My Favorite Books

My friend Mary Kay emails me now and then about books she's read that she thinks are great. I was thinking that since I read constantly that it might be fun to make a short list of my favorite books and why I like them. I've just started by including three favorites here, along with the author's names so you can also look at other books by these authors.

1. My favorite author over the past few years is Dean Koontz and the whole Odd Thomas series of books. Odd Thomas is the name of the first book, and is actually the name of the main character. Odd has some psychic abilities that lead him on some awesome adventures and murder mysteries. He is a short order cook because he needed to have a job that would give him a simple life as his internal life is anything but. The characters are real and engaging, and the suspense makes it hard to put any of these down. The four books are Odd Thomas, Forever Odd , Brother Odd , and the latest installment which was just published : Odd Hours. This series is really hard to put down, so don't read it right before bed or you'll be missing sleep later.
2. Reading any book by Stephen King has to be a fun time, especially for summer reading. Dave Meador, a colleague at OHS told me about an older book called BLAZE that King wrote when he was still writing as Richard Bachman. The title also refers to it's main character, a very sympathetic young man who has lost his best friend, yet is still controlled by him. It is somewhat allegorical to Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, and he as always achieves the realism that I love King and Steinbeck for. This would be a great summer read.
3. My favorite book that I read this school year I have shared with multiple people, like Kathy Hayes our librarian at OHS. We all loved this book, The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz. This book is one of those rare reads that will make you laugh out loud as well as keep you reading to follow the main character as she deals with her weird family, all of whom are private investigators, including her. My favorite part involved the summer camp chapter where her little sister goes to camp against her will. I was in tears laughing. There is a sequel that I will be reading this summer called Curse of the Spellmans: A Novel. I'll let you all know what I think, but it is actually rated a bit higher on Amazon than the first, which is amazing.
   I hope you all try these and enjoy your summer reading. School's out, and this is all I want to do now.