January 2019 Newsletter
Welcome to the January 2019 newsletter!
First of all my apologies for the newsletter being late this month. Usually I have it out on the first of the month. I was in Scotland until January 4th, and I never had a chance to do the newsletter while over there.
I then got caught up in a few other things. Then that plus being away led me to a huge backlog of work and doing the newsletter unfortunately got away from me.
Oh before I forget – be sure to check out the really cool website Litographs.com. A reader recommended it to me and it’s such a cool website where you can get t-shirts, blankets, pillows etc where the design is actually passages from books. An idea for upcoming birthdays!
I was actually just going to skip this months newsletter but – WOW – I’m blown away by the amount of e-mails I received wondering where the newsletter was, or if I was okay etc. It was really cool seeing so many e-mails and how many of you look forward to the newsletter each month. So thank you to everyone who e-mailed; you’ve motivated me to get this newsletter out.
It’ll probably be a bit of a condensed version simply because I’d like to get it out and in mailboxes, then we’ll get right back at it in February.
I hope everyone had a good holiday season and got a lot of reading done. Alas I didn’t. I mentioned in the December newsletter that I was reading the third novel in the Orphan X series by Gregg Hurwitz. Well amazingly I am still reading that book!
It’s not that it is a bad book or anything. I just haven’t been in the mood for reading for whatever reason. My interest has temporarily switched to watching TV shows. I find that I just don’t have the time in my life for multiple sources of entertainment as odd as that is. It’s either one or the other. So I’ll spend most of my time reading, but then every few years there’ll come a time where I just spend a couple of months catching up on TV shows instead then something motivates me to get back to books.
As it is I may have that motivation as the latest Peter Ash book was released two days ago. I’ve recommended that series multiple times here previously to people who have liked Jack Reacher, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the three books in that series so far. Have it sitting on my Kindle at the moment and so I think I’ll try and at least get that done by the end of the month, time permitting.
On top of that Joseph Finder has a new book at the tail end of the month. One of my top 5 authors so can’t wait for that. You know what? With that and a few other books by authors I like coming out – I’m getting a bit more motivated to get back to reading!
TV wise I’ve been going through Ray Donovan which is an excellent show if you’re a fan of the Sopranos and The Good Place which was a show I enjoyed so much I immediately rewatched it with the wife and kids.
I think I’ll make a multi-part mailbag question on those topics actually. Anyhoo let’s get on with the rest of the newsletter and thanks again to everyone that e-mailed! With how much e-mail we all get these days it was pretty cool seeing so many people who had missed the newsletter.
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.
Our winners this month are Rebecca V from Midland, TX and Judith from Trenton, FL. Both of you have been e-mailed. If you don’t see anything, check your junk folder or contact me.
Book Recommendations:
Usually in this section I will give recommendations. However our mailbag topic for December was What was the Best Book you Read All Year? Or what great author/series did you discover in 2018?
Rather than provide my own opinions this month, I feel it’d be good for you to check out the reader mailbag where we had lots of people e-mail their recommendations as to the best book or series they read in 2018. Here are just a few of them:
Brilliance Trilogy by Marcus Sakey.
Rowland Sinclair Mysteries by Sulari Gentill
Inspector McLean by James Oswald
DS Faraday & Winter by Graham Hurley
Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon
Any novels by John Hart
And many, many more! Check our reader mailbag for the suggestion – linked below.
January 2019 Book of the Month:
I’ll probably take a break from mentioning this series for a little while after this. I just feel like I’ve shared it a fair bit recently. I just can’t help it as every month I get e-mails from people thanking me for the recommendation – it’s been the best recommended series since I started this newsletter based on the feedback.
If you like Jack Reacher, you’ll love Peter Ash. This is the fourth book in the series and it came out January 15th. Peter heads to Memphis to help out a friend who is receiving threats. The situation has gone downhill fast by the time gets there however as someone has driven a dump truck into her living room!
As if that wasn’t enough some homeless musician has a robbery go wrong and tries to steal a truck at gunpoint. That persons truck? Peters. Yeah – that isn’t going to end well.
10 Other Notable Books Released in January
Judgement by Joseph Finder
The latest Orphan X book by Gregg Hurwitz, “Out of the Dark”
The Suspect by Fiona Barton
Crucible by James Rollins (Sigma Force)
Demon’s Mercy by Rebecca Zanetti (Dark Protectors)
The New Iberia Blues by James Lee Burke (Dave Robicheaux)
Betrothed by Christina Bauer (Angelbound)
Murder, She Meowed by Liz Mugavero (Pawsitively Organic)
The Wrong Highlander by Lynsay Sands (Highlander)
The Wicked King by Holly Black (Folk of the Air)
Your Thoughts:
ast month I asked what the best book or series/author you read in 2018 were. Your feedback is later in the newsletter.
This month I am asking two questions based on my own lack of interest at reading at the moment.
1: Do you get in “funks” when it comes to reading? And if so how do you get yourself out of that funk?
2: Along with reading do you watch lots of TV, play video games or consume other entertainment? If so how do you balance it all?
For me – the answer to #1 appears to be the reemergence of authors who I am a big fan of. Just writing this newsletter, I got motivated to start reading so I can read the latest books by Joseph Finder, Fiona Barton and Nick Petrie. So I think it’s knowing that there are authors out there whose quality I can trust.
Come to think of it – this happened before. I got in a real funk with reading and going back to check my reading history, I see that to get out of it I re-read the entire Mitch Rapp series. So I guess that’s how I get out of a “funk” – reading or rereading books by authors I trust or series that I can re-read knowing their quality.
Looking at my reading history this past last few months I tried various new authors too. That was part of my goal for 2018 and there were quite a few stinkers in there. So maybe that just wore at me.
As for #2 – like I said in the beginning I really don’t have a balance. I will just go a long period where I usually just read, then for a month or two I’ll just stop altogether and binge a lot of TV shows. It’d be nice to have a better balance however so I’m interested in seeing your feedback.
What about you? How do you get out of the “funk”? And how do you balance reading with the rest of your life? Let us know!
E-mail us your feedback to site@OrderOfBooks.com
Hi Graeme. So glad you are back! I hope you enjoyed your holidays and I understand how you can get in a funk about reading. I think you get to a point where you read so much that you need a break (i.e. TV series…and there are some good ones right now!) I read the December mailbag and so many of the readers had some good suggestions. I have read a lot of them. I would like to add another. The book is called ‘Need To Know’ by Karen Cleveland. I really enjoyed it. There is a TV series that I am watching now on Netflix called The Last Kingdom. There is 3 seasons (did some binge watching so it went faster). It’s similar to The Vikings. Always look forward to your Newsletter!