A Lovely Read

The Art of Fielding is my favorite read for 2011. Written by Chad Harbach and a first novel, Art uses baseball and a shortstop as the foundation of the book.  I love the characters, the story and the writing.  "She's gotten so far ahead of the curve that the curve becomes a circle, and now she was way behind."  Beautifully written. If you hate baseball, don't bother, as you probably won't appreciate the book's/game's prose.

 On the other hand, I tried starting the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. Highly recommended by Anna and Kath, I tried, I really did.  But I'm not a fan of romance novels or historic novels from the eighteenth century that involve time travel or that are 600+ pages long!  And there are seven of these!  Ugh.

So when my new John Sandford novel, Shock Wave showed up at my front door, I immediately ditched Outlander and devoured Virgil Flowers in all his finest.  No way I'm going back to the Outlander series. Done.