If Only I Could Claim a Literate Clone ...

At the end of every year, I glance back at my record of books read, and--after congratulating myself for having covered so much ground (both in fiction and non-fiction)--lament the fact that many other titles never quite made it to the top of my to-be-read pile. Life and work (and, I admit, recreational blogging) have a tendency to get in the way of my burying my nose in one good book after the next. As a result, the following “unlucky 13” crime novels will just have to wait for my attentions in 2007:

• Buried, by Mark Billingham (Little, Brown UK)
• Bust, by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr (Hard Case Crime)
• The Casebook of Sidney Zoom, by Erle Stanley Gardner (Crippen & Landru)
• Cold Kill, by David Lawrence (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Minotaur)
• Darkness & Light, by John Harvey (Otto Penzler/Harcourt)
• A Field of Darkness, by Cornelia Read (Mysterious Press)
• Gardens of the Dead, by William Brodrick (Viking)
• The Meaning of Night, by Michael Cox (Norton)
• Memory Book, by Howard Engel (Carroll & Graf)
• Mr. Clarinet, by Nick Stone (Penguin UK)
• The Poe Shadow, by Matthew Pearl (Random House)
• The Prisoner of Guantánamo, by Dan Fesperman (Knopf)
• A Stolen Season, by Steve Hamilton (St. Martin’s Minotaur)

And I don’t even want to consider how many entries in the wonderful Akashic Books Noir Series I still have waiting on my plate. (I think I’m almost done with Laura Lippman’s Baltimore Noir.) If I actually believed in making New Year’s resolutions, I would probably commit myself to reading all of the aforementioned novels. However, I know that the next few months will distract me with new books, and by the time December 2007 rolls around, there might still be a straggler or two (or three) from this list of 13 begging for my notice. All in good time, my friends, all in good time.

(Hat tip to Bookgasm.)