I thought it was entertaining. I’m 50% through second one that was released last week. It’s not fine literature. It’s an airport thriller. Basic escapist beach reading.

I got a few pages into I, Claudius a couple of months ago on my PaperWhite and read something else. I didn’t want to read something written in the first person.

I actually read all three of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. I’d bought them on Amazon to see what all the fuss was about and felt obliged to finish them. Easily the worst written books I’ve ever read.

I’ve read some real slogs over the years. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in High School. B F Skinner Beyond Freedom and Dignity wasn’t exactly a page turner. After decades of reading technical writing and having to have 100% mastery of it for my job, I don’t have the patience for slogs with my pleasure reading.

I remember reading it the first time in college. I was totally lost. I’ve re-read it easily a dozen times. When the movie came out in 1984, all the words were totally different from how I was pronouncing them.

I’ve started the first one maybe five times and abandoned it after 100 pages. It just didn’t grab me at all. I still haven’t watched the series because I want to read the books first.

I was born in New Bedford and grew up in the suburb next to it. It was required reading.

Nope. I spent my career reading technical standards and research papers. I was also on various committees authoring them. My pleasure reading has always been total trash to unwind from having to be 100% focused to fully comprehend technical writing. My wife’s library is literature and nonfiction. I’m proud of those 27 Matt Helm books or the 20-ish Dirk Pitt books. The only thing I’ve read in 2023 that wasn’t total trash was The Grapes of Wrath and that was a 1930s bestseller.

I read it earlier this year. I have no memory of reading it as a new release. The movie had been my Jurassic Park. It was interesting to see how they changed the characters for the movie.

Amazon Prime has a book with a shapely woman in black leather on the cover. After scrolling past it 100 times looking for interesting titles, I pushed it to my Kindle. There it sat for a year+ with that shapely woman in black leather taunting me in the Uncollected folder. Eventually, I channeled my inner 14 year old and read it. It wasn’t awful so I read the next one in the series. The series dead-ended so I tried another series by the author but abandoned it fairly quickly.

It’s not how I normally choose books but the Kate Beckinsale Underworld outfit with more exaggerated curves sucked me in.

I’m 65. It’s on my Kindle PaperWhite to read eventually.

The beach can be 3 or 4 hours alternating between reading and swimming.