JOPLIN, Mo. — Sometimes a book can surprise you. When I’ve read it and am still thinking about it a week later, I’m very surprised, not to mention pleased.

I love books and I read a ton of them. If I start a book and it’s disappointing, I stop. There are so many great and good books out there; life’s too short to waste any of it on borderline-to-bad book choices.

And I make a few bad selections, especially when turned loose in a library. I bring home all kinds of books that don’t live up to my hopes and expectations.

Ah, but those that do! A perfect example is “Coming of the Storm, Book One of Contact: The Battle for America” by W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear. Why I waited so long to read the Gears’ is a mystery to me but now that I have, I’m eagerly anticipating the next book in this series about the “blood drenched years that followed Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto’s landing in ‘La Florida’ in 1539 -- as seen entirely through the eyes of two courageous Native Americans.” That’s what the dust jacket says and that’s what happens.

The Gears have written many books, both together and separately; more than 20 of them international best-sellers. I have no particular knowledge of that time period but I’m ready to accept their expertise -- there are pages of bibliography to support my decision. In fact, after finishing the book I went immediately to the Internet to search for de Soto to verify his villainy.

The writers have harsh words for de Soto, both in the foreword and in the book. The atrocities committed against the tribes are not emphasized in online descriptions of his explorations.

His trek across the American South earned his place in history books, municipal parks, auto designs and road side markers, they note: “One wonders if 500 years from now future generations will do the same for Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin or Pol Pot”

Ouch! But an “ouch” well deserved. The protagonists in the book are Indians and as they realize what faces them, their people and their way of life, so do we. They’re wonderful characters and the plot is filled with action, some of it grisly.

The Gears label de Soto as a monster. I’ll go along with that.

Goofy book cover garners attention

I went from “Storm” to another book from the library: “Bounty Hunter’s Daughter,” by Phyllis de la Garza.

Two things drew me: the cover, which is goofy, and the fact that this American western was printed in Great Britain. I thought the author might be British, which she isn’t, but I didn’t know that until I read the “About the Author” page in the back. She’s American, living in Arizona.

That cover makes me nuts. In it, the protagonist -- a daughter, not too surprisingly -- is shooting a pistol. Her bottom half points one way and her top half points the other way and no matter how I look at it, no human being could do that without being a contortionist.

The book was a traditional western with a little romance, which was probably a good choice after the Gears’ book -- it gave me a chance to come down from the previous high. I liked it just fine because I don’t judge one book against the other. I consider what a book is trying to be and whether or not it achieved that aim.

Both these books did.

E-book sales up

Industry folks are talking about a news release from Amazon.com that says during the past three months, the online retailer has sold 143 e-books for Kindles for every 100 hardcovers, and during the past month has sold 180 e-books for every 100 hardcovers. (These figures include sales of hard covers for which there is no Kindle edition and exclude free e-books.)

Amazon has sold three times as many Kindle e-books in the first half of 2010 as it did in the same period last year. The growth rate of Kindle unit sales has tripled since the company lowered the e-reader’s price to $189 from $259 a month ago. Of the 1.14 million e-book editions of James Patterson titles that Hachette Book Group said earlier this month have been sold, some 867,881 were Kindle e-books.

The Wall Street Journal noted that e-competitors of Amazon have similar news: B&N has had “a big uptick” in sales of the Nook since it cut prices a month ago and Sony told the paper that sales of the Reader in the second quarter were triple the same period a year earlier.      

Not all the news is bad for traditional publishers, however.

Madeline McIntosh, president, sales, operations and digital at Random House, said, “Our conclusion is that there’s no data to prove any connection -- good or bad -- between growth in e-books and the growth or decline, in trade paperback sales É If anything, we may be seeing a positive effect in which the steady pace of e-book sales helps to keep a book in front-of-mind for a growing number of consumers after hardcover momentum slows.”