Books. I read books.

I've been reading a lot more the last year, being unemployed and all.

I got back into Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels. Read Debt of Honor, followed by Executive Orders, and I've now started The Bear and the Dragon. I've also got Rainbow Six sitting at my bedside, waiting. That's a John Clark novel, an offshoot of the other series.

In Debt of Honor, written in 1996, a character flies a passenger jet loaded with fuel (but no passengers) into the Capitol building while a joint session of Congress is listening to the President, thus destroying the entire government of the US in one fell swoop. I was struck by the fact that neither that, nor the numerous other signs before 9/11, were enough to make the people in charge take the threat of that kind of attack seriously. No saying if the attacks of that day were preventable, but it made me think.

In the last few weeks I've also read Dan Brown's breakout bestseller The Da Vinci Code, as well as the prequel, Angels & Demons, and I read his earlier book Digital Fortress, back in the spring on our trip to Israel. Good page turners.

I shouldn't forget Suzanne Brockman's Gone Too Far and Harlan Coben's No Second Chance, both of those being perfect airplane reading. Thrilling, exciting suspense books that are like fast food. Good while you're having it, but forgettable.