Rick's Book Club (with comments by Mic)

Oprah has a Book Club, so why not Rick?

When he's not tying flies, fishing, puttering with the motorhome, or talking with the other campers and fishermen in the fly shop, Rick's been reading books. Lots of books! So many that I've asked him if he's reading every page. I thought I was going to be the one reading all the books once we started travelling, but he's surprised me with his passion for reading novels. For about 20 years the only type of reading Rick did was of technical computer magazines, software documentation, and PC newsletters. And the daily newspaper. He loves the paper, but since being in Montana he hasn't read one regular newspaper. We get a newspaper delivered to our motorhome when we're staying in a Thousand Trails park, but he resorts to the Internet for news when we're not at TT.

Rick used to say he didn't have time to read something for fun or entertainment. He has a wide range of likes from Stephen Hunter to Zane Grey to Clive Cussler to Michael Creighton to Ralph Compton to John Grisham to James Reeves to Louis L'amour. He's usually willing to try something new, but once he finds an author he likes, he wants to stick with them.

We're lucky to have a bookstore in Dillon, aptly named The Bookstore. They have shelves and shelves of books, both new and used and you can trade in the books you've read and earn points towards another book or two. The owner is super nice and she donates the extra books to other agencies in need. Another good source of used books are the Goodwill Stores. For the hard-to-find and must-have-it-now, Amazon.com provides another supply of books and just about anything else you didn't know you needed.

Rick likes the Compton, Hunter, L'amour, and Grey authors because they write about history with some fiction thrown in (or maybe it's fiction with a little history interspersed). Some of the books are based in the west, and a couple are based in Montana, making them interesting since that's where we spent the summer. Rick has just started The Brethren by Grisham.

The last book I read (a few months ago) was The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. I thought it was very good and I passed it along to my Mom when I finished. (I wonder how she liked it? I'll have to remember to ask her.) Before that it was Grisham's The Bretheran and The Last Juror. I like mystery, detective, thriller, who-done-its. Grisham, Crichton, Grafton, and Higgins-Clark.

Have you read any good books lately? Any that you would like to share with us? We'd like to know what you're reading. Send us a comment and tell us about a couple of your favorite authors.