Vacation Reading

I was recently in the Florida Keys on vacation and had ample time to read. In fact, I finished the three books I brought with me and picked up four more while I was down there. The three I brought with me were books recommended by the bloggers - Not a girl detective by Susan Kandel, The Penguin who knew too much by Donna Andrews and Peter and the Secret of Rundoon by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. I read I dreamed I married Perry Mason before I left so knew Not a girl detective would be an easy read. I've also read the other Meg Lansdowne novels, so enjoyed this one, too. And, yes, I've read the previous two books of the Peter trilogy, so really looked forward to reading it.
I have to admit I'm not that enthralled with the leading character in Susan Kandel's books. She's just too involved in clothes for me to identify with her. Ask my sister about that. I also think the plots are just a bit far fetched, but then they're based on a biographer of mystery writers, so what would one expect.
The Penguin who Knew too much was similar to the rest of Andrew's Meg series - crazy family members and I loved the medical examiner and his claustrophobia! It's not laugh out loud like Evanovich's books, but you do chuckle from time to time.
I loved Peter and the Secret of Rundoon and hate the fact that it is the last book of the trilogy - although there are enough loose ends that I can see a new Peter adventure on the horizon.
I've also read Inkspell and Inkheart by Cornelia Funke - another recommendation by Alison which were terrific reads.
So, after I ran through the above and still had a week of our vacation, we went to the discount book store and I purchased four action thriller books and, of course, I can only remember two of them. The first book I read was The Lions of Lucerne by Brad Thor. I hadn't read anything by him before and picked it up because it was at least 400 pages. I like long books when I'm on vacation. It was extremely action packed and I actually had a hard time putting it down. I've since requested a few of his books from the library and will let you know if they're as good as his first.
I then read Icon by Frederick Forsyth (best known for The Day of the Jackal). This started out very slowly as there were a ton of Russian names to deal with in the beginning. It always scares me when you have a list of all of the characters in the book and it's longer than three pages. And yes, I did refer to it in the beginning. Thankfully, after the first 100 pages, it was limited to ten to fifteen characters. Also, after the first 100 pages, it really got interesting. I'm a sucker for a good spy novel and this was one of them.
I can't remember the last two books other than they were also of the action spy thriller genre and were at least 400 pages. For some reason this year I was into the action genre on vacation.
So, when I returned home last weekend, I went to the library and picked up books by Frederick Forsyth, Patricia Cornwall, Ken Follett and James Patterson.
I just finished Cross by Patterson and other than the very grisly murder scenes (which I started skipping after the first five or so), it was an interesting read that finally identified Alex Cross's wife's killer.
Here's to a Happy New Year of many new and old books to read! Enjoy!