Gosh this book was wonderful. I kept it on my nightstand well past the overdue date because I kept swearing to myself that I would re-read it and ultimately haven’t. On the other hand, I haven’t returned the book either...

Coffin has a way with words and in this small collection of sermons he manages to put togehter a lot of good words about justice, poverty, our societal obligations to one another and why there’s no decent biblical reason for anyone to be predjudiced against gay people. It’s a really life-affirming set of essays, all of them both humorous and weighty, accessible and yet learned. For anyone who is looking for inspirational reading that’s a little deeper than the standard love yourself" platitudes, this book is a good starter tome on getting to love each other. Read it.

I’m starting to get into the rhythm of these books. Someone is accused of a crime, the usual characters interact in new ways, something unforseen happens and the person who actually did it turns out to be who you least suspect. Of course, knowing that it’s going to be who you least suspect makes it easier to figure out who that might be. As a legal/cop mystery series, I like these books but I definitely enjoyed the first few I read slightly more than the later ones only because once the pattern is established the details seem less important. Lescroart does create likable characters and the whole idea of an ensemble cast for these types of books really works well for his settings and plots.

[review pending]

This was a fun page-turner that I brought on vacation and never finished. It was good but not terrifically gripping. The loose outline is that there’s a Russian company that is doing an IPO and our hero runs a small investment firm that is bringing the IPO to market. Then there are some concerns about the viability of the company, and then all hell breaks loose. There are parts of this book that are serious snoresville and of course the main character is a strong-jawed former military man with a haunted past who just can’t lose. I picked it up on the free table at a ocal library and thought it was much better than I thought it would be, but still pretty stuck in formulaic genre thriller fiction molds.