Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Top Ten Tuesday: Words/ Topics That Instantly Make Me Buy/ Pick Up a Book


Taking a cue from my daughters blog Playing in the Pages.

She did a post on her book centric blog which covers reviews and reading, and I didn't want let my answered only appear there, so here are mine ...

What Will Make Me Pick Up a Book

1- Short Horror Stories: Quick scary, thrilling or laughable reads. Try the Stephen King collections.

2- Detective series: Began with Encyclopedia Brown, entered the Agatha Christie stage, moved on to Travis McGee and others. John D McDonald was the forefather so give Travis a chance.

3- Set in the Northwest: Still like Seattle settings, but the city has gotten a little full of itself. If set in Tacoma I will give it a read.

4- Energy Solutions: Maybe it is non-fiction, but it is still escapism to me cause I doubt I will ever build that solar powered, rain filtering, trash compacting solution. Still, read “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind”.

5- Origami: Give me a model and I will fold it.

6- Trendy economic books: Call me a slave to the news cycle, but if everyone is freaking out about a flat world economy driven by a creative community, I will likely feel compelled to read it. Try Freakanomics and Collapse.

7- Books for kids: If there is a kid to read them to, I will want to read it. Mine are now too old, but I can babysit and someday I may have grandkids.

8- Near future science based Sci Fi: Michael Crichton is my go to author for this, with the Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park and Coma being three great ones.

9- Cyber Punk: William Gibson inspired from Burning Chrome through Mona Lisa Overdrive.

10- Detailed historic work written like a novel: Tom Wolfe did it with The Right Stuff and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Second Book of Short Stories Out on Amazon

During the last year I wrote four short read collections called the Three Twisted Tales . Today they are available in aggregate as The Clock...