20101219

Is the Thriller genre over?

I read a lot. All three of the walls in my home office have Ikea bookcases filling them. And of course - you would be hard pressed to find any room on any of the shelves for anything new.

A sizable number of those books are action adventure or military thrillers. And when you talk about military thrillers - you have to include Tom Clancy. The first Tom Clancy book I read - was the Naval Institute release of "The Hunt for Red October", and I was hooked. Ever year or so from that point one - there was a new Clancy thriller to look forward to, and a new copy would get added to the bookshelf.

[one of the early books, actually was personally signed by Clancy when one of my friends got it at a book signing]

As the Cold War changed, so did Clancy's novels. Gone were the Soviets, replaced with terrorists (way before 9/11), or by greedy idealistic corporate leaders. But Clancy changed outside of the novels as well. His 10th novel - Rainbow Six - crossed over to become a very successful video game series.

After an absence of several years, Clancy has finally released a new book this holiday season - Dead or Alive.



A follow-up to 2004's Teeth of the Tiger.

The irony of all of this - in the 6 years since the last Clancy book, I have moved on. I saw the new book listed as a Future Release on Amazon a couple of months ago, but there was no excitement in finding it. Because the book was listing a co-author.
One thing I have seen w/ several other thriller author's in the last couple of years, is that unless the co-authors have the same style, the book becomes a mess.

So I am sitting on the sidelines and just wait for this to come out as a paperback next year (or maybe I will just get it as a Kindle download).

20101212

Most Viewed Pictures for November 2010

Even though my picture taking in Nov was pretty busy, I still have most of the pictures backlogged on my PC waiting for review/processing/posting.

I will be glad when 2010 is finally over, and maybe life will settle back down to normal.