It would seem from my lack of recent posting that I forgot how to write, lost my computer, fell in a well, moved to a cabin in the wilderness without Internet access or was called away for a secret CIA mission in Tajikistan.

But none of that happened. I was out of town for a few days, and other days just got filled with other things.

A few of those involved reading books. Three of them to be exact. Since none of them really inspired the kind of reaction that would normally merit their own long post, I’m going to zip through them all here as a group.

The first is “The Book of Basketball” by Bill Simmons. This will be the easiest post-book writing of all time: If you already read his stuff on ESPN.com and like the NBA, you will enjoy it. Though I must say it is probably 150 pages too long.

Second on the list is John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” one of those titles I felt like I should have read a long long time ago but never did. If you have been following my reading habits for any amount of time you should know that I think Steinbeck can do no wrong and this certainly follows that trend. My only regret is that I didn’t wait until it was warmer outside. There’s something about his writing that I think is best enjoyed when sitting in the sunshine with a light breeze rustling the leaves of nearby trees.

A number of his books are quite short by conventional standards — somewhere around 100 pages. But the nature of his writing is such that you find yourself 80 pages into the story and not even cognizant that you are nearing the end. He spends so much time and so much care crafting a story involving a small cast of characters and taking place over just a few days. And yet despite the lack of pages, you feel as if you have been told a complete story and had all of your questions answered.

The latest of the trio is Erik Larson’s “Devil in the White City.” This one is a longtime coming, since multiple people recommended it to me last summer and I finally got around to acquiring a copy and reading it. But it was well-worth the wait. I dog-eared a few pages, as I normally do, but in looking back I either don’t remember what seemed noteworthy or think it would give something away to those who end up reading the book.

So I’ll keep it more generic, and in keeping with the theme of this post, short. If you enjoy history, you’ll be into the descriptions of how the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair came into existence. Considering the technology and building techniques in use at the time, it was really a remarkable feat of engineering and construction. Add in the auxiliary products and attractions that were first introduced at the event and you have a long list of things that are still very much a part of our daily lives.

And then there’s the murder. Well, the murders. If you didn’t know it was a true crime story, you wouldn’t believe the actions of one of the main characters, a psychopath who eludes the detection of law enforcement at the time to perpetrate a borderline impressive list of dastardly deeds. Larson weaves the two storylines together with a superb use of historical background and primary documents to give a complete sense of what it was like to be in Chicago at that time. A very info-dense story at times, but well worth the read.