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May 2015: Books I Read Recently

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If you’re a regular reader here, you’ll know that in January 2015 the reader in me died. It was unfortunate, and while I don’t want to bash the guy – it was the author Andrew Grant, and his David Trevellyan series of books.

No offense to him at all – as I wrote in that article – I actually LIKED the first book! But the second was just so bad that it killed off my reading bug. I actually didn’t read at all in February 2015. Not one book. I can’t remember the last time I went a whole month without reading.

Thankfully I got back into reading for the months of March and April.

I knew what I had to do was go back to a series of books that I really enjoyed reading, and only read once. Thankfully these days I have a bad memory. I mean that’s not a good thing – but when it comes to re-reading a book it is as I can enjoy the smaller details with only a broad memory of how the books end.

I went with the Dan “Spider” Shepherd series of novels.

These are written by Stephen Leather and boy are they amazing. If you’ve never read this series, I can’t recommend it enough and it got me back into reading.

I didn’t go through all of them, but I read:

  1. Hard Landing
  2. Soft Target
  3. Cold Kill
  4. Hot Blood
  5. Dead Men
  6. Live Fire

So 6 of them. Not bad. I’ll probably fire through the rest in the series soon too. His latest book Black Ops comes out July 2015 so I’ll make sure I finish the entire series by then!

But thank you Mr. Stephen Leather for getting my love of reading back.

I also read Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. It was funny as I couldn’t escape this book. Everywhere I went I saw it online. On reviews, on websites, on book recommendation sites. It was constant.

Then I went to Europe to visit my family last month, and my sister asks what I’m reading. I tell her Spider Shepherd books, and she says “Oh I just started The Girl on the Train”.

So I gave up, connected to their wifi and bought it right there and then.

I really enjoyed it. I’ve seen mixed reviews – but I think a lot of people on the internet tend to go into books like this with a strong negative opinion to begin with. They saw how heavy it was pushed, saw the comparisons to Gone Girl – and hell, they just hate ANYTHING popular.

I personally really enjoyed it. I felt the stories were done well, the representation of an alcoholic was great without being over the top, and I was immersed in the whole story. I was able to picture the characters very well and yeah – just a really enjoyable novel.

Next on the list was Irvine Welsh and his new novel A Decent Ride. This book focused on Juice Terry, who was a main character in Porno. This was um…quite the book. I saw some really negative reviews of it – but that was mostly based on some of the things that occur in it. Really – I thought it was another enjoyable read, and if you like Irvine Welsh you’ll like this.

I then read Harlan Cobens new novel The Stranger. It was okay. I didn’t feel as connected to the characters, and while the mystery was good – it wasn’t as satisfying as some of his novels.

I ended the last couple of months by re-reading a Harlan Coben book. I had read all his standalone novels once already – and I was curious about their re-reading value based on the fact that they are mystery novels with lots of twists and turns. Decided to give it a whirl.

I’m unsure to be honest how I felt. I read Just One Look and while I enjoyed it and again could only remember the basics of it – it wasn’t quite the same.

That was it for me. What did you read recently?

Book Series In Order » Blog » May 2015: Books I Read Recently

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