It’s Thursday and you know what that means…another edition of Booking Through Thursday is here.

This week’s question is: What’s the best book you’ve read recently? (Tell me you didn’t see this one coming?)

This was a tough decision to make. I’ve read some mediocre books of late, but I’ve read some great ones too and I was having a difficult time choosing between them.

But the winner by a few points is The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. (Coming in a close second is Generation Dead by Daniel Waters.)

I adored reading The Lightning Thief and its characters and adventuring with Percy. When I finished the book, I was breathless and in a mild state of awe wondering why I had waited so long to start this series. (It’s kind of like Harry Potter in that sense…you’re beating yourself up for being literarily lazy.)

The review is in the queue. Shame on me for still being lazy.

Recent Arrivals chronicles the books that have made their way onto the Today, I Read… bookshelf. Here’s the latest arrival: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

First line: Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood.

Initial thoughts: I’d seen this title around for a while, but it didn’t hit home until I was standing in line for the November elections and saw a woman well into her fifties reading it. When I asked what she thought about it, she was completely smitten. So that’s when I knew I needed to get a copy of the book. (BTW, she was reading it because she wanted to know what her kids were into.)

Book description:

Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school…again. And that’s the least of his troubles. Lately, mythological monsters and the gods of Mount Olympus seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy’s Greek mythology textbook and into his life. And worse, he’s angered a few of them. Zeus’s master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect.

Now Percy and his friends have just ten days to find and return Zeus’s stolen property and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. But to succeed on his quest, Percy will have to do more than catch the true thief; he must come to terms with the father who abandoned him; solve the riddle of the Oracle, which warns him of betrayal by a friend; and unravel a treachery more powerful than the gods themselves.

Book Details: 392 pages; Miramax Books; Pub. March 21, 2006