The miracles of social media

President Bill Clinton put me to sleep Wednesday night.

Even though I liked his ad-libbed line at the Democratic National Convention about brass, I just couldn’t stay awake. I only saw a little bit of his 50-minute speech because I couldn’t stay away after Tweeting earlier: “Well, I’ve decided: Tonight, no blogging. And no #DNC2012 either. Gonna stick my nose in a #JohnLescroart novel & shut out the world.”

Already sore from my return earlier in the day to Warrior Crossfit Muscatine, I drifted off and slept until the ache in my right shoulder could no longer be ignored. Some five hours later I was awake and wandering around in a dark house, searching for Ibuprofen.

Going back to sleep didn’t seem like a strong possibility, so I checked email on my phone and found a notice from Twitter with this subject line:John Lescroart (@johnlescroart) is now following you on Twitter.

This was a pleasant surprise. Lescroart — 64, according to his Wikipedia page — has published more than 20 novels, including the legal and crime thrillers featuring the characters Dismas Hardy, Abe Glitsky and Wyatt Hunt. His first novel was published in 1981, but it often takes me awhile to discover a good thing and I had never read any of his books until earlier this year.

Since then, I’ve become a real fan, especially of books featuring Dismas Hardy. I am reading “The Hearing” and have read “The Oath,” “The Mercy Rule” and “Damage.”

I’ve not been reading his books in the order that Lescroart wrote them, but I’m not good at such coloring inside the lines. I’ll read them in whatever order I please. Lescroart won’t care, I’m sure.

The bottom line is this: His books are good. I’ll keep reading them until I’ve read all of them.

It’s jut an added plus to know he may be reading the nonsense I write on Twitter. Who knows? If Lescroart really has time on his hands, maybe he’ll even read this blog.

Thinking about it is almost enough to make my shoulder stop aching.