mp3 player or iPod for playing Hannah West on Millionaire's Row audio book.

I don't have an iPhone, but my fictional creation can be heard on one. That greatly amuses me. If the series is succcessful on audio, I will be further amused and pleased by royalties.

Flower Children by Maxine Swann:

Maxine Swann’s story “Flower Children” won both an O. Henry Award and a Pushcart Prize, and was included in The Best American Short Stories. Nearly a decade later, that story forms the first chapter of her lyrical novel, Flower Children, about four siblings raised by their living-off-the-land hippie parents in the 1970s. Everything about this short novel is beautiful, from the occasional and (successful) experimental plural third person protagonist to the stunning descriptions of how children with unlimited freedom yearn to conform.

Consider this passage from when the children first go to school and learn penmanship and rules:

“They learn not to swear. They get prizes for obedience, for following the rules down to the last detail. They’re delighted by these rules, these arbitrary lines that regulate behavior and mark off forbidden things and they examine them closely and exhaust their teachers with questions about the mechanical functioning and the hidden intricacies of these beings, the rules ...”

Gosh, you know, that whole section was delightful when I first read it. The problem with posting it here, out of context, is that it might not actually entice you into reading this book. That’s always a problem with excerpts, though.

This is the kind of writing I used to revel in. Too often these days, I read for a different kind of escape, where I want to get whisked into a story or involved with the characters. Now, don’t get me wrong – I cared a lot for the four kids in this book. But it was the writing that I most looked forward to each time I opened the book, the way that Swann let me in to observe this family and their friends, never making a judgment. I think this would be an exceptional fictional companion read for The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeanette Walls.

It's Mii! (A Wii me, for the uninitiated.) I love love love Wii tennis. You can probably tell how good of a player I am by my focused, determined look and my smooth two-handed backhand.

I'm way behind in posting about books and vacation. We just got back from two weeks in Belize. Our first trip to Central America, first trip to the Caribbean, and first trip to the jungle. I'll post a couple of pictures later, but the real travelogue will be on Flickr.