Summer reads

I've had my nose in a book, two of them, in fact. Isn't that why summer was invented, so we could flop down and read?

The first one was Richard Wolffe's RENEGADE, a thorough review of the 2008 presidential campaign from the perspective of the Obama camp.

Barack Obama was given the name "Renegade" by the Secret Service, thus the book's title. The author begins before the beginning, from the making of the decision to run a candidacy back in 2006 and takes us through the scenes behind CNN until after election day.

News junkie that I am, I watched all the reports during those two-plus years but was limited by what was public and televised. Not being embedded in the Obama fold, I didn't have the option to interview Obama myself, couldn't get Michelle's opinion of all that was happening, couldn't hear what the campaign strategists were saying off camera. Now I feel like I have!

Then I went back to prison, so to speak, and ripped right through Jeffrey Archer's second volume of his prison diary in PURGATORY.

I listened to a download of volume one and reported on it a few weeks ago. Our local library didn't have audio copies of the next two parts so I settled for an old-fashioned read.

This author can really tap out the books -- he wrote the first diary in 22 days. This one was written in less than two months while he was in a less secure facility awaiting transfer to an open prison. That will be the topic of the third part -- my next summer flop-down-and-read.