The guys had a tee time so after our enormous brunch, they took off. J had several projects to work on in the cabin while her pal, R, helped as much as necessary. I did my bit by staying out of their way. I did get up off the couch at least twice; once to mix myself a gin and tonic (J had already paused in her projects to make me the first two, I figured I could pitch in by not asking her a third time. I try to be a considerate guest. It's why I keep getting invited back.) and once, later in the day, after the guys were back from golf, I got up and walked all the way down to the dock where Jay was fishing to see how it was going. That constituted my entire exercise regimen for the day.
Exhausted after that excursion, I fortified myself with yet another g&t and buckled down to finish my book.
I took a pile of Daniel Silva titles from my parents' house when we moved them out last summer. They had all his books, so I knew they liked his stuff and they're a very good indicator as to weather an author is any good or not. I took all the duplicates, which was most of his titles.
Silva writes spy-thrillers, similar to Vince Flynn's but Silva's assassin is an Israeli agent who also happens to be a world class restorer of old Masters. That's his cover, so there's an art history aspect to most of his tales of intrigue and adventure.
Bottom line, he's an excellent story teller, which is really the only thing that matters.
I'll read any genre at all as long as the author can pull me in and make the real world disappear. Not that I don't love the real world, for the most part, I do but when I'm reading a book, I want to live in it.
That's why I have such a problem with the new fad of books written in the present tense. It feels terribly unnatural to me, like the author keeps intruding on the story.
I started Silva with The Defector. I thoroughly enjoyed it! I finished the Rembrandt Affair Thursday night and read Portrait of a Spy in its entirety on Friday, so don't think I didn't get anything done while I sat on the couch. That book is 448 pages long!
So far, it's been a perfect vacation.