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Unbeatable

I was there for Notre Dame football’s national championship in 1988. I was my senior year though, so I had bigger fish to fry. After reading this book, I realized that I didn’t really appreciate it as much as I could have. At times, this book made me feel almost like an outsider; I didn’t know half of what went on.

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Master and Commander

I was looking for something to transport me to another world. I usually get his urge after reading a string of crime and spy novels, which I’ve done lately. I went in to this book wanting a Game of Thrones or Millennium Trilogy type of original escape, but I didn’t get it. It was close, but there were hurdles.

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Food Rules

I read The Omnivore’s Dilemma years ago and loved it. I’ve been meaning to read the other books by Michael Pollan but I haven’t gotten around to it. This booked popped up recently while I was wandering through Open Books trying to burn a coupon. It’s a short book with 64 food rules postulated by Pollan that aim to make you a better eater and a better human.

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Flying Finish

I don’t read Dick Francis that ravenously any more but whenever I finish a book I always wonder why. They’re crime novels based amongst the UK horse racing scene and they’re highly enjoyable.

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White Butterfly

This is the third installment of the Easy Rawlins Mysteries by Walter Mosely, written in 1992, and it reaffirms why I’m reading these. It’s fresh, dark, and original stuff that puts Mosely squarely in the class with all the crime/mystery writers I read.

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Absolute Friends

I thought about Mundy a few days ago. He’s the main character in this spy novel by John le Carré. I was just doing some dishes and I wondered if Mundy would end up being lifelong friends with Sasha. It was like I knew Mundy. He just popped into my head like any real live person I’m acquainted with. It was weird. I’m weird.

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Chancy

My sister read 76 books last year. If I’m going to try and keep up with that I’m going to have to read a lot short books. A good way to do that is to read classic, pop-westerns by the authors like Louis L’Amour. The man can pack a great story into less than 200 pages. This was one of those.

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W is for Wasted

Kinsey is the best. Any modern, tough, but caring female character stands on the shoulders of Kinsey Milhone. That’s my view, and I’m sticking by it. Luckily, you’ll probably never see her in film, so you won’t get a sexed up and more vulnerable Kinsey that Hollywood would surely desire. Grafton is not selling the rights to Kinsey to anyone.

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SS-GB

I love Len Deighton, but I’m taking a break from him for a while. I probably won’t read him again until 2015. This book kind of didn’t meet expectations and I need to burn through my backlog of other authors. My expectations are so high because of the Bernard Samson series, which was really difficult to match in terms of action and characters.

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Jericho’s Fall

I consumed two items simultaneously, one book and one TV series, with the word “Fall” in the title. That’s weird. This book, Jericho’s Fall, was written by Stephen Carter. I grabbed it at Open Books because I loved his first book, The Emperor of Ocean Park, from a few years back. They are two slightly different books, Jericho’s Fall is classic thriller and Emperor is a drama/mystery. I liked the drama/mystery much better, this was only so-so.