This makes 13 books so far this year. All were good. The Taylor Caldwell was an excellent story, maybe a bit over written. Sugar and the Everglades was a puff piece written by US Sugar to get reaers to complain to Washington DC about giving Cuba and South America the ability to take over the US sugar market. A well written puff piece, though.

Here’s the first books of the year! I kicked the year off with a Vince Flynn thriller. Then I moved on to reading of the 2nd Seminole War. That lead me to read of the life of Thomas S. Jesup. I went back to Flynn’s third book. I wandered into the Everglades and back to war with ‘Discovering the Civil War in Florida’.

Above are the last 9 books I read through November and December. I went to simpler fiction to get to the 52 number. Quite different from the start of the year where the bulk of my reading was non-fiction. I’m aiming for 55 in 2010. Let’s see if I can make it.

Here are some new covers gathered. The ones above and below are from romance novels. I love the multi-levels of the one below.  Great art for 10 cents each.

Today is Jacob’s 15th birthday. Amazing but true, for those who know what this is about. I had lunch with my father at Steak and Shake. The sketch (First I’d done in the sketchbook for almost 2 months) is of gumball machines at the restaurant. Later I was fortunate to have the opportunity to spend some time and talk Orlando history with my 101 year old friend, Lucile Fair. Later Met with Tex Ann and Bob Buck to work on Orlando Remembered display. Still later met up with ol’ Ken Culotta and worked on gags at a Denny’s. Below is a photo from that meeting.

Another set of books. ‘Glades County History’ is about one of the 67 counties in Florida. It’s well meaning but missing an enormous amount of time. Otherwise it is well written. ‘No House Limit’ is outstanding part of the Hard Case Crime series. This was written by someone living in Vegas and he does an amazing job of depicting the area. A good story, too. ‘Big Sugar’ is an NPR type crying in his coffee about horrendous conditions of workers and just ignoring who they’re working for. If the businesses are so horrible to treat people this way, then why not give the reader at least some benefit of the doubt that the knowledge gained would still have us outraged as to the workers treatment. I read this 20 years ago and I’m wiser now and see through the effort to just rile up the crowd. ‘The Messenger’ is another recent book that could have had about a hundred pages ripped out and still have been in excess. There’s a well crafted plot there, just over produced.

Wow! I hadn’t put up books in a while! So here’s what I’ve taken in since mid-July. I went pretty straight forward fiction during the kidney stone mess. I tried reading non-fiction but had trouble keeping it in my head.

I love Charles Geer’s artwork. I first saw it in elementary school and love to now find his illustrated books. This is one I found today. Above is the cover to ‘Open Throttle’, a collection of railroad stories for children. It has just a handful of his wonderful illustrations inside.

Below is a very large caricature I delivered today.

Here’s some art from a few books I picked up. Above is from the old ChildCraft series. This inside the cover of Volume 14- Science and Industry. Below is uncredited art from ‘The Case of the Fugitive Nurse’ by Earle Stanley Gardner. Beside that is Robert McGinnis art from ‘The Seven Sirens’ by Carter Brown.

I met with author John Scolaro, who passed on to me his new book that I illustrated. Above John stands holding the books in front of a major character in the book, The Waffle House.

I attended the Friday luncheon of the Florida Press Association at historic The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida. During the luncheon the Florida Press Association presented awards to those of the daily papers. Also given were awards from The First Amendment Foundation. The Pete Weitzel/Friends of the First Amendment Award was given to Pat Gleason, who is an assistant to Governor Charlie Crist on many things including open government. She is a great lady. She assisted Sandra and I when visiting the Governors Library & Sandra donated many of her books. Governor Crist was at the luncheon to present the award. Below is a fuzzy photo of Pat Gleason speaking, to the right of the photo.

I was honored to receive the Sunshine Award for my editorial cartoons on the subject of Sunshine Week. Below the photo are the two Sunshine Week cartoons. My time at Orlando City Hall greatly helped my constructing these two cartoons. Director  Barbara Peterson was a big help!

To the right is a colored sketch of drapery in The Breakers.

While at the Florida Press luncheon I met Mark Mathes who once editted a ton of cartoonists when he was with Tribune Media Services. Amongst those is cartoonist and editor, Dick Kulpa. Dick was one time editor of the infamous Weekly World News.  I once penciled a week of comics strips for Dick’s comic strip ‘Ghost Story Club’ many years ago.

Anyway, Mark invited Dick over and we went to dinner. Dick and I drew each other and a photo of such is below.