Guilty Pleasure

I don't read books much anymore, at least not for pleasure.  Mostly now I get audiobooks from Audible and listen to them when I have the opportunity.  I originally started ordering them when I wanted something to do when on my elliptical trainer (reading is too difficult them) but it's been, uh, more than a couple days since I've been on the elliptical.  But I still order the audiobooks because I enjoy the format.

One type of book, though, I'll buy in dead-tree format.  My guilty pleasure is Clive Cussler novels.

Cussler's novels are kind of action-adventure, James-Bond-y or Jason-Bourne-y novels that are just campy enough to entertain me.  They're over the top, but it works.

One thing that entertains me is that Cussler can't write a woman's character to save his soul.  Every woman is an archetype of what men want women to be--they're smart, strong, athletic, tough, but feminine when they need to be.  They're all Lynda-Carter-as-Wonder-Woman, every one of them, unless they're one of the bad guys, in which case they're just bad men with internal plumbing.

But I enjoy the stories.  They're complete and total escapism.

Cussler has many series.  I read all of the Dirk Pitt books until Pitt was so old that he had to be replaced by his twin son and daughter, Dirk Jr. and Summer.  At that point I stopped with Dirk Pitt, having read 19 of them (I just counted, they're on my shelf).  But then I came upon The Oregon Files.

The Oregon is a "tramp steamer" registered in Iran, but behind the rust and squalor lies one of the most advanced warships on the planet--certainly the most advanced privately owned ship.  It's crewed by members of The Corporation, men and women mercenaries who are all part-owners of Oregon and The Corporation.  I like having a ship and a crew to read about, I like the teamwork--and the several members of the crew make for many different possible story arcs.

I've read 9 books in The Oregon Files series, and today at Costco I came upon a 10th one.  It was cheaper there than on Amazon so I bought it.  And there's an 11th one still to get.

I now have something to keep me occupied for the next couple days.

Update, 6/11/16:  Turns out I bought the 11th one at Costco--found the 10th on Barnes & Noble in the format I like so I ordered it.  It was supposed to arrive Friday (yesterday) but got here Thursday instead.  Good job, B&N, UPS, and USPS!

I have to get Piranha, the 10th, read before I leave on a cruise in a week.  Rather than taking audiobooks with me, which instead I will listen to when I drive to Canada in July, I'm taking some pulp sci-fi books with me on the cruise.  Any I read I can just leave in the ship's library for someone else.  I have to get the 11th Oregon Files book read before school starts!

It often surprises those who know me, but I'm the world's slowest reader.