Two Books Down

My To Be Read list has grown smaller by two books over the last two days.

Yesterday evening I finished Dan Brown's latest, The Lost Symbol. (A couple of minor -and cryptic-spoilers follow, so read on at your peril) It was a perfectly respectable read that seemed to take me forever. Not because of it's length or complexity, or even because of quality. I would just set it down and find something else I needed to do and forget to come back to it. Well, I finally finished it, tucked up in bed with my cold medicine and it was good. I still think Angels and Demons was his best effort. The Lost Symbol continues the rather preachy tone that really reved itself in The Da Vinci Code. The lead character in this trilogy, Robert Langdon keeps getting bitch-slapped with Christianity. First he goes along with a church cover-up in A&D, then he ends up kneeling at the tomb of the "Holy Grail" after saving Jesus' great, great, great (on and on great) granddaughter, and now he ends up nearly dead because someone buried a bible in the corner stone of a building in Washington, D.C.

Sorry, but if I were Langdon I'd either become a contemplative monk in the mountains and take a vow of silence, or I'd slap the next person who showed me a Judeo-Christian-Islamic artifact until they begged for mercy and promised to leave me alone.

The second book I read today. I started it this afternoon and read straight through, even as my son used me for a jungle gym. He didn't mind, it seemed my only needed participation in the game was to sit still and not complain too much when he used my hair to pull himself up. This absolute page turner was Cindy Spencer Pape's Crazy for the Cowboy. And quite frankly folks, I enjoyed it a lot more than the above.

I've never been one for cowboys. The clack of cowboy boots and the smell of sweaty horses and dust just doesn't do a thing for me. That having been said, I find myself loving this series by Pape. The Cowboy's Christmas Bride is book one and all three books are available in either electronic or print formats.

The Love at the Crazy H series is filled with all the best parts of romance. Sexy, intelligent, gentle, alpha males who know how to make you swoon; strong, very believable and identifiable heroines who are not too good to be true; and hot, toe-curling, heart melting romance. And this is why I'm up, still coughing my head off, but unable to wait to buy the third book.

Now what to read until it arrives?