17. The Return Man, by V. M. Zito

When I last posted here on Friday, I stated that although I hadn't yet picked my next book to read, "given our plans for the weekend" I certainly would do so by the end of the day. Well, this is the proof of that. I had a rather lazy weekend in which Tank spent most of it playing with his step-siblings and step-cousins, which left me plenty of time to read. Alas, while I liked the book, my final thought upon completing it had nothing to do with looking forward to its obviously impending sequel. Instead, I found myself thinking that I need to step away from zombies for a while. For whatever reason, somewhere in the middle of this novel I hit overkill. I'm not certain of an exact count, but I know for a fact that I have read a minimum of nine such novels over the past six years or so.

The good news is that with over 2½ months remaining in 2012, I have matched the number of books I read in 2011. However, given that one of last year's books was a Dozois-edited year's best anthology, it behooves me to include something of similar or even greater heft in this year's list. So, with that in mind, I've picked my next arm-breaking tome: The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction.

It will be fun seeing if I can finish it before the end of the year. :-)