April Reading List

1. CHARLESTON IS BURNING / Daniel J. Crooks, Jr. *** Slight volume covering the history of Charleston's major
   fires and fire fighting.
   
2. JOHN C. CALHOUN . Margaret L. Coit *** Pretty good (but dated) bio of Calhoun.
   
3. PIED PIPER / Nevil Shute *** The only Shute novel I had never read. Good, but not great.
   
4. THE PEACH KEEPER / Sarah Addison Allen *** Charming, but v-e-r-y- slight novel. Allen has a great way of
   creating characters and making magic seem normal, but she is in danger of becoming a parody of herself.
   
5. GIDEON'S SWORD / Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child ** Very poor thriller. Almost as slight as a James
   Patterson book.
   
6. WHAT THE NIGHT KNOWS / Dean Koontz * Awful. Koontz has gotten progressively worse. I guess some
   people only have 30 good books in them! I miss the classic (good) Koontz.
   
7. LITTLE BEE / Chris Cleave * Virtually unreadable.
   
8. JOHANNES CABAL THE NECROMANCER / Jonathon L Howard. *** Entertaining but way too much cleverness.
   
9. LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME: EVERYTHING YOUR AMERICAN HISTORY TEXTBOOK GOT WRONG / James W.
   Loewen. *** Excellent review of stories American history textbooks don't teach, but I'm sorry, Mr. Loewen,
   everything is NOT about race. Maybe in your mind, but not in most people's.
   
10. FOOL: A NOVEL / Christopher Moore ** Docked one star for working too hard to be funny and clever.
    
11. ON THE BEACH / Nevil Shute *** Shute's most famous novel, but not his best by any stretch.
    
12. FREEDOM / Jonathon Franzen ** It's good to see that Franzen's famous novel THE CORRECTIONS was not an
    aberation. This book is quite boring also.