2017: The Year In Books

With another year coming to an end, it is time to take a look back at the 28 books I read over the past year, 3 less than last year.  Of those 28, 7 were non-fiction and, of the 21 novels, only 4 were TV show tie-ins.  For the first time, none of the books came out of my “to-read” drawer, and a record 16 were e-books.  I read over 80,000 pages, my lowest total since at least 2013.

Once again, a majority of the books I read this year were by authors I’ve never read before. The 15 authors that I read for the first this year were:
Amy Schumer
Jessie Humphries
Gene Kim
Tod Goldberg
Matt Zoller Seitz
Philip K. Dick
Harland Sanders
Paul Levine
William J. Mann
Matthew V. Clemmons
Chris Smith
Riley Sager
Whitney Cummings
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tom Perrotta

There were 4 authors I read multiple titles from during 2016, the ghost writer for Richard Castle, Jeffery Deaver, David Mack, and Erle Stanley Gardner.

7 of the books I read were released this year, while 3 of them were released last century.

Finally, the breakdown by month.  Vacation in December certainly helped pad its totals a tad bit.

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Book 3 (of 52) – Killing Ruby Rose

Killing Ruby Rose – Jessie Humphries

Every month, Amazon offers its Prime customers a free Kindle ebook, which is how I ended up the owner of this lovely title.  Killing Ruby Rose tells the tale of Ruby Rose, a precocious high school student who, following the death of her father, is forced to kill criminals that her DA mother has, for one reason or another, let slip through the justice system.  She needs to figure out who is setting her up while trying to keep her friends safe and find out the secret her mother is keeping from her.  If it sounds a bit convoluted, that’s because it is.

There’s a decent enough story buried in here somewhere, but it gets overwhelmed by badness that drags things down.  For example, Ruby worries that she’s about to be arrested for the “murders” she’s committed, despite them not being murders and her being legally in the clear.  Once the other characters start calling her out on her illogical approach, you have to wonder why the author continued to hammer home the wrong point.

I obviously have no intention to continue on with the Ruby Rose series.  Hopefully, for those that do, the author learns to tighten up her game.