I see it’s been almost a month since my last post. Shameful. What’s wrong with me? Anyway, a lot has happened in the past few weeks. For starters, here are the five books I’ve read or listened to on audiobooks. All simply mah-velous.

Peter and the Secret of Rundoon. The third and currently last book in the Peter and the Starcatchers series. I love these books. Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson have exactly the right mix of humor, humanity and classic fast-paced adventure. I’d read a hundred of these if there were that many.

Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, Ender’s Game may be my favorite novel ever. So when this book was released — a direct sequel to Ender’s Game, unlike Speaker for the Dead, which is also a sequel but occurs much later in the life of the main character — I was ecstatic. It’s wonderful. Card captures better than any other living author of whom I am aware what it means to belong to a family or how it feels to be utterly alone without one. Also, if you’ve ever wondered what soldiers returning from war feel like, read this book. Amazing. I pray Card plans to write a direct sequel to this one.

The Hound of the Baskervilles. I had never read any Sherlock Holmes adventures before, but now I’m hooked. I can see how Holmes has greatly influenced modern mystery writers as well as Scooby Doo, although the bad guy at the end of this short novel does not say, “And I would have gotten away with it too if not for you pesky kids!”

The Hard Way ( a Jack Reacher novel). A few months ago someone posted on my blog and encouraged me to read Lee Child’s Jack Reacher’s novels. Bless you bless you whoever you are. Reacher is the tough guy I’ve always wanted to be. Hard Way has a simple premise, but in Jack Reacher’s world nothing is never as easy as it might first appear. My only complaint about the audiobook was the reader, who adopted a strained voice for one character that was impossible to understand. Fortunately the character doesn’t have too many scenes, but whenever he did I wanted to reach through my iPod and shake the reader senseless. Hey, pal. You’re a reader. If I can’t understand you, you’re not reading; you’re making noise.

Nevertheless, The Hard Way is a Jack Reacher winner. I don’t expect to tire of this guy any time soon.

Echo Park. This is my first Michael Connelly book. After listening to the audiobook of this one, I encouraged Lauren to check him out. She’s since read four of his novels and enjoyed them all. Connelly’s reoccuring character Harry Bosch is an older, wiser LA detective who strives to be a “true detective,” one who is meticulously thorough and shows true compassion to the victims of the crimes he investigates. This near obsessive behavior however can drive Bosch to bend the rules of police procedure a bit in ways that aren’t always ethical. It’s a great character. And I’m looking forward to reading more of Bosch’s adventures.

I love Robert Crais, especially his Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novels. The two make a lovely testosterone-filled pair. There’s always lots of busted heads and snarky commentary to go around when Elvis and Pike are on the job. But Hostage is one of Crais’s standalone novels. A few years ago it was made into a movie with Bruce Willis, but I recently saw the trailer, and I don’t think it’s anything I’ll want to see any time soon. It looked rather silly. But “silly,” dear reader, the novel is not.

Hostage tells the story of Jeff Talley, a former LA SWAT hostage negotiator who left the job after a hostage situation went bad and Talley became consumed with guilt. Now he’s the chief of police in the sleepy California town of Bristo Camino where the only legal infractions are the occasional speeding ticket.

All that changes when three criminals on the run are forced to stop in Bristo Camino to steal a car. As you might suspect, a hostage situation ensues, but it’s far more complicated than you might think. I’d rather not give anything away here, but suffice it to say that Crais is a master of the slow boil. Just when you think the situation couldn’t get any more dire or more complicated, Crais throws another wrench into the gears. This isn’t a simple hostage story. This is a story about the lengths one man will go to save the people he loves. It’s lots of fun, and although it’s loaded with more gore and language than you typically get from Crais, it’s still a wonderful ride.

Robert Crais is my favorite author these days. His Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novels read like nine-hour action movies. I usually listen to them on audiobook, but I’ll occasionally read them the old fashion way as well. In Indigo Slam, Elvis Cole, the self-proclaimed world’s greatest detective, is hired by three young kids to find their missing father. At first Elvis considers calling Social Services and having the state take care of the kids, but then Elvis discovers that the kids are in a whole hurt of trouble with the Russian mob and that they’re father isn’t what he appears. Meanwhile, Elvis’s girlfriend Lucy is making arrangements to take a job in LA to be close to Elvis, but Lucy’s ex-husband is playing hardball. This novel was written before The Last Detective, which deals more with Lucy’s husband and the lengths he’ll go to to maintain control over his wife and son. So if you haven’t read either, read Indigo Slam first.

What I respect most about Crais is how much research he does for each of his novels. In Indigo, Crais delves deep into the particulars of a certain type of crime (one I won’t divulge here) and the federal agency responsible for stopping it. It’s fascinating. That’s what’s great about Crais. You can be entertained and educated at the same time. Granted, it’s always crime education, how bad people do what they do. But hey, it’s learning.

Recently someone anonymously posted on this blog and suggested that I check out Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels. I had never heard of Child but as soon as I picked up The Enemy, I new I had come home. This, ladies and gentlemen, is my kind of book. A tough-guy, gritty mystery that keeps me hopoked from page one to closing.

Ironically, a few days after I began listening to The Enemy on CD (read by Dick Hill, a veteran of the audiobook world) I stumbled upon a column by Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly. The column was all about the false notion circulating in fiction these days that men don’t read. Don’t write a book for men, wannabe novelist, men are too engrossed in their football and steak sauces to pick up one of them silly books.

Hogwash, says Stephen King. Poppycock. Men read. In fact, King suggested a name for the kind of books we men typically devour. Manfiction. And the best example of manfiction, says King, is Lee Child and his Jack Reacher novels.

I believe it. Jack Reacher is the ultimate loner tough guy, a large, husky former military police officer who is part drifter, part criminal investigator, and all man.

I suppose part of my fascination with Jack Reacher is that my dad was an MP back in the day. Dad was mostly stationed in Germany when I was a kid, but he’s told me a lot about his experiences as an MP, and his description of the military matches up quite nicely with how Child portrays it, which is: highly political and full of self-centered pricks.

Don’t get me wrong. The military is full of valiant men and women who fight for no other reason then to protect the innocent and preserve freedom. Jack Reacher is one such example.

But among these hundreds of thousands of selfless soldiers is the occasional careerist, the officer who seeks power, the man who dreams of becoming a general and squashing those under him simply because he can. Jack Reacher refers to these men as (pardon my French) assholes.

And in The Enemy, there are a few such characters. Not because Child is trying to taint the image of the military, but because this is a mystery, after all, and it’s the author’s job to throw suspicion on a lot of different characters in order to keep us, the readers, tagging along, desperate to know the truth.

I picked The Enemy as my first Jack Reacher novel at random — it was the first one I found at the library — but now I see how truly lucky I was to pick this one first.

The Enemy is the eighth Jack Reacher novel, but unlike most, it takes place while Reacher is still in the military, or more specifically just as the Berlin Wall is coming down at the beginning of 1990.

Reacher is a young major and has just been transferred from Panama to North Carolina. It’s New Years. Just past midnight. And Reacher gets a phone call. A two-star general has been found dead in a seedy hotel room, apparently having died of a heartache while cavorting with a prostitute. The general, Reacher learns, is a married man and the commanding officer of the Army’s Armored Division in Germany. In other words, a very important person. Reacher’s orders: protect the military. Clean up the mess and keep it hush hush.

But the general’s briefcase is missing. And hours later the general’s wife is found murdered. Slowly Reacher uncovers a much grander plot at work that puts him in ever-increasing danger.

I won’t divulge more than that. I’ll only say that The Enemy is the type of book I hope to be reading when I’m ninety years old, the type of book I’ll never tire of. Jack Racher is the man. And if men really aren’t reading as some naysayers say, then please send me all the Jack Reacher novels you can find. I for one can’t get enough.

I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve never read Jack London before. I know, shameful. He’s a man’s author if ever there was one. But I saw an unabridged version of Call of the Wild on CD at the library and decided to give it a try. The language is poetic without being pretentious. And if ever there was a book that actually made me consider getting a dog this is it. I found myself envying John Thorton, the Klondike man who earns Buck’s undying love and devotion.

What I love most about Wild is that it’s an adventure story through and through. A literary classic, yes. But an adventure story first and foremost. There’s peril at every turn as Buck, the stout St. Bernard/Collie mix, is kidnapped from his comfortable home at an estate in California and sold as a sled dog far north in the merciless Klondike. Buck must learn the law of “club and fang,” the harsh, savage code of the North in which the strong and vicious rule with brute force and bite.

Passed from owner to owner, Buck learns that there are good natured and evil men in the world. And that dogs too can be classified as such. One of the novel’s most thrilling moments is the stand-off between Buck and his rival dog Spitz.

But the story’s true heart emerges when Buck finds John Thorton. Theirs is the relationship that every dog-owner longs for. And when Buck is called upon to pull the 1,000 pound sled to win John Thorton a bet, I felt like cheering as much as the witnesses in the story.

Recently I picked up a collection of Jack London short stories at the used book sale. And now I’m very glad that I did.

Most everyone who intends to read this book probably already has by now; I’m a little late to the party. What can I say? Lauren had to read it first. Then again, since she read it in like 48 hours, I don’t have much of an excuse for taking so long to finish it, do I?

Hmm. I guess I’m just slow. Get over it.

The fourth and final book in Stephenie Meyer’s teenage vampire saga is the most controversial of the bunch, dividing her loyal fan base and earning a D rating from Entertainment Weekly. Considering how little weight I give to book and movie reviews at EW, the D thing doesn’t faze me, but the outrage from some of her fans did. I tried not to listen to all the complains since I hadn’t read the book at the time and didn’t want to taint my experience by knowing beforehand what fanned everyone’s fire, but simply knowing that people were displeased made me a little skeptical.

So if you haven’t read the book and want to avoid spoilers, stop reading now. OK, you’ve been warned.

In my opinion, which only holds any value with my mother and wife, Breaking Dawn is an excellent and appropriate conclusion to a wonderful series. The Jacob-imprinting-on-the-baby thing didn’t bother me. As one fellow reader pointed out to me: Jacob imprinting was inevitable. That mythology had already been introduced. Meyer was merely living up to the rules she had already established. Besides, she prepared us for this beforehand. One of the other werewolves . . . excuse me, shape shifters, had already imprinted on a toddler. Meyer is no dummy. She prepared us all well.

And Bella gaining and learning vampire powers. Awesome. Her shield ability. Awesome. Stumping the Volturi in the field. Awesome. My only complaint was that the Volturi didn’t get a major butt kicking. Four hundreds of pages they prepare and talk about an impending fight and then the fight never happens? Say what?

But these are small petty things. Overall it was wonderfully enjoyable. Thank you, Mrs. Meyer. Please don’t let this be your last.