April 2020 Mid-Month Newsletter
Welcome to the second “mid-month” newsletter!
I published a special mid-month newsletter in March, with a lot of reader suggestions on book series to get stuck into during isolation/quarantine.
It ended up being a big success, with many of you saying you’d love to hear from me twice a month as opposed to just once per month. That’s great to hear and so I thought I’d give it a whirl.
It allows me to talk more about the books I’ve read at least. I already yammer on a fair bit in the introduction and so I only cover a few of the books I’ve read that month. Now I can talk a bit more about them which is good.
Now this is going to be a more “condensed” version of the newsletter. So there will be certain sections missing or limited. For example normally I do 4-5 book recommendations in the monthly newsletter but for the mid-month newsletter I’ll only do two.
I’ll also remove the “upcoming books” section and there will be no new reader mailbag as that will remain a month long deal. However I thought we could add new features such as “charts” – top 10 most popular authors and series of the month on the site. Now this may end up being dull if it’s the same authors and series over and over but I figure it’s worth trying out and I’ll date that back to January 2020.
If there’s anything else you’d like me to cover – be it in the mid-month newsletter or the monthly newsletter – let me know! Always happy to add new features etc to the newsletter.
One thing I will do too is take to Facebook for recommendations on a specific niche. For example cozy mysteries, Scandinavian detectives, sci-fi short stories etc then present that in future newsletters. If you have any suggestions for topics like that let me know by hitting reply.
Reading wise I made some progress in the Bosch universe:
The Closers by Michael Connelly: What an incredible book this was. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Harry is in a new department working on closed cases. It was something different from the usual and I’m a big fan of those “cold case” TV shows etc as it’s fascinating going back and looking at historical stories like that. Excellent book and one of my favourite books in the series thus far.
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly: I’m sure this is what introduced a lot of people to Connelly due to the movie. I loved this book. One thing I thought was great is normally when I read a Connelly book, Bosch or not, they generally feel the same. This one felt fresh, and different and I forgot all about the fact that it was a Connelly book.
And the movie? Wow! First of all a murderer’s row of great actors. Second it stayed so true to the book which was great. I absolutely loved this movie and seeing the book being played out in real life. One of my favourite book to movie adaptations and I sat there with a big dumb grin on my face the entire time.
Mr Nobody by Catherine Steadman: I enjoyed Catherines debut standalone thriller Something in the Water. I remember concept wise it was excellent although very rough around the edges but I was happy to give her another try.
Like many standalone thrillers these days, it is a bit frustrating at the beginning as it gives you 5 or 6 mysteries that you need to keep reading to find out the story behind them. Some of them were fine such as the main storyline; a man wakes up on a beach with no recollection of how he got there, no memory of what happened to him or who he is etc. That’s fine. But the fact that he has something important written on his hand, and the author chooses not to reveal what that is? That sort of thing is always frustrating. Feels like such a cop out when things like that aren’t revealed and this wasn’t revealed until about the last 10 percent of the book.
Overall though I really enjoyed it. It took me a little while to get into it but once I did, I was hooked and I was satisfied with how everything wrapped up. I thought it did a good job of making you root for the female protagonist etc.
I’m now reading Power Down, the first novel in the Dewey Andreas series by Ben Coes. I read that book back in 2010 when Vince Flynn recommended it and really enjoyed it however I never got round to reading any more in the series. So going to go back and read the first one then hopefully the rest.
Each month we give away 2 prizes to 2 random subscribers of $25 each in the form of Amazon gift certificates. To win all you have to do is be a subscriber. Nothing more! When we go to hit “Publish” we take a list of all of our subscribers, throw them into a random draw and those are the winners.
Due to current circumstances, I’ve temporarily upped that to 10 winners until the day I can walk downtown and just pop into a pub for a quick pint again. At that point all my money will be going towards draught beer and wings instead!
Our winners this month are:
Pat W. from Toronto, ON
Joanne S. from Peekskill, NY
Earl D. from Sacramento, CA
Susan B. from Cincinnati, OH
Diane H. from Ashburn, VA
Donald McG from Hamilton, ON
Lynn S. from Franklin, NC
Mary B. from Ottawa, ON
Jane from Lagrange, GA
Patrick B. from Camarillo, CA
All of you have been e-mailed. If you don’t see anything, check your junk folder or contact me.
Book Recommendations:
In this section I give 2 random book recommendations when it’s the mid-month newsletter, and 4-5 recommendations for the monthly newsletter. They can be old books, they can be new. But either way – I recommend you read them if the type of genre they are in appeals to you. Feel free to e-mail suggestions to site@orderofbooks.com as many of the suggestions each month are from our readers. If you wish to add a description for the book around the same size as the ones below that’d be great too!
The Girl You Left Behind by JoJo Moyes
What I really enjoy when doing these recommendations is when rather then write a description myself, I get to share what a reader wrote. Especially when they are so obviously passionate about a book and loved it. That’s the case with this one. Loretta wrote in:
I had to share this with you. I finished reading The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes. I could not put this book down – finally had to at 11:30 last night and then up this a.m. to finish.
This is a really good historical novel that also has two love stories – 100 years apart – and it covers many issues. One of which involves restitution of art that has been stolen, and well as the German occupation in France, the gray morality of war, etc. Her characters are not all good or all bad. Her attention to details (but not too wordy) conveys so much and that is what makes it believable. An added delight is that she wrote a prequel to this – Honeymoon in Paris – which she included at the end of the book – definitely going to read later. Normally, I do not reread a book, but this one I might because I was hurrying through to see what happened.
PS – Can you tell that I am really excited about this book 🙂
Yes I can tell, and I love the passion. Check out our JoJo Moyes page!
The Mike Garin Series by Peter Kirsanow
I haven’t read this series myself yet however I got talking to reader Ron, whose favourite genre is the black ops / spy thriller type books.
He recommended this series to me which has two books so far, saying if I like Rapp and Reacher I’d like this, and that it is a “must read” for anyone into black ops books.
The first book in the series is Target Omega. It’s about a very secret and elite ultra-black ops unit whose job is dealing with terrorists and rogue regimes. They return from a successful operation only for everyone on the team to be assassinated except for their leader Michael Garin. Garin ends up not being just the sole survivor but also the chief suspect and his own government has turned against him.
Reminds me of the first “Gray Man” book to a degree, and I’m looking forward to trying it out. Check out our Peter Kirsanow page.
Top 10 Charts:
I used symbols for the up and down arrows and so on. Hopefully it all turns out okay in the newsletter but if anything weird shows up let me know.
For future months I’ll give a quick summary of how things went as well and make notes as to potential reasons for changes. For example Dean Koontz breaking the top 10 in March? Yeeeah there might be a little thing going on in real life right now that’s the reason for that 😉
Will be interesting to see if Mitch Rapp continues his drop. Kyle Mills just announced a new book so I’m curious to see if just the buzz of a new book (Total Power, September 15th) will be enough to keep him on the list after dropping to 10th on the list.
Top Spelling Errors: David Baldacci Edition
Everyone makes spelling mistakes. It happens. One job I have been doing recently on the website is making a list of common spelling errors for an author, so that even if someone spells them incorrectly they still get led to that page.
I’ve found some real doozies for so many authors and thought each month I’d feature some of the best spelling errors.
This month we’re featuring the author David Baldacci and just a few examples of what people searched when trying to find his books:
David Baldacchino
David Balducci
David Baldachi
David Baldaci
David Baldacchi
David Baldicci
David Balsamic
David Baleardici
David Balldacci
David Balduci
David Badacci
David Bacardi
David Baldecci
David Baldaccid
David Ballsaacci
David Balldacci
David Baldaacci
Daniel Baldaci
James Baldacci
Jack Reacher by David Baldaacci
And my personal favourite: David Bald Ax I.
New Author Spotlight:
This month we are featuring Nicole Flattery.
Nicole is an Irish Author who has only published the one book so far. That book was called Show Them A Good Time and it is a collection of 8 short stories.
Nicole is a winner of the White Review Short Story Prize from back in 2017.
This book was named a “Most Anticipated Novel” by the likes of Entertainment Weekly, The A.V. Club and the Wall Street Journal.
Despite the initial buzz over the book, it’s received mixed reviews at best. I haven’t had the chance to personally read it yet so I can’t give my own opinion. However regardless of the reaction, I respect any person who is able to get out there and write their own book and will try and check it out this month. If you’re interested in it, check out Nicoles page.
Reader Mailbag:
This month the mailbag topic is inspired by Ann, who sent me the above picture:
Send me a picture of your book collection.
I’ve received some great submissions already. Keep them coming! Or if you just want to talk about your book collection or whatever do that too and I’ll include those submissions in next months mailbag.
Just one thing – if possible send the pictures to BOTH site@orderofbooks.com and 8ambeerpong@gmail.com just in case they are too big they don’t come through. Or if you send it and don’t get a “thanks” back from me within 2 days, follow up with me to make sure I received it? As large attachments can be iffy at times.
E-mail us your feedback to site@OrderOfBooks.com or just reply to this e-mail, and we’ll pick the best comments and feature it in next months newsletter. Two people will also randomly win a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.