January book notes

It is really hard to go back over a years worth of reading and give the January books the same attention that the most recent books get so here is a one month set of book notes.  January is a good reading book and I hope you have had some good reading, but still got some great outdoors time.

1. Americans in Paris, Charles Glass is really outstanding history giving us insights into the very complex life in Paris when it was occupied by the Nazis.  First when the US was neutral and then when we were the enemy.  Paris is a complex city in any time, but never more so than in this period.
2. Old Man River by Paul Schneider.  This was an excellent book on the Mississippi River.  It blended old tried and true stories with personal observations and gave an excellent look at this complex geographic location called the Mississippi. 
3. The Trail to Seven Pines, Louis L'Amour.  One of four Hopalong Cassidy novels that L'Amour did.  It is well paced, captures my old hero, but with more edge and excitement and satisfied all my love of westerns.
4. Unfathomable City, Soluit and Snedeker.  Actually a combination of essays, each with a map of New Orleans looking at the layers of the old and eccentric city.  I loved the beginning half and the last chapter, but got lost in a series of essays that were too esoteric for my taste or it would have been number one on the list.  Very well written and the maps are a unique and effect support to most of the essays.
5. Dirt by David Montgomery is a look at the basic building block of all continents and life on earth.  It is the undervalued by lynchpin of our lives too, one we disregard too regularly.  We sacrificed topsoil down our rivers, substitute chemicals and artificial GMOs for the historic organic basis of life.
6. Eighty Days by Matthew Goodman follows the around the world race of Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland.  It is a look at two women who do an amazing travel adventure.  The loser, as is the American tradition does not get the recognition she deserves, but in fact comes out the better in life itself.  It is a time when Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days set the standard, even though fictitious for world travel.  A very enjoyable read.
7. Madam by Cari Lynn and Kellie Martin is the story of Storyville in New Orleans.  It is a fictitious story in that the authors have to create a narrative that fits between the blank spots in the information that is available about this experiment in legalized, but controlled prostitution.  The characters are reall and the history that the novel exposes is fascinating.
8. Bull River by Robert Knott is a continuation of the Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch westerns of Robert Parker.  Good characters, the black and white west is crisscrossed by characters who are sure of their decisions, but constantly in the gray zone between good and bad.
9. Catch Me by Lisa Gardner is a very good police thriller.  It is about the thin line between police and vigilante, the dangers of on-line trolling for underage victims and gives good suspense with some real red flags for people to consider.
10. Cooperstown Confidential is the story of baseball Hall of Fame, but not the bio of those who get in, rather the politics of induction.  The choices that were made that should not have been made and the  very human aspect of HOF decisions. 
11. Red Planet Blues by Robert Sawyer was a genre buster for me.  I am not a SciFi fan, but this mix of Sci FI and detective was well done and well paced.  
12. The Persuader by Lee Childs is a Reacher Novel.  I read out of curiosity. It is first and last.  A testosterone novel.  No suspense - he is too good and he is the narrator so he has to make it.