Why I haven't been reviewing books lately:

I haven't been posting many reviews lately, but I have a good reason. I read a book that was so bad, it completely pushed any thoughts of reviewing books completely out of my mind. I'm not going to fully review "The Bad Book", but I'll tell you a little about it here to try and exorcise this demon that's still haunting me:

Zero Day, by David Baldacci

This is a horrible book. I love Baldacci's writing (usually), and have read everything that he's written, but this one was bad. I'm a big fan of the Reacher series, by Lee Child, and evidently, so is David Baldacci. Baldacci evidently likes Reacher so much that he decided to try his hand at writing a Reacher book of his own. He changed enough details (barely) to avoid an accusation of plagiarism, but a judge would have a hard time going either way if Child decided to press the issue.

Let's do a quick inventory (and this is not a canonical list):

Tall, physically overpowering main character? Reacher: check. Baldacci's character: check.

Military affilitaion? Reacher: separated military investigator.  Baldacci's character: active duty military investigator.

Uncanny sense of time? Reacher: doesn't need a watch. Keeps time to the second in his head. Baldacci's character: doesn't need a watch. Keeps time to the second in his head.

Baldacci's writing style doesn't lend itself to this character. He's got two great series that he's working on (the King / Maxwell series, and the Camel Club series) that I would highly recommend. Zero Day, though, I would stay away from. If you want to read a Reacher book, then pick up a Reacher book. Baldacci's book comes off as a cheap imitation, just an attempt to cash in on Reacher's popularity.

It's taken me weeks to get over reading it.