Category Archives: Books I’ve Read

In 2008 I turned into quite the bookworm: eleven read in 2008 – I didn’t start until almost mid-year. – and eight so far in 2009, as of this writing. Eight doesn’t seem like much, but most of them have been Stephen King novels, so that explains that.
Books I’ve Read
Of course, you could just go to the Topicality drop-down menu over there and choose the link of the same name. Yes, I’m chronicling them; mainly for my own purposes, but for the other bookworms out there that might give a damn what I fill my head with.
I had a club meeting tonight and as usual, I arrived a little too early – Punctuality is one of my stronger suits. – and decided to walk over to the dollar store to see what they had. Coming up empty-handed, I walked over to the books section to see if I could find a new crossword puzzle  book (a small addiction of mine) and spotted a little black book called The Book of Murder by Guillermo Martinez. Of course, a book with Murder on the cover is going to catch my attention – I mean come on, look what I write about! So I picked it up.
I dug around a little more and found two more titles: The Shadow Catchers by Thomas Lakeman and In The Company of Liars by David Ellis. The synopses of the three sound pretty interesting so I bought them. You can’t beat buying twenty-four-dollar books for one dollar each.
These three books are going into the pile of books to read on my desk; there are three short horror story compilations sitting there now waiting for me to finish Dianetics (L. Ron Hubbard). Of course, in my pursuit of knowledge regarding different religions, the Holy Bible and the Koran are on the list but not yet in the pile. So I guess that gives me nine more books to finish by the end of the year.
You know, I could finish those if I really buckled down and tried, but I would be rushing through them so fast I wouldn’t remember a damn thing I’d read. And besides, it’s a little hard to find the time when you’re working on this here website, thinking about when I’m going to write next month’s short story (which I admit I usually don’t even worry about until I actually sit down and write it), hunting for publications to submit work to and all the other niceties of daily life I have to attend to. The only time I get to read is during my lunch breaks; it’s my little release from the day’s stresses.

I finished reading How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie today. Sitting at the lake at Fort Yargo State Park today during my lunch break, I finished up the last six chapters of this book. I spend three days a week at the park during my lunch break to partake in the peace and quiet and solitude as well as a little reading or fishing; angling for the non layperson.
Originally published in 1936, my particular paperback copy was published in 1965 and was owned by my grandmother’s second husband. I hear he was a great man and I think this book had a lot to do with it. He unfortunately passed away before I was born, as did my paternal grandfather. I would have loved to have known them both.
This is truly a great book, everyone should read it. I am saddened though that I didn’t discover this book earlier on in life as I have learned a lot from it. I started applying its principles over the past couple of weeks and have found that they actually do work.
I’m too lazy to open my own and type it all by hand, so I’m electing to take the cheap way out and copy/paste it from Wikipedia.