32. No Limits

No Limits: The Will To Succeed - Michael Phelps

What an outstanding story! I love this guy!

31. Somehow Form A Family

Somehow Form A Family - Tony Earley

This is a collection of stories and anecdotes from a man who grew up in the 60s and 70s in the mountains of North Carolina. His family was typical country farm small town Appalachian folk. The stories could be told by many people. They were not unique or extraordinary. These were stoiries about average people doing average things.

And...I liked it very much.

"He did not understand weakness because he had never known it."

That line was in one story that for me was very thought provoking. Any book that can make me think about something for a few days is worth mentioning. It was not exciting. I did not "learn" anything. It did not expand my mind or even entertain me in a page turning sense. It made me think. I really like that.

30. Immoral

Immoral - Brian Freeman

This book ended up being another one of those crime/trial novels.

I did not think that was what this would be when I started reading it. I thought it was going to flip morality on it's head and create a world where immorality was viewed as morality is in our own world. It had none of that. Just today's world with some folks doing bad stuff and cops investigating to solve the crime.

The back of the book compares this author to Dennis Lehane (Shelter Island, Mystic River, etc). Those are some pretty big shoes to fill in regards to plot twists and keeping the reader in suspense. This book failed to fulfill those promises.

I took almost a month to finish this book. I read the last half in the last three days just to get it over with. It got better with the last third, but to get there it felt like I was wading through quicksand. Slow. Infinitely boring at times. The ending did get better as it was "less boring", but it also just seemed like it took so many little twists and tried to tie them together in a way that would be difficult to solve the crime. Too many little twists and conveniences for my tastes. Unlike Lehane, who seems to use one massive twist to throw the entire perspective of the book on it's head.

This book did not live up to my expectations as far as the "immoral world", as a comparison to Lehane, or to keep me awake during the first half. It did end pretty well, though it felt forced. Not awful, but there are better books.

29. Swimsuit

Swimsuit - James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

This is one of those authors that I have avoided because he has written about 10,000 books. He may be popular, but I can't stand those writers that keep plugging in different names and places in order to tell the same story over and over. I figured this is a book about a bad guy who gets chased by cops and in the end justice is served.


That is essentially what this book was. Just another crime novel. What happened that surprised me was that I actually enjoyed it. Darn! Now I might have to check out another James Patterson book. What happens if I like that one too?

28. A Simple Government

A Simple Government: Twelve Things We Really Need from Washington (and a Trillion That We Don't!) - Mike Huckabee

I loved most of it.