Len's book reading list - featuring the "Bob Lee Swagger - sniper" series

[Len Backus]

I really enjoy reading thriller and mystery non-fiction. Years ago more of my reading was non-fiction. But in recent years the ratios have flipped.

I'll read about 100 books per year. I check out and discard quite a few beyond that 100 number without completing many others after I start them. Mostly digital, some hard cover. My digital books come through an app called LIBBY. Once installed you can use it through your local library card to gain access to an incredible array of good reading material...at no cost.

I'll guess that some of you have read parts or all of the Swagger, sniper novels written by Stephen Hunter. I just completed his TIME TO HUNT story. Set in Viet Nam War and in western US mountains.

Bob Lee Swagger Series - click on following links to read plot summary

1. Point of Impact, 1993
2. Black Light, 1996
3. Time to Hunt, 1998
4. The 47th Samurai, 2007
5. Night of Thunder, 2008
6. I, Sniper, 2009
7. Dead Zero, 2010
8. The Third Bullet, 2013
9. Sniper's Honor, 2014
10. G-Man, 2017
11. Game of Snipers, 2019

---

Earl Swagger Series

1. Hot Springs, 2000
2. Pale Horse Coming, 2001
3. Havana, 2003

Really great series.

I love this website for identification of ALL books by an author in a certain chronological order...and then trying to read them in order if possible.

Book Series in Order

A List of Characters and Authors and Their Books

www.bookseriesinorder.com

Currently I have 35 books on hold (one week to six months) or reserve status with either my local library (hard cover) or Libby (digital text - - - or audio - for long drives - or in a tent at night in the wilderness)

Current authors on my lists include:
Dean Koontz
Stephen Hunter
Patricia Cornwell
Brad Thor
John Sanford
Johnathan Kellerman
Catherine Coulter
Harlen Coban
James Patterson
Craig Johnson
C.J. Box
David Baldacci
Daniel Silva
John Grisham


What do you like to read?

 

[epags]

For the past couple of years, I have been using Amazon for my digital downloads.
Currently I have enjoyed books by: Ted Tayer, Cal Rogan, E.H. Reinhard, J.C. Ryan (The Rex Dalton series), Bruce Beckhan (DI Skelgill series), Toby Neal (Paradise Crime series - I like Hawaii) and for laughs Mike Faricy (Jack Dillon Dublin Tails as well as his other series) as well as B. Hesse Pflingger (The Jake Fonko Series).
Like you I have started a number of books that were so bad I stopped after a chapter or two.

 

[ButterBean]

I wish I had the time as I loved to read high school, I was a Louis L'Amore fan

 

[QuietTexan]

I use Kindle for digital but buy a lot of used books off the internet and from a local book store in Ft Worth (yes those still exist!!!) I read lot's of history books. Stephen Harrigan has written several books of Texas history that are incredible, his They Came from the Sky is a teaser to a much longer book on Texas history and chronicles the arrival of Spaniards to the South Texas coast.

Larry McMurtry wrote the great Thalia series that is sadly overshadowed by his much more popular Lonesome Dove series. Lonesome Dove is still a very important series to me because living in Weatherford both Oliver Loving (the inspiration for Call's repatriation of Gus' body to Texas) and Bose Ikard (the inspiration for Joshua Deets [Danny Glover's character]) are buried in the cemetery here. The epitaph on Bose Ikard's headstone was the almost word-for-word inspiration for what Call put on Deet's grave plank. McMurty's shorter books are great reads, I'm fortunate enough to live close enough to his hometown of Archer City to have been able to get a copy of Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen and read it at an actual old-style DQ, it was a very Texan experience.

John Graves's Goodbye to a River is one of the most formative novels I ever read, it honestly hurts to read the book and see how much of North Texas has been lost in the last 50 years with the explosion of the Metroplex and mass migration that has trampled over a prairie ecosystem just as beautiful as any national park in the country. The 1883 TV series glorifies North Texas along the Trinity River yet there's basically nothing left of that - just a muddy ditch you can't eat the fish from and fields of grass covering the levies that get spray pained over with advertisements. Why even pretend there's a river at this point, might as well dig a cutoff from Whisky Flats to Joe Pool and not have to deal with it anymore. Grave's wrote several more books about his time in Somervell County that are interesting if you like his writing style.

I read Point of Impact, I'll be honest that I almost gave up on it. Tough to me to get the suspension of disbelief necessary to read into a world that amounts to a young, well-known shooter (basically equivalent to a Bryan Litz or Erik Cortina level of popularity and exposure) getting into an accident and 30 years later he's willing to assassinate someone and parachuting out of airplanes with a wheelchair. It was a lot of "mysticism of the gun" lone-wolf stuff that didn't appeal to me.

I like Grisham novels, but I almost couldn't finish Grey Mountain because of his technical inaccuracies regarding the rifles they used. Was incredibly annoying for someone with that kind of a legal mind to use a case length to describe what investigators determined from bullet impacts. I enjoy A Time to Kill and re-read it fairly regularly, it's an interesting milestone to gauge how far society overall has changed in terms of how it would be received today.

James Michener's Centennial is one of my all-time favorites. My high school dumbed down our Colorado history class by letting us watch the 1979 TV mini-series instead of reading the book, but I've been carting around a beat up used hardcover for years now because the book holds up well on its own.

Two books from James D. Hornfischer are must-reads for anyone interested in the Pacific Campaign of WWII. Neptune's Inferno and The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors are both great novels, the later is actually on the CNO's reading list for 2022.

Lasty I read a lot of Stephen King. His Different Seasons gave us the movies Stand By Me and Apt Pupil (odd tie in to Grisham via the child actor who was the lead in The Client). His shorter and older novels are really good, shame he went woke and his newer stuff is derivative drivel.

 

[TexSavage]

Len I have read all of those except for #9, 10, & 11. My favorite was #4, 47th Samurai. I also enjoy Jack Coughlin, C.S. Lewis, Jim Geraghty "The Weed Agency"

 

[brcfo_outdoors]

I have a deep love for science fiction and fantasy, but it is one of the more difficult genres to weed through all of the mediocre offerings out there. I like when the author can create a immersive world like Andrzej Sapkowski or that they have done the research to make you believe they know exactly what they are talking about like Michael Crichton.

David Morrell is the king of action thrillers in my mind, and I find his books easily re-readable.

Non fiction for me needs to be focused around a particular topic of interest: On Killing, On Combat, American Sniper, Lone Survivor, 13 Hours.

I like to explore the classics too, to see what they are all about. I have experimented with Jules Verne via Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Herman Melville via Moby Dick (did not finish, I need to reattempt), and am currently working on The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper since I failed to finish it in paperback. I know I have read others but have lost track.

Audiobooks have really been a blessing for my ability to discover more books. Throw them on while commuting to work, or at work, while I am home tinkering with my guns and equipment, or even exercising. My wife and I use a similar app with my local library for free.

 

[jpfrog]

I use Kindle for digital but buy a lot of used books off the internet and from a local book store in Ft Worth (yes those still exist!!!) I read lot's of history books. Stephen Harrigan has written several books of Texas history that are incredible, his They Came from the Sky is a teaser to a much longer book on Texas history and chronicles the arrival of Spaniards to the South Texas coast.

Larry McMurtry wrote the great Thalia series that is sadly overshadowed by his much more popular Lonesome Dove series.

John Graves's Goodbye to a River is one of the most formative novels I ever read, it honestly hurts to read the book and see how much of North Texas has been lost in the last 50 years with the explosion of the Metroplex and mass migration that has trampled over a prairie ecosystem just as beautiful as any national park in the country.

As someone who has been in the metroplex for 38 of my 41 years, I love reading about TX history. Hunting for the last 16 years out between Ranger/Breckenridge, my interests have exploded into all things Brazos and west, and reading Goodbye to a River also made me sad. I need to read that one again, and revisit some other non-fiction on the area in general.

I like a lot of Grisham, Koontz, Clancy, etc type of fiction as well. I need to dust some of them off that I have in hardcover, and fire up the kindle on others!

 

[dmj]

I enjoy reading and will read anything. Can go to the library and they have a fairly good supply of paper back books. You can take these and there is no due date. Actually don't even have to return them. I do return them so others can read them. My rule of thumb is, if I pick it up and start to read it, I have to finish it. Got to be honest, twice I have just not been able to finish the book. So painful just gave up .

 

[birddog 68]

I enjoy reading but it seems to take me months to read a book. I love history and have probably read most mountain man books but my favorite book is 44 years of the life of a hunter. About the struggles and the changing of life for a hunter named Meshach Browning in the late 1700's and into the 1800's. All true and written from his diary.

 

[jbs2014]

I really enjoyed I Sniper. Especially the showdown at the end with the Irish guy. I like how he described the shoulder hit from that 7mm Rum. Dean Koontz is pretty decent too with the guy that sees the ghosts and such, Odd Thomas is it? Now all my reading time is work related reading policy memos, regulations, various white papers and more emails than I care to remember.

 

[QuietTexan]

I love reading about TX history.

If you've never read any J Frank Dobie I highly recommend it. He was a big part of the change to realism in Western fiction as opposed to the romanticism of L'Amour and was instrumental in helping save the Texas Longhorn from being entirely replaced by other other breeds. Big Wonderful Thing is a very interesting read - I was fortunate enough to meet Stephen (the author) several years ago and his passion for the work is palpable.

Big Wonderful Thing on Amazon


I'm not a hoity toity art guy by any means, but the Sid Richardson Museum in Downtown Ft Worth and the Amon G. Carter museum over by the stock show both have the kind of "art" that a redneck like me can understand and enjoy. Frederick Remington sculptures, a portrait of George Washington, lots of Western Americana and Texas focused pieces. I want to support places like that that tie us back to some of our founders here in Ft Worth so we don't lose all of our identity as the carpetbaggers continue to take over.

 

[Rick Richard]

As someone who has been in the metroplex for 38 of my 41 years, I love reading about TX history. Hunting for the last 16 years out between Ranger/Breckenridge, my interests have exploded into all things Brazos and west, and reading Goodbye to a River also made me sad. I need to read that one again, and revisit some other non-fiction on the area in general.

I like a lot of Grisham, Koontz, Clancy, etc type of fiction as well. I need to dust some of them off that I have in hardcover, and fire up the kindle on others!

Have you read Comanche Moon? You might like it.

 

[Rick Richard]

I really like the Joe Pickett series by Lee Child.

 

[Veteran]

This painting by Winslow Homer named "A Tight Fix" was at the Amon Carter Museum back in 2017 or 2018.

Hunter is down, lost his rifle, only has his knife, his partner in the background doesn't see him in peril.