OrderOfBooks.com April 2022 Mid-Month Newsletter
Hi everyone and welcome to halfway through April!
I had a great time with my mum and 4-year-old nephew, who visited me from Scotland for a week. First time I’ve seen them since December 2019, so it was an extra special time due to that.
Two negatives: The first is that it went fast. Way too fast! The second is that I didn’t have much of a chance to read!
My nephew kept me nice and busy and there was very little downtime. I also felt I was running on fumes all week as he had a lot of energy and I had to keep up – then I’d make the mistake of getting to bed at a decent time, but sneaking in an hour of reading when I really should have been going to sleep!
I’m currently reading The Chessmen, the final book in the Lewis Trilogy by the highly recommended Peter May.
I loved The Blackhouse and The Lewis Man. Actually before I had even finished The Blackhouse, I was messaging some people to recommend it. That’s how much I was enjoying it. If you haven’t read this trilogy, be sure to give it a go.
Also still listening to The Night Shift by Alex Finlay. I’m about halfway through this one and enjoying it a lot.
Speaking of audiobooks – I just picked up a pair of Aftershokz Aerpex and I am absolutely loving them. They are open-ear bone conduction headphones and I prefer them to my wireless ear buds.
It’s nice being able to hear everything around you, and I find I am using them more than the ear buds for the short walks I do each day. That should allow me to get through audiobooks more which is always good!
Not too much else going on. It’s been a busy work week getting caught up, but the weather has been nice so I’ve been able to pop into the hot tub most nights this week for a couple of hours of reading. I’ve also started the TV show Schitt’s Creek and I see what all the fuss is about – a very enjoyable show.
Each month we give away 5 prizes to 5 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:
Pat M. from Queens Village, NY
Jaci B. from Urbana, OH
Dave from Oxford, MI (email starts with drm)
Phyllis S. from Charlotte, NC
Roger P. from South Lake, CA
All of you have been e-mailed. If you don’t see anything, check your junk folder or contact me.
Graeme
OrderOfBooks.com
Quote of the Mid-Month
’How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.’’
– A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh)
A quote that really struck home after saying goodbye to my mum and nephew at the airport. Feel free to submit your own quotes to site@orderofbooks.com or just hit reply. It can be just general quotes about books, author quotes within a novel or even character quotes.
Book / Series Recommendations
In this section I give book or series 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!
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
A standalone novel by Lisa. Recommended by a few people. Joni wrote in:
“I never thought I would recommend a “single” book and say it was better than any other, but I just finished “Before We Were Yours” by Lisa Wingate. This one is fiction, but based on the reality of children taken to be sold for adoption from the 20’s to 50’s. I could not read it fast enough. It had me in tears, and definitely reflecting on what is important in life… If this isn’t your thing, your wife may love it!
(This is different even for me… I normally love Linwood Barclay, Joseph Finder, James Patterson, etc.)”
To me that’s always the sign of a good recommendation; when it’s not the type of book you normally read but really enjoy.
See our Lisa Wingate page for more details.
Detective Hiroshi Series by Michael Pronko
I know there are many fans of detective novels reading this, so this may be an interesting series to try as it takes place in Japan. I always enjoy reading books set in a different locale, and this award-winning series sounds great.
Jane wrote in to recommend it, stating that it is “A great detective story and interesting look into the the culture and sights of modern Japan.”.
There are currently four books in the series.
The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Phoenix wrote in to recommend this one, stating that it was the best book they had read in 2020. Here is what they wrote:
“On the surface, it seems simply a children’s fantasy novel, but underneath it is really quite deep.
Faith, superstition, and fear mingle with love and hope creating an unbreakable bond, and I confess that I was entranced. It asks the questions, Can good travel with evil, and good still triumph? Will prolonged exposure to good eventually break down evil’s barriers? How often do we start out thinking we are one thing, only to discover, after walking our own journeys, that we are something else entirely? Does every path we take, every adventure, every quest simply bring us closer to ourselves, as we were meant to be? What a wonder to discover that our unsightly humps are really wings, waiting to be unfurled and spread!
The time frame in which the author writes is one of my favorites. My favorite series of books is Margaret Frazer’s Dame Frivesse mysteries. And Cadfael, of course. Those books are wonderful to read, and I can lose myself in them quite easily. But The Book of Boy is different. It makes me think, makes me wonder, makes me ask questions, and search my own heart for answers.”
See our Catherine Gilbert Murdock page for more details.
April Charities
While I appreciate all offers of donations to show your appreciation for the site and newsletter, I’d much rather you do that by supporting some great causes. Each month I pick a few select charities broken down by our most popular countries or topics that you can support instead. Thanks!
Animal Rescue: Harmony Fund
Australia: Bundjalung Community Flood Relief
Books: Pajama Program
Foster Care: Day 1 Bags
I rotate this list each month. Feel free to suggest a charity – hit reply.
Facebook Question of the Month
Each month I ask readers on our Facebook page a question, then list the responses here.
Unfortunately, this month the question I posed barely got any responses and I never had a chance to ask another.
I did notice however that when I had never uploaded the mid-March 2020 newsletter. That was a special newsletter due to the beginning of the pandemic, and is what started the mid-month newsletters.
So I have uploaded that today with a great list of “Book Series you can Escape Into” which we all needed at that time.
You can read that and see the list here.
April 2022 Book Of The Month (16th-30th)
Danielle Steel is still going strong, and on April 19th her latest book is released which is titled Beautiful.
Veronique Vincent is a 22 year old supermodel. She lives a glamorous life although doesn’t really enjoy it.
Brought up in the home of a single and hard working mother, Veronique prefers relaxing at home or hanging out with her boyfriend.
Then a terrorist attack at an airport changes her life forever. It takes away the two people she has loved most, and leaves her alone and in the hospital. She is really struggling until she reads the will, and accompanying letter, that her mother left her. These findings will change her life forever.
10 More Notable Books Releasing Apr 15-30
- Shadow Fire by Christine Feehan
- Immortal Rising by Lynsay Sands
- Death of the Black Widow by James Patterson & J.D. Barker
- Kingdom of Bones by James Rollins
- When She Dreams by Amanda Quick
- A Perilous Perspective by Anna Lee Huber
- The Wrong Victim by Allison Brennan
- Cold Snap by Marc Cameron
- City on Fire by Don Winslow
- The Order by Jeremy Robinson
Random Top 10 of the Month
10 Great Short Series
Sometimes it can be fun to pick up a short series to read. It’s why I am enjoying the Lewis Trilogy – because I can invest all my reading time into it, and reading it as if it is a complete story. As opposed to say the Bosch Universe, where I felt obligated to put them down every couple of books just to break it up.
Here are 10 great short series:
- The Lewis Trilogy by Peter May
- Kane and Abel Series by Jeffrey Archer
- Sam Capra Series by Jeff Abbott (Great Spy Thrillers)
- Carter Blake Series by Mason Cross
- Wayward Pines by Blake Crouch
- Waverly Place / Gilded Hour by Sara Donati
- Time and Again Series by Jack Finney
- Cormac Reilly by Dervla McTiernan
- The Patternmaster by Octavia E. Butler
- The Time Quintent by Madeleine L’Engle
Reader Mailbag – Your Thoughts
This month’s question:
If there are authors whose books you “blindly buy”, do you read the book description beforehand?
I thought of this question while reading The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart. I’ve only read one book by him so far, so I made the decision to read the description of novel first.
I’m glad I did because the book itself throws you right into the middle of this futuristic world featuring a hotel that you can time travel from without any explanation!
As a test, I gave it to my wife to read without letting her see the description. After spending a few minutes reading, she stopped and said she had absolutely no idea what the heck was going on.
Luckily I then explained it to her. She restarted the book, understood it this time and ended up loving it.
It got me thinking about the books I read. I usually don’t dive deep into book descriptions – especially with authors such as Lee Child or Michael Connelly.
I may read the first line or two just to get the general concept but that is it.
What about you? Do you read the descriptions beforehand? For authors whose books you normally blindly buy – is the description ever going to change your mind and convince you not to buy the novel?
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. Five people will also randomly win a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.
