![]() As a writer who has been unapologetically influenced by Springsteen, I raced through the book in a few days. I just finished Warren Zane's book Deliver Me From Nowhere, which details the making of Bruce Springsteen's 1982 album, Nebraska. The novel is mischievous and funny and crazy-smart, but the part that made this my favorite book of the season is the beauty of the sentences themselves, which grow like wild, magical vines.Īnna Bassoff Jon Bassoff, Beneath Cruel Waters In it, two women in different time periods crawl through the Roman Colosseum cataloguing plants while trying to figure out how they themselves can grow between the cracks of a world that would rather not see them flourish. While I dug and planted and sweat, I read Katy Simpson Smith's dazzler of a novel, The Weeds. This summer I tore out the grass in our front yard and replaced it with drought-resistant native plants. Our sense of American history generally skips straight from the Revolution to the Civil War, and The Forest creates a mosaic of a decade in the in-between period, and offers us a vivid sense of how transformative, marvelous, dark and seemingly strange that time in America was. The Forest is a series of short, fictional vignettes, offering stories and studies of curious characters, forgotten industries and lost places, all beautifully written and all set in the 1830s throughout the United States. I came across Alexander Nemerov's The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s through the Instagram feed of the Rocky Mountain Land Library, which is a great source for fascinating, off-the-radar books. ![]() I got hooked from the TV series, and I really enjoy the books. I've been working my way through all the books just finished with The Burning Room. And I always love Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series. First is Jonathan Maberry's Joe Ledger series, action-adventure/thrillers right now I'm reading Kill Switch. Just finished Stalin's Ghost, by Martin Cruz Smith in his Arkady Renko series. ![]() ![]() I have three go-to series, "my guys" that I cycle through one at a time. I write mainly science fiction and fantasy, but my pleasure reading is usually mysteries or thrillers. Anderson, Dragon Business, Clockwork Destiny Thompson’s pulp style belies his insightful analysis of human behavior and social politics. Book number three is Jim Thompson’s classic, The Killer Inside Me, a first-person account of a man degenerating into a serial killer. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t end well for them, and that Mexico lost is the reason we enjoy living in present-day Denver. The story is artfully told through Ximena Salomé, a Mexican curandera, and John Riley, an officer in the San Patricio Battalion, the Irish volunteers who fought Yankee aggression to preserve Mexican sovereignty. can never remember and Mexico can never forget. I’m midway through Reyna Grande’s excellent and immersive Corrido de Amor y Gloria, an historical epic set during the Mexican-American War, known as the war that the U.S. He especially appreciates dark noir, and this read plunged me into a world of very disturbed characters - teen runaways, junkies, drifters, a cult leader - in an expertly textured narrative that careens between desert compounds and the homeless sprawl of Los Angeles. I just finished Wonder Valley, by Ivy Pochoda, a book recommended by my next-door neighbor. Mario Acevedo, The Nymphos of Rocky Flats They provided so many quality suggestions - with such a variety of subjects and styles - that this list should keep even the most dedicated reader busy well into 2024, no matter how early and deep the snow falls this year. And so when we reached out to thirty of Colorado's top authors to find out what they'd read over the summer, they skipped references to their own work (we added their most recent books after their names) in order to tout the work of others - some local, some not, some new discoveries, some living legends, others long gone. And the writers themselves are not only generous with their time, but they're supportive of each other. The written word is honored here, with fans showing up at bookstores, on campuses, at coffeehouse and bars to meet an author, shake a hand, buy a book. There's more, of course, but our writers should be near the top of the list.ĭenver's literary scene is especially vibrant. A Western sensibility combined with some Midwestern common sense. Read a good book lately? Colorado is known for many things, including mountains with all their purple majesty.
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