Coffee and a book ... my perfect day!

Coffee and a book ... my perfect day!

Go on an adventure ... simply by reading a book:

 

Go on an adventure ... simply by reading a book.

There's a lot more to writing a book than most people think ...

There's a lot more to writing a book than most people think ...

The value of reading and the power of imagination:

That moment when you're reading a book and the whole world around you doesn't exist anymore.

Coffee + book = happiness!

 

Coffee + book = happiness!

Every book opens to a new adventure:

Every book opens to a new adventure.

Conjuring magic is easy ... all you have to do is read a book:

Experience magic.

Read.

How I keep adding to our home library:

I am not buying any new books.

Oh, look!

A book!

The answer? … Start another book!

 

I finished my book.

And now I don't know what to do with myself.
The answer? … Start another book!

A comfortable chair is no use to anyone without a good book:

 A comfortable chair is no use to anyone without a good book.

#comfortablechair #goodbook #reading #read

Recommended reading - The Embezzler (1940)

 

The Embezzler (1940)

a.k.a. Money and the Woman.

by James M. Cain.

 
Published by‎ Avon Books, Inc.
Paperback novella.
 
ASIN: B002MICS6C
 
Description:
 
A bank employee’s wife teams up with his boss – with fatal results – in this noir novella by the legendary author of The Postman Always Rings Twice.
 
Despite an ulcer that requires surgery, workaholic Charles Brent doesn’t want to take time off from his job as a head teller at the bank. What eventually convinces him to give in and take a break is the prospect of his young wife, Sheila, temporarily taking over his responsibilities. Then, in Charles’s absence, his wife and his boss discover the embezzlement he’s been hiding—and the reason behind it. But instead of reporting Charles, the two form a pact . . .
 
Originally published under the title Money and the Woman, The Embezzler is a standout novella from James M. Cain, celebrated crime writer and master of the noir thriller.
 
“James M. Cain is one novelist who has something to teach just about any writer, and delight just about any reader.” – Anne Rice, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Interview with a Vampire.
 
“One of the greats of American noir.” – The Guardian.
 

Recommended reading - The Mammoth Book of Great Detective Stories (2001)

 

The Mammoth Book of Great Detective Stories (2001)

 

Edited by Herbert Van Thal.

Mammoth Books.

 
ISBN-10: 0786708867
ISBN-13: 978-0786708864
 
Anthology of short stories.
 
Description:
 
Murder, suspense, mystery – the biggest and best collection ever.

This huge and unique volume contains four anthologies by Herbert Van Thai featuring 35 of the best detective stories ever told. The stories range and style and setting from the mean streets of Raymond Chandler's New York to the classic English whodunnit by Agatha Christie and offer an unmissable treat for detective fans.

Recommended reading - A New Omnibus of Crime (2005)

 

A New Omnibus of Crime (2005)

Edited by Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert.

Contents:

Introduction; The Man Who Knew How; The Girl with the Silver Eyes; Red Wind; The Wench Is Dead; Gone Girl; The Couple Next Door; By the Scruff of the Soul; A Poison That Leaves No Trace; Photo Finish; The Crime of Miss Oyster Brown; Red Clay; Barking at Butterflies; Running Out of Dog; Hostages; When the Women Come Out to Dance; Flowers That Bloom in the Spring; Woodrow Wilsons Necktie; Loopy; Great Aunt Allies Fly Papers; First Lead Gasser; Chee’s Witch; Breathe Deep; Rumpole and the Bubble Reputation; The Hanged Man; The Holly and the Poison Ivy; Copycat; He Loved to Go for Drives with His Father; Credits; Index.

Description:

Three-quarters of a century ago, Dorothy L. Sayers compiled the classic anthology The Omnibus of Crime, a definitive collection of short fiction that brought together crime and mystery works from the Apocryphal Scriptures to whodunits from the 1920s.

Now, reflecting the explosive developments in the genre, Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of that book's publication with A New Omnibus of Crime. 

Like Sayers's volume, this new book is envisioned as a vehicle carrying stories the editors think represent the best in crime and mystery writing in our time. Selections also reflect the tastes of Contributing Editors Sue Grafton and Jeffery Deaver, both of whom have stories in this volume.

The anthology begins with a story by Sayers herself; other giants of the genre including Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, are also represented among the twenty-seven works. Hillerman and Herbert introduce each story and place each selection in the context of the literary history of the genre.

Several of the writers confide the circumstances and real-life happenings that inspired them to write their stories. The book concludes with stories by Jeffery Deaver, Alexander McCall Smith, and Catherine Aird – all in print for the first time here.

While mystery writers in Sayer’s day shunned the love interest as a distraction from a puzzling plot, some of these stories show how the depiction of love – thwarted or otherwise – can effectively enrich crime writing. In the last seven-plus decades, the use of a distinctly regional voice has also revitalized the genre, as our selection of stories shows.

And while Sayer’s contemporaries looked at crime as something that could be solved and “tidied up,” writers here take the view that the effects of crime linger like a stain even after a solution has been reached. Illustrating another more recent trend, pets romp through these pages, some in surprising ways.

Like passengers on an omnibus, the stories that keep company here are colorful and mixed. Some will inspire laughter while others will incite chills. All will keep readers turning the pages.

We invite you to hop on, take a ride, and get to know them.

Recommended reading: Eaters of the Dead, by Michael Crichton (1976):

Eaters of the Dead

by Michael Crichton (1976):

Full title:

Eaters of the Dead: The Manuscript of Ibn Fadlan Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in AD 922,

a.k.a. The 13th Warrior.

 

Description:

The year is A.D. 922.  A refined Arab courtier, representative of the powerful Caliph of Baghdad, encounters a party of Viking warriors who are journeying to the barbaric North. He is appalled by their Viking customs — the wanton sexuality of their pale, angular women, their disregard for cleanliness . . . their cold-blooded human sacrifices. But it is not until they reach the depths of the Northland that the courtier learns the horrifying and inescapable truth: He has been enlisted by these savage, inscrutable warriors to help combat a terror that plagues them — a monstrosity that emerges under cover of night to slaughter the Vikings and devour their flesh . . .

Recommended reading - The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain (1934):

 

The Postman Always Rings Twice

by James M. Cain.

“A good, swift, violent story.” – Dashiell Hammett.
 
Description:

An amoral young tramp. A beautiful, sullen woman with an inconvenient husband. A problem that has only one grisly solution — a solution that only creates other problems that no one can ever solve.

 

First published in 1934, The Postman Always Rings Twice is a classic of the roman noir. It established James M. Cain as a major novelist with an unsparing vision of America's bleak underside and was acknowledged by Albert Camus as the model for The Stranger.

 

“I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I merely try to write as the character would write, and I never forget that the average man … has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent.” – James M. Cain.

Recommended reading - Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal With Change in Your Work and in Your Life, by Spencer Johnson:

 

Who Moved My Cheese?:

An Amazing Way to Deal With Change in Your Work and in Your Life,

by Spencer Johnson.

Foreward by Kenneth Blanchard.

First published in 1998.

 

Description:
A timeless business classic, Who Moved My Cheese? uses a simple parable to reveal profound truths about dealing with change so that you can enjoy less stress and more success in your work and in your life.
 
It would be all so easy if you had a map to the Maze.
If the same old routines worked.
If they'd just stop moving "The Cheese."
But things keep changing...
 
Most people are fearful of change, both personal and professional, because they don't have any control over how or when it happens to them. Since change happens either to the individual or by the individual, Dr. Spencer Johnson, the coauthor of the multimillion bestseller The One Minute Manager, uses a deceptively simple story to show that when it comes to living in a rapidly changing world, what matters most is your attitude.
 
Exploring a simple way to take the fear and anxiety out of managing the future, Who Moved My Cheese? can help you discover how to anticipate, acknowledge, and accept change in order to have a positive impact on your job, your relationships, and every aspect of your life.

World Book Day – April 23:

What an astonishing thing a book is.

It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles.

But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person,

maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.

Across the millennia,

an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head,

directly to you.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions,

binding together people who never knew each other,

citizens of distant epochs.

Books break the shackles of time.

A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

– Carl Sagan.

#WorldBookDay #Reading #Library #Novel #Story #DontBotherMeImReading #Book