Ye-gads...two in one day.

After posting my last post, I looked at the blog and the new doohickey thing that tells you how many posts by year (etc., etc.) and saw that my 2006 total was WAY lower than my 2005 total. Awful! Especially awful for a writer!

Of course, I should count up the posts from my other blogs. That should count, shouldn't it?

Bleh.

I'll have to do better. But heck if I'll make an actual resolution about it.

And now...on to actually blogging about something...(in my head, I hear that fellow from Monty Python going "And now, for something completely different...)

I'm reading Brother Odd right now. This is a book I'm reading just for me -- not for review, not for research...I'm just actually - oh my heavens - reading it. Tony got it for me for Christmas because I -- egad -- asked for it.

You have to understand...I receive in hundreds of books a year for review. I almost never buy books anymore. I don't have time to read the books I do get in (though I recently had to go on a reading spree for the Cybils awards...which means now I have a huge backlog of reviews to do).

Though he'd slightly missed -- Tony, that is. I'd actually asked for the trilogy, since I'd read the first book (Odd Thomas) before. Phyllis had loaned it to me. He couldn't find Odd Thomas in stock anywhere, but he did find Brother Odd...but that left me without the middle book, Forever Odd. So I actually had to get that one first (I read it last night) so I could then read this one.

Which was a really long story to get to the point that, yes, I happen to be reading a book right now and it is called Brother Odd. By Dean Koontz. I wasn't actually a huge Koontz fan before Odd Thomas (his books were okay, but nothing that lit a fire under me). I liked Forever Odd, though it didn't have all the charm of the first book. Brother Odd has, so far (I'm about half way through, I've only been reading it for about an hour and a half), seemed to capture more of that original charm. Odd is a lovely little character. Someone I'd like to have tea with.

Though I have to wonder, out of all the potentially famous (or infamous) ghosts out there for Odd to have as a silent but constant companion...why did Koontz choose Elvis?

I am not a huge Elvis fan myself. I was born in the wrong time, but more importantly, I knew someone who was a big Elvis fan that I have reason to not like at all. That person is the same reason I'm not overly fond of pickup tricks, the South, and heavy beer drinkers. Certain Elvis songs just set my teeth on edge. But at least the Elvis featured in the book is silent, almost clownish.

I actually should like Elvis. After all, I love Doris Day movies. And Sandra Dee. And those perfectly saccharine Gidget movies.

Maybe I only like girl musicals.

Nah. I also hold great love for Fiddler on the Roof and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and The Music Man. And, heck, I even have a complete collection of Maurice Chevalier.

Anyway, I rather like Brother Odd. If you haven't read Odd Thomas yourself, go check it out. Not that Dean Koontz needs any help from lowly little book reviewer / writer me.