Not that anyone really cares what’s on my bookshelf, but I do. I always keep wishing I’d kept a reading journal starting back when I was a kid, because, mercy, I’ve read a lot of fiction. And a bit of non-fiction. But the fiction? A tsunami of ink has flowed over my gray cerebral folds and left odd bits of flotsam behind. Sci-fi, fantasy, thrillers, international and political intrigue, mysteries, police procedurals, courtroom dramas, and adventure stories have left my head full of strange ideas and weird connections that has my family puzzled at times. Not that I remember the plot lines all that well. Fiction, for me, is a relaxing bubble-bath for the brain—not that I’m a bubble-bath-enjoying sort. But, if I were … well, you’d find me there with a soapy book.

Jennifer and I have tried to catalog just the books I own (forget about the books I

I finished reading an old Stephen King novel, The Dark Half, last night. Wow, what a read!

(I’m not sure I’ll have much time for this post … the kids are about to wake up from their nap and I need to take them shopping. So, I’ll try to be brief.)

I love books about moral good versus evil, and I especially enjoy books featuring writers as protagonists. One of the first I read along these lines, years ago, was Mr. Murder, by Dean Koontz, also an enjoyable read, as I remember it.

In this tale, the principle character, Thad, began writing as a pre-teen, but the creative act somehow awakened some tissue that remained inside his body that was the leftover from a so-called fetus in fetu. (The rare, but real, circumstance where one