Hard Case Crime

When Kimberly enrolled in Nurse Anesthesia school back in the fall of 2005, Chris wondered what he could do to be around the house and not make too much noise while she studied. Then it hit him...make his way through the Star Wars Universe via books (well, all the ones except for the kids crap). Start at the beginning and read his way through to current releases. He had two years to complete the mission, and thankfully he succeeded. Right before graduation in 2007, he had made his way through gobs and gobs of $6.99 mass market paperback books. There are now 97 Star Wars paperbacks on the shelf so far to date. 97! Now all he has to do is catch up on the occasional Star Wars paperback release every month or so for the new ones. Neato.

So now, when not reading American History books (the 704-page Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence is currently slowly being consumed) and there's a need for some fun, some candy, some cheese, some pure unadulterated entertainment, there's a fresh idea:

At lunch one afternoon about 2 weeks ago at Walgreens, Chris sat in the Jeep in the parking lot "away from it all" listening to Terry Gross's Fresh Air on NPR, and an interesting interview took place with Charles Ardai. Ardai publishes "Hard Case Crime" novels, reprints of old stories and also new books of classic crime and pulp fiction. Think film noir on the page. It was an intriguing interview to say the least. Classically painted covers, pulpy stories, fallable heroes. Fifty titles had been published since 2004, with the 51st book (Fifty-to-One) comprised of 50 chapters, each chapter titled one the books in order of publication. Pardon the pun, but how novel!

So tonight, with Star Wars - Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice completed, a Barnes and Noble online order was initiated (with Christmas gift cards) for the first few books in the Hard Case Crime series. This should be fun!