BOOKS: So much for a month

Once I find a writer I enjoy, I tend to hoarde books until I can sit down and spend a month reading one writer. Sometimes, I can buy every book put out by a writer for as much as four or five years, and then go through them one-after-another until I have another half-decade wait 'til the next time I'll read his or her offerings again.

There are exceptions. My birthday and Christmas co-inside with Janet Evanovich's publishing schedule. The latest Stephanie Plum book never lasts two days from receipt. I do the same "get and read" for the latest Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling) and Artemis Fowl (Eoin Colfer) books. But that's about it. I have self-control for the most part.

This month was SUPPOSED to be Clive Cussler month. Turned into a week. I've been a big fan of Cussler since a radio interview he did convinced me to read Raise the Titanic! It was a great book (and one of the stinker movies of all time) and made Cussler a must-read on acquisition day for a loooong time. But somewhere around Sahara (a bad book, punctuated by a character named Cussler, but a very pleasant surprise of a movie), I started collecting Cussler for "reading months." And it was time to plow through the four Cussler co-authored books on the top of my reading pile.

As previously mentioned, I was disappointed by the Kurt Austin series entry, The Lost City. I bit my lip at the Dirk Pitt series tome, The Black Wind, when the Cussler fictional alter-ego once again improbably arrived to save the day, an aaargh moment in an otherwise decent thriller. And I raced through the two entries in the Corporation series, Golden Buddha and Sacred Stone in three days. Thus, my intended enjoyment of Cussler's writing was condensed into just eight days.

But Cussler, writing with Craig Dirgo, has a keeper in The Corporation books, aka the Oregon Files. It's really a literary equivalent of the TV Alias series transplanted to a floating wonder-ship. There's none of the unconvincing romantic by-play that Cussler really doesn't do well. It's wall-to-seawall action and I have no problem seeing these books making good TV or a movie or two. And nary a fictional Cussler to rub me the wrong way.

My brother hobnobs in the higher circles of the literary world and only offers a bemused smile when I mention my affection for Cussler's work. But when it comes to escapist, page-turning fare, it's hard to beat the mcguffin man.