OK, I'm back....

I know, I know... Consistency is supposed to be a trait of all good bloggers... and I have failed that test miserably.

Some new gigs, writing magazine stories about everything from colored diamonds and New York's fashion district, to Silicon Alley entrepreneurs; editing all kinds of high-intensity financial news; writing a column that mysteriously morphed from weekly to daily. Major Internet catastrophes (Verizon left me sans phone, sans Internet, sans connection to the outer world, from August through Thanksgiving...) -- and just real life. Travels have been fun -- including one jaunt to San Juan for a magazine story that involved me sampling "La Bestia" -- the longest and highest zipline in the Western Hemisphere. All I can say is, never again. They strap you into a harness so you're sailing above a forest and a river hundreds of feet in the air, looking down, and seeing a tiny little dot move across the ground, and realizing omigod that's me.... Nope. Done it. Got the T-shirt. (Yes, literally.) Nevermore.

Anyway... hanging out at BookExpo (BEA) last month reminded me of the fun that sharing favorite books and taking a hard look at books with lotsa buzz can be. Plus, my shelves are now absolutely jammed with new books, both the real shelves and the Kindle cyber-shelves. Indeed, I have (again) run out of shelf space. Oh, and wall space for new bookshelves...

Some of my new acquisitions:

From BookExpo, I managed to get galleys of the following:

• Malice of Fortune by Michael Ennis
• The Headmaster's Wager by Vincent Lam
• Sweet Tooth by Ian MacEwan
• The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann
• Leonardo and the Last Supper by Ross KIng
• Zoo Time by Howard Jacobson
• The Twelve by Justin Cronin
• The Absolutist by John Boyne
• The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
• The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penn

Other galleys/ARCs from NetGalley or Amazon Vine:

• The Vanishing Point by Val McDermid
• Broken Harbor by Tana French
• The Joy Brigade by Martin Limon
• True Believers by Kurt Andersen
• Jack 1939 by Francine Mathews
• The Pigeon Pie Mystery by Julia Stuart
• The Lower River by Paul Theroux
• Second Person Singular by Sayed Kashua
• Meander by Jeremy Seal
• The Lion Sleeps Tonight by Rian Malan

And I've acquired so many library books (and a few Kindle/dead tree ones, too) that I'll have to circle back in a future update on those!!

But I do promise to try to be a more frequent and diligent reviewer in the coming weeks and months... really! So, Uncommon Reading is open for business once more...