Authors agree: reading is writing. Reading is mental calisthenics that develops writing muscle–voice, cadence, timing, dialogue, and sense of story. Diversity of topics provides an appreciation for perspectives, styles, and world view.
Following is a list of books I’ve recently read:
Paris Trout – Pete Dexter – June 2025
Cormac McCarthy must have had Paris Trout in mind when he created Anton Chigurh. In fact, if he was trying to outdo Dexter’s psychopathic protagonist Paris Trout, he had stiff competition. Chigurh might have killed more people, but his mind was no less twisted than Trout’s. A real southern mind-bender from a former newspaperman and author who knows first-hand about indifferent, ruthless, homicidal characters.
I Heard They Paint Cowboys – Chris Bauer – May 2025
Bauer begins his thriller with a flamethrower setting a mummer string band ablaze and never lets up. It would be hard to find a more memorable protagonist than Counsel Fungo, female bounty hunter, retired state police officer, with two attack canines and Tourette’s syndrome. And her supporting cast is just as memorable. Bauer weaves this thriller together from the Second Amendment rights lobby, a gun control advocates, professional art forgers, vigilantes, a bail bondswoman, an unstable transexual ex-con, and a presidential candidate who put him behind bars when he was a prosecutor and takes the reader on a wild ride through the streets of downtown Scranton in the Pocono Mountains. An author with the guts to take on the gun lobby has to be from Philly.
The Hiding Place – Corrie Ten Boom – May 2025
A remarkable story of a courage, shrewdness, and faith embodied by a Dutch family who was part of the resistance against the Nazi occupation during World War II. Casper Ten Boom, patriarch of the family and master watchmaker in Haarlem on the outskirts of Amsterdam, was a religious man who read the bible to his family every evening. The family risked everything, many of them their own lives, hiding Jews in a secret room in their house. Once their hidden room was filled to capacity, Casper’s daughter Corrie became the lynchpin in finding safe houses around the Netherlands. She also worked with others in the resistance acquiring forged food vouchers. The Ten Boom family was finally caught and sent to concentration camps that took the life of most of the family. Corrie survived and traveled the world telling her story and advocating for social justice.
At the Fights – American writers on Boxing, Foreword by Colum McCann – February 2025
Shake off your disbelief that literary award winner Colum McCann wrote the foreword of a collection of stories by the greatest boxing writers ever to pen an analysis of the sport, as well as many of the greatest authors. Scan the table of contents and find London, Tunney, Baldwin, Plimpton, Mailer, Hamill, Dexter, Joyce Carol Oates, and you have covered a wide swath of the entire literary universe. Consider David Remnick who wrote biographies of both President Obama and Muhammad Ali, but won the Pulitzer Prize for his book about the collapse of the Soviet Empire and there is no possible way you cannot pass up this incredible collection, not even a non-boxing fan.
The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion – February 2025
The Year of Magical Thinking is sad, tragic, amazing, incisive, and at times, satirical. Only Didion could write with such courage and candor about the deaths of her husband (you sit down to dinner and your life changes forever) and daughter, who had slipped into a coma the week prior and died less than two years later. Known for her incisive attention to detail, she leads the reader to believe no stone has been left unturned, then pulls out the rug coving a deep well of personal affairs. In a remarkable aside, Didion writes that she doesn’t know the rules of grammar, a pretty stunning reveal for a National Book Award winner. To compensate, the chronicler of some of the most significant events of the 1960-70s says she writes according to the way the narrative feels and sounds to her ear.
On Boxing – Joyce Carol Oates – January 2025
When the author of more than one hundred works of fiction, with literary awards that include the National Book Award and the O. Henry, writes a book about boxing, there is no way to ignore it. This concise, insightful, unusual, and at times philosophical, study of what many consider the most violent of sports is a perspective that no sportswriter could ever achieve. The rare literary work goes beyond the records of champions and iconic matches and looks under the hood at the psychology of men who square off to knock one other out, as well as the fans who pay hard earned money to cheer them on. Oates observes that boxing isn’t a sport because you play baseball, basketball, football and hockey; you don’t play boxing. But it’s not all gore and death, for she spends significant time in praise of the boxers’ work ethic, athleticism, dedication, discipline, stamina, and respect for not only their sport, but their opponent. A tad over one hundred pages, Joyce Carol Oates leaves no doubt that she is a fight fan who has seen her share of boxing matches.
No Country For Old Men – Cormac McCarthy
December 2024
Terse, violent, psychopathic story immersed in the otherworldly beauty of the southern border states. Images of Chigurh will have you double check the locks on your doors and windows.
I Don’t Want To Go Home, The Oral History Of The Stone Pony – Nick Corasaniti
December 2024
Nick Corasaniti, political reporter for the New York Times and music connoisseur, interviews key players and records the history of the iconic music mecca The Stone Pony, one time home to Bruce Springsteen and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. Told in the words of club owners Jack and Butch, bartenders, bouncers, promoters, agents, and the musicians themselves. Corasaniti traces the Pony from its humble beginnings as worn-down hole-in-the-wall dive bar in the down-and-out Jersey Shore town of Asbury Park to international destination for musicians from around the globe.
Train Dreams – Denis Johnson
November 2024
Robert Grainier lived a full, hard, tragic, adventurous life as a logger for Spokane International clearing logs for a railroad gang along the Idaho panhandle. The loss of family and home in a devastating forest fire sets the stage for a moving story of survival.
Cradle – Chris Bauer
November 2024
A thriller that marries contemporary themes of illegal immigration, AI and space travel with a police chase to find two felons hell-bent on taking down a Peruvian drug cartel kingpin.
Too Loud A Solitude – Bohumil Hrabal
November 2024
Absurd, horrifying, historical, sober, relevant. A romp through the banal life of a Czech paper compactor who spends his day bailing literature and nights drinking beer. Kafkaesque tale of oppression, censorship of literature, and Nazi propaganda about adoration of Hitler, and battle for freedom in Prague.
The Sentence – Louise Erdrich
November 2024
Heartfelt story about ghosts, books, love, struggles, family tension, the pandemic and civil unrest. Fall in love with protagonist ex-con Tookie, and memorable Native American characters who are flawed, admirable, simple, complex, hard, and lovable. Revel in Ojibwe recipes, cooking, crafts, incense, arts, and music. The Sentence has the power to penetrate readers’ lives.
Erasure – Percival Everett
September 2024
Everett combines humor with deft literary skills to call out the absurdity of racism in the publishing industry, and therefore society as a whole. Protagonist, Thelonious Ellison, “call me Monk,” is not black enough for the publishing establishment, which pisses him off. Exchanges between Monk and his agent trying to coach him to be ‘more black,’ are hysterical.
Plot Against America – Phillip Roth
September 2024
Reading Roth’s novel about Charles Lindbergh’s candidacy for president of the United States will have you believe Roth had a crystal ball with a clear picture of America in the Twenty-first Century, complete with authoritarianism and anti-immigrant sentiment. Scary!
Say Nothing – Patrick Radden Keefe
August 2024
A violent, sober story of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, centered around Jean McConville, mother of ten, dragged from her home in the projects of Belfast and ‘disappeared.’ A story of the pure madness that was the 1970s in Northern Ireland’s six counties where Catholics were fighting the British and Protestants, or Prods, for their civil rights and to unite with the Irish Republic (the twenty-six counties to the south not under British rule.) Of all the many books I’ve read about The Troubles, Say Nothing moved me the most.
Crook Manifesto – Colson Whitehead
July 2024
Ray Carney was on the “straight and narrow,” for four years since Harlem Shuffle. Out of the game until he hooked up with Detective Munson, a dirty cop with no morals or regard for life. Crook Manifesto is a wild ride leaving the reader wanting an encore.
Ship Breaker – Paolo Bacigalupi
July 2024
Working conditions in breaking yards in Bangladesh are horrifying. What Paolo Bacigalupi does in this stunning novel is give the people who work under such harsh conditions a name and a voice.
Slow Horses – Mick Herron
May 2024
Fast-paced story about outcast MI5 agents banished from Regent Park, fictional British Intelligence HQ. Slough House, a nondescript three-story building on a busy London street with a filthy black front door where nobody ever enters or leaves is home to discarded spies. Herron combines crusty, warped, and hysterical characters with sharp dialogue into a captivating page turner.
The Detective Up Late – Adrian McKinty
April 2024
Sean Duffy visits a missing girl’s family, sees the mother with a black eye, and shoves his revolver into the father’s throat and says, “I think your family would be better off without you,” dropping the deadbeat to his knees and bringing him to tears. That’s how the story begins in another Sean Duffy thriller. McKinty keeps the pedal to the metal to the last page. Dialogue, narrative, and wit grow stronger by the page, and in the end Duffy, dare I say, is almost lovable.
We Don’t Know Ourselves – Fintan O’Toole
June 2024
Born in 1958, Fintan O’Toole writes a history of Ireland during his lifetime. Flashback to the Easter Rising of 1916, onto Bloody Sunday in 1972, the slaughter of innocent civilians by British paratroopers, the suppression of civil rights, the tit-for-tat. The Good Friday Agreement in 1998 finally ends the sectarian warfare. Written in the context of Ireland’s nationalist movement, link between the traditional agrarian/pre-economic development society, development with the modern world, economic boom known as Celtic Tiger. Unique perspective and education of Ireland’s history.
Razorblade Tears – S.A. Cosby
March 2024
Razorblade Tears is about Ike “Riot” Randolph, a black ex-con not fond of white people, and Buddy Lee, a good old boy and ex-con himself with an aversion toward blacks, who become an unlikely pair when they team up to hunt down the murderers of their gay sons. A break-neck paced thriller that hits every note on the emotion scale—love, hate, tenderness, alienation, and reconciliation. Oh, and plenty of broken bones and blood. Everything about Riot and Buddy Lee’s relationship defies logic, and that’s what makes it so damn good.
Cobalt – Chris Bauer
March 2024
Chris Bauer takes the reader on an energetic race against time for global dominance in mining Cobalt, the precious metal prized by industry and governments because of its use in lithium-ion batteries that will power international demand for clean energy in everything from computers to cars, trucks, buses and beyond.
All The Sinners Bleed – S. A. Cosby
February 2024
S.A. Cosby caught my attention with his New York Times essay about Chester Himes. Three novels later I know him as a master storyteller who crafts crime thrillers with real characters who speak dialogue so true you can hear the inflection in their voices. Take Titus Crown in All The Sinners Bleed for example. A former FBI agent, Titus is the first black sheriff in a rural southeast Virginia county in the post-Jim Crow era. No match in his hunt for a gruesome serial killer.
Trespasses – Louise Kennedy
January 2024
A powerful, heartbreaking story of a young Catholic elementary school teacher whose family operates a pub that precariously caters to both Prods and Taigs without being blown up by either group. Cushla, the teacher, falls into a romantic affair with Michael, a Prod barrister, a relationship that is fraught on so many levels it must be kept under wraps. Trespasses is as powerful and sad as that tragic time in Northern Ireland’s history.
Once A Welder 