July 2019 Newsletter
Happy Canada Day to my Canadian readers, and welcome to July.
This is going to be a rather abbreviated version of the newsletter unfortunately. It’s been a bit of a crazy time for me lately. I had to fly over to Scotland out of nowhere for a couple of weeks due to a family situation. I arrived back on Friday and we had to go to the cottage on Saturday for a week and then I am back off to Scotland again. So yeah crazy time. I’ll probably skip a few of the more time consuming portions of the newsletter here but we’ll be back in business again next month.
This month I read the new book Recursion by Blake Crouch. Incredible book and if you enjoyed Dark Matter, be sure to pick this one up.
Reading that, it got me motivated to go through the books by Blake Crouch I haven’t read yet. There was one real hit and one real miss. I’ll list the “hit” in the recommends section below.
The “miss” was Snowbound which was an early book by Crouch and it ignored all of the crazy stuff the man can come up with. It was just a really bad generic thriller and if you are going through Crouch books, feel free to skip that one.
It motivated me however to re-read the Wayward Pines trilogy. It’s interesting going back and re-reading that. At the time I had no idea what to expect and thought it was just a general thriller series. I had no idea what a beautiful mind Crouch had. Going back and re-reading it I am really appreciating it that much more.
If you’re a long time reader of this newsletter, you’ll know my time at the cottage is usually spent reading standalone thrillers. Not sure why that is but I love having those books that I can just fly through, glued to the mystery more than anything else.
Only read one so far which was the Girl You Lost by Kathryn Croft. A 6 month old gets abducted, but then a girl shows up 18 years later claiming to be that girl.
Kathryn is one of those authors who really grew as a writer. This is an earlier book and it’s very rough – if I didn’t know what she was capable of I’d probably have stopped reading early on. However I stuck with it and it ended up being a solid enough book. Not one of her best but I was happy enough that I invested the time in reading it.
Hopefully I’ll get to some more standalone thrillers in between reading the Pines books.
Alright that’s it for me. Oh big thanks to everyone for the positive feedback I received last month – so many incredibly nice e-mails. Truly appreciate all of that.
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 Don H from Pearland, TX and Doug from Georgetown, TX . Both of you have been e-mailed. If you don’t see anything, check your junk folder or contact me.
Book/Series Recommendations:
In this section I give 4-5 random book recommendations. 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!
Mitch Rapp series by Vince Flynn
This is one of my favourite series and I’ve read through it three times so far. I was motivated to recommend it again by a reader who just discovered it.
Rapp is basically an assassin for the CIA. Simple as that. There’s a secret section of the CIA that he works for to do those missions that the USA can’t be held responsible for.
It’s not the most unique plot in the world but Vince Flynn absolutely makes it work. It’s just an incredible series with great action, political drama, and fantastic characters to boot.
Vince Flynn passed away but Kyle Mills has did an excellent job and paying faith to the Rapp universe.
One thing – there is a standalone Vince wrote called Term Limits. Start with that. Rapp isn’t in it but it is part of the Mitch Rapp universe and is an excellent book as well with a great introduction to some characters.
This book isn’t Blakes best by a long shot but it’s a book that makes you sit back and think “what if I was in this situation” and I always appreciate that.
Something bizarre is happening in America. Many people witnessed this crazy light in the sky and suddenly it appears to be changing them. Mass school shootings. Riots. Violence everywhere. The police can’t control them – or are even joining up with them in the violence. Then they start reading names out on the Emergency Broadcast System of people to be killed. One such name is Jack Colclough, the main protagonist of the book.
Join Jack, his wife and two kids as they try to escape and travel an America that is in ruin and whose citizens are hunting down everyone they can to kill them.
What I really enjoyed this book was sitting back and thinking what if I was in the same situation? You can really picture yourself in that spot and you get connected to the character. This is a solid book club book too – as it’s a great book to discuss “What if this all happened to you?”.
Highly recommended in terms of that. The final act of the book I wasn’t a huge fan of but one that I was encouraging my friends to read as soon as I was done, so we could chat about it together.
The Peter Ash series by Nick Petrie
I’ve recommended this series a few times in the newsletter but I don’t have much time to do research this month so I’m going with it again.
You might have seen lists that say “If you like Jack Reacher you’ll like this” – well if this Nick Petrie series isn’t #1 on that list, then the list is garbage and that’s just a fact.
Out of every book or series or author I have recommended in this newsletter over the years, I’ve never received as much positive feedback as I have for this series. Peter Ash is basically Jack Reacher and Nick Petrie is one of the only authors to capture the magic that Lee Child had in a bottle.
f you like Jack Reacher…..read the Peter Ash series.
July 2019 Book of the Month:
It’s that time of year again – where my website traffic starts going up on the Daniel Silva page and he becomes the most popular author of the month as people seek out info on his new book.
The latest book in the Gabriel Allon series, The New Girl, comes out this month and I know there is a lot of excitement for this.
Silva is one of those authors that still seem to be going very strong after all these years and always has a story to tell.
The latest one comes out this month.
Audiobook Arena:
Written by Karl D.
The Jack Reacher series of books read by Dick Hill. Dick Hill “channels” Reacher like he was born into Reacher’s virtual 6″5’frame. He makes the series come alive with his scratchy, staccato voice, and I don’t know how else to describe it as being Reacher-y with his Reacher-isms. (i.e “Reacher said nothing.”)
We have a lot of audiobook fans and invite book listeners to write their own column every month. Want to discuss audiobooks or a favourite narrator? Hit reply and write and we’ll feature your column in a future newsletter!
Your Thoughts:
Last month I asked you about suggestions for my new book notification website. Your feedback is later in the newsletter.
This month I am asking what is the most memorable scene or scenes in a book that you have read?
Now we want to avoid spoilers where possible – so if you can be vague then great. And please write it with the title of the book and author first so people can see that and stop reading if they don’t want spoilers.
For me:
Transfer of Power by Vince Flynn: When Mitch has a job to do, however he sees a women(Anna) in distress. He’s being urged to carry on with his mission……but then he makes the right choice.
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch: The internet chat room.
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.
And even if everything I said above covers everything you’d need – still let us know! That way we know we’re on the right track, and you also get a chance at winning the random $25 prizes.