No new books?

Maybe I don't have to seek out any new books.

This spring, two books arrived at the top of the "to read" pile and I picked them up and took them to Sidetrack, that little oasis on the lake. Between spring clean up in the yard and planting new blossoms, I picked up the first one and began reading.

The book was J. A. Jance's Justice Denied. I read about the first 30-40 pages and said to myself, "This seems familiar." But I had no clue about what came next. About half way through, I said to myself, "I've read this before." I still had no idea how it ended, and being away from an Internet connection, I couldn't look up ReadingBlog to see if I'd written about Justice Denied.

The more I read, the more familiar the story sounded, but I was awfully close to the end before I remembered what happened. The book cover says this is "A J. P. Beaumont Novel," and indeed Beau and his lover (also a Seattle detective) are the main good guys in the book.

And I had read it in August of '07 and written about it under the blog entry Vigilantes and the slow pace of justice.

I liked it the second time around at least as much as I liked it when I said, "...this is one of her best."

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The next book I picked up that weekend at Sidetrack was The Burnt House by Faye Kellerman. After my experience with Justice Denied, I suspected a little more quickly that I was reading this book for a second time as well. But once again, I had no clue about plot twists or ending. By the time I'd finished, I knew I had read it and thought that the ending was familiar.

Sure enough, I had read and written about The Burnt House in September 2007 in the blog entry titled, Delightful details. I liked it then and I liked it again this spring. Reading it a second time was not all that different from reading it the first time. I guess I don't engage my memory much even when I'm writing about a book like this.

More good summer reading. They go on the shelf and maybe they'll be on the "to read" pile again someday. Maybe my "to read" pile should be made up of books that have been on the shelf for a few years and I can avoid trips to the library and the book store.

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