by Sybil Johnson
As you might guess, I love books. Always have, always will. I remember looking at a picture book of The Three Little Pigs in kindergarten and wishing I knew what all those markings on the page meant. I knew they were words and letters, but I couldn’t read them. It was very frustrating! (When I went to kindergarten in the 1960s, children learned their letters in kindergarten and learned how to read in first grade. Seems it’s a bit different now.)
My house is filled with books. My whole house is one giant TBR pile. The only rooms that don’t have books in them are the bathrooms. I pick up books when I’m traveling, get free ones at mystery conventions, pick up signed ones here and there, borrow some from friends and haunt libraries and bookstores. I also have a lot of unread books on my Kindle.
I definitely do not suffer from abibliophobia – the fear of running out of reading material.
I really, really need to read more of these books, especially the ebooks since, well, you never know when they might disappear off my Kindle.
I vowed that I wouldn’t buy any more books until I had made more of a dent in my stacks/bookcases... So, what did I do this past weekend? I bought some books at a local bookstore. I figure I’m helping to keep an independent bookstore in business. Yep, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Here are some of the books I’ve read recently that I thought were particularly good.
The Alaskan Blonde by James T. Bartlett. This is a true crime book I picked up at Bouchercon where James kindly signed it for me. It’s well-written, well-researched and well-put together.
Bell, Book and Corpses by T.C. LoTempio. This is part of the Nick & Nora mysteries. Nick is a cat. Nora Charles inherited a sandwich shop from her mother and now runs it in a town in Northern California. She is a former investigative reporter who now writes pieces on crime for a magazine. This is book 7 in a really great series. This one was set around Halloween.I love cozies set around that time of year.
MacDeath by Cindy Brown, book 1 in the Ivy Meadows mysteries. Ivy is an actress in Phoenix and is training to be a PI. I made my way through the first three books in this series. I bought them in eformat ages ago. I am embarrassed at how long ago it was so, yeah, not going to mention it. Really enjoyed all of them. Number 2: The Sound of Murder. Number 3: Oliver Twisted. There are 3 more I don’t have on my Kindle, but I’ve mentally earmarked them to read in the future.
Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor by Nathen Amin. I’ve read a lot about the Tudors, but have to admit I didn’t really know much about Henry VII. I’m not particularly fond of him. I’ve read more about his son, the VIII, you know the one with all the wives. Very interesting read.
What have you been reading lately? Are you making progress on your TBR pile?
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Remember how I wrote a post on creating characters a couple weeks ago? I saw this post on the Kill Zone blog by Elain Viets. Here’s her take on creating characters: https://killzoneblog.com/2025/06/building-character.html
