Can I Get A Drum Roll, Please?

As a writer, it seems like I always have something to work on. For the last three years I've written two books a year, roughly 900 manuscript pages. I do have another life outside of being hunched over my laptop. There's my husband, my household, my puzzles, my bowling . . . reading for pleasure gets pushed to the bottom of the heap.

But last year, during which I had more leisure time because I didn't do a whole lot of working at an outside job, I made some time to read, just for the heck of it. I started reading a few titles that I could take or leave, some of which I have yet to finish, others which left me with a that's-six-hours-of-my-life-I'll-never-get-back feeling. I can't say that I came across a single book that I couldn't put down . . . that free-falling carefree life is a thing of my twenties; now my deeply ingrained notion of get-your-work-done-before-you-pick-up-a-book precludes letting the laundry or dinner or food shopping go because I've just got to find out what happens to So-and-So . . . but I read some books that I greatly enjoyed.

I have narrowed down my short list of best reads for 2006 to two titles, two very different types of stories. Bettye's picks for 2006 are (drum roll, please . . . .)

I read one at the beginning of 2006, the other at the end of 2006. Both had babies at the center of their storylines. RM Johnson's The Million Dollar Divorce was a roller coaster ride of emotions, including desperation, despair, a thirst for revenge bordering on obsession, and most important of all, hope. Adrianne Byrd's She's My Baby was a charming story of a female publishing executive (referred to in the book by the outdated term career woman, which belongs with stewardess and Betamax) with no maternal instincts whatsoever, and a sexy neighbor who gives a sistah a hand. But both were great stories, highly entertaining, enjoyable to the last page.

What more could you ask for in a book?