As many of you know, I am an avid reader. In fact, one of the things I looked forward to in retirement is more time to read. I suppose it comes from my parents who are also avid readers. As far back as I can remember, we had a daily newspaper plus many magazines and books around the house — despite the fact that we were of quite modest economic means. That reading habit was deeply instilled in all of us kids (I have three sisters). Of course, we now also have web pages and blogs to add to the list of “must reading”. Even so, give me a good book any day.

And a fate would have it, I received a good book as a Christmas gift — The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel by Michael Connelly. When I first opened the gift I thought, “Oh, an historical novel about our 16th president”. On closer examination, the cover showed a car which obviously would not have existed in the 19th century. The novel is about a lawyer in contemporary Los Angeles who tends to defend the underbelly of LA society. He does not have a lot of money and works out of the back of his car, a Lincoln Town Car (and thus the name of the book). His driver is one of his clients who did not have money to pay for legal fees so he drives the lawyer around to work off the debt. The lawyer is approached about taking on a case for a more respectable client who was accused of battering and threatening to kill a prostitute. I’ll stop at this point because I don’t want to spoil anyone’s enjoyment of the novel.

Friday night I went to bed and as is my custom prior to sleeping, resumed reading The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel. Retirement has given me flexibility in bed times but, as a creature of habit, I still tend to turn the light off at 10:00 – 11:00 PM. I was already halfway through the book and the story was getting better and better. In fact, it became incredibly interesting — I could not predict the plot twists and turns — so that I could not put the book down and read to the very end, finishing about 1:30 AM! I cannot tell you how unusual that is for me.

The book was great and I highly recommend it — except for those of you who are not retired or on vacation. You may become hooked like I did and find getting up for work the next day to be a difficult challenge.