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New Year Reading Resolutions
9:12 AM EST 1/11/06
Has anyone made any New Year reading resolutions? I got thinking about this yesterday while reading Carol Fitzgerald's BookReporter Network e-newsletter.
A recent blog entry by Ms. Fitzgerald features the topic:
"Reading Outside the Comfort Zone"
Quoting from Ms. Fitzgerald's blog
Over the holidays I did some reading outside my comfort zone --- and enjoyed it. Like many of you there are certain genres that I read that are "typical." For me, these include suspense/thriller, mystery, women's fiction and biography.
I decided that over the holiday I wanted to stretch my reading boundaries a bit forging what I guess was a pre-New Year's resolution. So I read CONFESSIONS OF A WALL STREET ANALYST by Dan Reingold, which was my companion between wrapping, baking and the other seemingly endless holiday tasks that I worked through pre-Christmas. I found myself looking forward to reading this book each morning (I would sneak in a few pages in bed before I hit the ground running) and each night before I fell asleep (a couple of times I fell asleep with the book in hand and the light on...marveling I kept my place!).
read the rest at http://bookreporter.pmailus.com/pmailweb/ct?d=BZFWSQBXAAEAAAnBAACKig
Feeling much the same, one of my New Years reading resolutions is to try some new authors. Patrons frequently mention an author they enjoy or I might read about one in a review, blog or RA site. Somehow I never seem to get around to trying these authors, sticking to the familiar and comfortable reads. Not this year! I have started with Katherine Neville's A Calculated Risk. Interestingly, the title that encouraged me to check out Ms. Neville was "Eight", her debut thriller set in 1972 and 1790. Likened to the writings of Umberto Eco and with a quick paced plot adventure like Indiana Jones, the reviews sounded right up my alley. Ms. Neville, a former vice president for Bank of America, has much to draw on for her novels. Calculated Risk's heroine, 22 year old Verity Banks, is a high ranking female exec in the world's largest bank. When her boss axes her proposal to beef up the bank's security system she devises a plan to prove the bank's security system is inadequate by "borrowing" some money. The plan is simple; she will hide the stolen money where no one will find it, in the bank's own computer system. Throw in a bet proposed by her old mentor, Tor, and the book goes on to be a fast paced financial thriller with a bit of romance to spark the plot.
I really enjoyed reading someone and something new.
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