Berty Reads Books

2011 Reading List

I Really Loved These

In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences

Truman Capote

Note to self…read more Capote. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

In 1959, two men broke into a farm house in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, and brutally murdered four members of the Clutter family. Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation, and provides details of both events. He also describes the capture, trial and execution of the killers while giving in-depth background information of their lives.

Though written in 1965, it's a novel that feels like it could have been written yesterday. I would totally agree with the The New York Review of Books review that called it “The best documentary account of an American crime ever written…The book chills the blood and exercises the intelligence…harrowing.”

The grim information, announced from the church pulpits, distributed over telephone wires, publicized by the Garden City's radio station, KIUL (“A tragedy. Unbelievable and shocking beyond words, struck four members of Herb Clutter family late Saturday night or early today, Death, brutal and without apparent motive…”), produced in the average recipient a reaction nearer that of Mother Truitt than that of Mrs. Clare: amazement, shading into dismay; a shallow horror sensation that cold springs of personal fear swiftly deepened.


Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Laura Hillenbrand

Fabulous.

Louis Zamperini: Olympian, survivor of a plane crash at sea (drifting for over 2,000 miles and a month and a half), and POW.

The entire unbelievable story.

Go read it.

Phil felt as if he were on fire. The equatorial sun lay upon the men, scalding their skin. Their upper lips burned and cracked, ballooning so dramatically that they obstructed their nostrils, while their lower lips bulged against their chins. Their bodies were slashed with open cracks that formed under the corrosive onslaught of sun, salt, wind, and fuel residue. Whitecaps slapped into the fissures, a sensation that Louie compared to having alcohol poured onto a wound. Sunlight glared off the ocean, sending barbs of white light into the men's pupils and leaving their heads pounding. The men's feet were cratered with quarter-sized salt sores. The rafts baked along with their occupants, emitting a bitter smell.


The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey

Candice Millard

Fantastic.

After losing the election for President in 1912, Roosevelt decides to embark on an epic journey in South America.

Financed by the American Museum of Natural History, his initial plans are to tour South America and explore remote areas while bringing back samples of flora and fauna. Additionally, he plans to take photos and write extensive articles for publication.

Once there, however, he is convinced to find the Rio da Duvida, the River of Doubt, and trace it north to the Amazon River. Along with famed Brazilian explorer, Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon, as well as part of his original crew (to include his 24-year-old son Kermit), Roosevelt sets off on his trek at the height of the rainy season.

This book is fabulously detailed and full of wonderful descriptions of the journey. We learn about all the terrible things that can happen in the rain forest, and ride along with the explorers as they navigate around dangerous rapids while fighting off malaria and starvation.

Three men died and Roosevelt thinks about killing himself. So, yeah, it's a feel-good story.

Even Rondon, who had discovered and named the river, had been able to tell Müller very little about its course or its character. Rondon had stumbled upon its source five years earlier while on a telegraph line expedition in the Brazilian Highlands, the ancient plateau region south of the Amazon Basin, and he and his men had followed it just long enough to realize that they would need a separate expedition, one solely devoted to mapping its entire length, to know anything of substance about it. When he was told that Roosevelt's objective was to “unravel the unknown aspects of our wilds,” Rondon himself had proposed the descent of the River of Doubt as one of five possible alternatives to Zahm's more conventional route. No one who knew Roosevelt would have been surprised to learn that, of the five alternatives, he quickly chose the one that, in Rondon's words, “offered the greatest unforeseen difficulties.”


Water for Elephants

Sara Gruen

I thought this would be total chick lit book. I'm glad I read it.

Jacob Jankowski, a veterinary student who drops out of Cornell because his parents pass away leaving him nothing, jumps onto a train to get away and ends up becoming a part of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.

Taking place during the early part of the great Depression, this story shows us what it is like to be part of a third-rate traveling circus.

The book flashes back and forth between present day where Jacob is in a home for assisted living, to the early 30s where he struggled along with everyone else, making ends meet as the new “veterinarian” for the circus.

We meet Marlena, the beauty that Jacob falls for, August, the gregarious off-kilter animal trainer married to the beauty, and Rosie, a thought-to-be-untrainable elephant that is purchased as a last hope for success for the show.

Great characters with a great story.

I'm lying on my bedroll, curled up and facing the wall. My physical state is every bit as sorry as my mental one, and that's saying something. My head is crammed with visions, all jumbled up like a ball of string: My parents alive, depositing me at Cornell. My parents dead, and the green and white floor tiles beneath them. Marlena, waltzing with me in the menagerie. Marlena this morning, fighting tears at the window. Rosie and her snuffing, inquisitive trunk. Rosie, ten feet tall and solid as a mountain, whimpering under August's blows. August, tap-dancing across the roof of a moving train. August as a bull-hook-wielding madman. Barbara, swinging those melons onstage. Barbara and Nell, and their expert ministrations.


Moonlight Mile

Dennis Lehane

Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are back!

It's like they never left. It's a quasi-sequel to Gone, Baby, Gone, the book that had Patrick and Angie investigating the kidnapping of four-year-old Amanda McCready.

But things are different. Kenzie and Gennaro are married with a child, and have mellowed a little.

Amanda is now a 16-year-old honor student, and she has disappeared again.

Patrick is a little hesitant to get involved but ends up being drawn into an investigation that has him confront “the consequences of choices he made that have haunted him for years.”

Not as raw as the early detective novels, but still a great read. And Bubba makes an appearance!

After three hours of this, we broke for lunch. We found a diner a few miles away in Chester. I ordered a turkey club, no mayo. Angie ordered a cheeseburger and a Coke. I sipped my bottled water and pretended I didn't really want her meal. Angie rarely watches what she eats and has the cholesterol issues of a newborn. I eat fish and chicken ninety percent of the time and have the high LDL levels of a retired sumo wrestler. Life, it's so fair that way. There were eight other patrons in the place. We were the only people not wearing boots. Or plaid. The men all wore ball caps and jeans. A couple of the women wore the kind of sweaters you get at Christmas from elderly aunts. Parka vests were popular.


I Liked These A Lot

The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro

From Wikipedia: The Remains of the Day tells the story of Stevens, an English butler who has dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington (mentioned in increasing detail in flashbacks). The novel begins with Stevens receiving a letter from a former colleague, Miss Kenton, describing her married life, which he believes hints at an unhappy marriage. The receipt of the letter coincides with Stevens having the opportunity to revisit this once-cherished relationship, if only under the guise of investigating the possibility of re-employment. Stevens's new employer, a wealthy American named Mr Farraday, encourages Stevens to borrow his car to take a well-earned break, a “motoring trip.” As he sets out, Stevens has the opportunity to reflect on his immutable loyalty to Lord Darlington, on the meaning of the term “dignity,” and even on his relationship with his own late father. Ultimately Stevens is forced to ponder the true nature of his relationship with Miss Kenton. As the book progresses, increasing evidence of Miss Kenton's one-time love for Stevens, and of his for her, is revealed.

I want to see the movie now.

This book will draw you deeply into that time period. It will make you wonder how one man can devote himself entirely to the service of another to the point of giving up his own feelings and relationships entirely.

You will not dispute, I presume, that Mr Marshall of Charleville House and Mr Lane of Bridewood have been the two great butlers of recent times. Perhaps you might be persuaded that Mr Henderson of Branbury Castle also falls into this rare category. But you may think me merely biased if I say that my own father could in many ways be considered to rank with such men, and that his career is the one I have always scrutinized for a definition of ‘dignity’. Yet it is my firm conviction that at the peak of his career at Loughborough House, my father was indeed the embodiment of ‘dignity’.


Spies of the Balkans

Alan Furst

I think I may have found a new go-to-guy for historical fiction stories.

I can't find any other books of his from his web site (I don't want to install any plug-ins so I can't navigate around it), but, for now, you can read this synopsis there:

“Balkan Greece - the city of Salonika. In that ancient port, with its wharves and brothels, dark alleys and Turkish mansions, a tense political drama is being played out. On the northern border, the Greek army has blocked Mussolini's invasion, pushing his divisions back to Albania -the first defeat for an ally of the Nazis, who have conquered most of Europe. But Adolf Hitler cannot tolerate such defiance: a German invasion is coming, and the people of Salonika can only watch and wait.

“At the center of this drama is Constantine ‘Costa’ Zannis, a senior police official, head of an office that handles special ‘political’ cases. As war approaches, the spies begin to circle, from the Turkish legation, from the German secret service, a travel writer sent by the British, and others…”

Good characters. Great setting. Fun stuff.

By 1934 he was promoted to detective and, three years later, to, technically, the rank of sub-commander, though nobody ever used that title. This advancement did not just happen by itself. An old and honored expression, from the time of the Turkish occupation, said that it was fortunate to have a barba sto palati, an uncle in the palace, and it turned out, to Zanni's surprise, that he had that very thing. His particular talent, a kind of rough diplomacy, getting people to do what he wanted without hitting them, had been observed from on high by the head of the Salonika police, a near mystic presence in the city.


56; Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports

Kostya Kennedy

Kennedy does of a fabulous job of taking you back in time to get the feel of a nation during Joe DiMaggio's unbelievable hitting streak.

Fabulous stories of Joe interacting with his teammates and the public, with details of all the at-bats of each game during the streak. You'll also feel like you are in the clubhouse before a game, sitting next to DiMaggio while he drinks his tenth cup of coffee before going out on the field.

I loved how Kennedy included interviews with “present day” baseball stars and what they thought of the possibility of someone one day breaking this record.

In the flyspeck town of Glendive, Montana, in the white dawn of another day, a man walked into a small breakfast shack, a slapped-up place with maybe eight spots to sit. He wore a wide, dark cowboy hat and weathered boots and old blue jeans. He was tall with a broad back and a bow in his gait and a face like leather. He might spend all day and even the night out on the range. A step through the doorway of the breakfast shack the cowboy looked at the man behind the counter and nodded his head. Already by his presence the cowboy's order was placed—griddle cakes, three eggs easy, coffee black. He shared a look with the counterman. “He get one?” And the counterman nodded and put down the cup of coffee. “Yes. He did. He got one.” They didn't even need to say his name.


Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal

Ben Macintyre

The true story of World War II double agent Eddie Chapman.

A thief, and small-time criminal, Chapman gets caught and is in an English prison in the Channel Islands…which soon become occupied by German forces during the war.

Chapman convinces the Germans that he would make an excellent spy for them. He is given German military intelligence training and learns the fine art of working with explosives. He is then given the orders by the Germans to parachute into England to sabotage an aircraft factory.

He surrenders promptly after landing and is turned into a double agent by MI5.

Great book with tons of detail about Chapman, his exploits and the perils of being a double agent. Fascinating stuff.

That night Chapman, von Gröning, and Praetorious stayed at the Hôtel des Ambassadeurs in Paris. In the morning, Praetorious searched him as promised, and then handed over a canvas bag sealed with oilskin containing £990 in used notes of varying denominations. Had Chapman looked inside the money bag, he might have spotted that the wads of money were held together by bands stamped “Reichsbank, Berlin,” with “England” written on them in pencil. In an unbelievable act of thoughtlessness, the Abwehr had given Chapman a cash package that immediately identified him as a German spy. Having checked every inch of his clothing for clues, Praetorious had handed Chapman a death sentence in used notes.


Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Michael Lewis

Billy Beane was a star baseball player.

The scouts loved him because he looked great at what he did. Drafted out of high school in 1980 in the first-round of the draft (to the Mets, along with Darryl Strawberry), Beane was thought to be the total package.

But his numbers told a different story: his batting average had dropped from over .500 in his junior year to just over .300 in his senior year.

In the majors Billy floundered. He had signed with the Mets just for the money, his heart never really in the game. Years later, he would say that that was the only time he had done something just for the money.

After bouncing around the league he finally ended up with the A's. After playing there for a while he walked into the front office and asked to stop playing. He was given a job as a scout and eventually promoted up to general manager.

Lewis was given unprecedented access to the A's front office. He details how Billy and his assistant, Harvard graduate Paul DePodesta, threw out conventional thinking, ignored the scouts gut feelings that were based on a player's appearance, and drafted or signed players for much less than everyone else based mostly on numbers.

I can't wait to see the movie.

As the thirty-fifth pick approaches, Erik once again leans into the speaker phone. If he leaned in just a bit more closely he might hear phones around the league clicking off, so that people could laugh without being heard. For they do laugh. They will make fun of what the A' are about to do; and there will be a lesson in that. The inability to envision a certain kind of person doing a certain kind of thing because you've never seen someone who looks like him do it before is not just a vice. It's a luxury. What begins as a failure of the imagination ends as a market inefficiency: when you rule out an entire class of people from doing a job simply by their appearance, you are less likely to find the best person for the job.


Song of the Sirens

Ernest K. Gann

I loved Gann's Fate is the Hunter, and this book is to boats as Fate is to airplanes.

Gann has a fabulous way with words. Though I'm not a big sailor I still immensely enjoyed his descriptions of his various sailing exploits that happened on his favorite boats.

Being blessed with familial backing, and doing well with his writing and flying career, Gann has owned 17 different “sirens” that he lovingly restored or sailed. Ride along with Gann when reading the book and you might just want to take the plunge and buy a boat yourself. Or, more probably, you might enjoy reveling in the fact that by not owning a boat you most likely will never face some of the dire situations that Gann did.

Beneath those various contraptions was a labyrinth of pipes, undulating, spiraling, snaking their way between, over, under, and around each other like discarded intestines in a slaughterhouse. Each year since her original launching various reforms had been made to satisfy new piping needs, so that now even the Dutch engineer who was supposed to reveal the secrets of this puzzle found himself perplexed. He was a small man with vague wisps of hair remaining on his torpedo-like head. He smoothed these hairs frequently as he tried to explain which pipe led to the sea, which to the bilges, and how this valve and that valve influenced the whole mess. During his halting lecture I sensed that his heart was not in his delivery and at first believed it was because of my mechanical stupidity

He sighed again and again as he felt and thumped at pipe after pipe and said frequently, “I myself do not understand why this pipe is here. It leads to nothing.”


True Grit

Charles Portis

Saw the remade movie, but read the book first.

Loved the book. Loved the movie.

Rooster Cogburn. Awesome band name.

He said, “Be right still.” I looked around for Lee and figured he must have gone to bed. Rooster said, “I will try this the new way. Now watch.” He leaned forward and spoke to the rat in a low voice, saying, “I have a writ here that says for you to stop eating Chen Lee's corn meal forthwith. It is a rat writ. It is a writ for a rat and this is lawful service of said writ.” Then he looked over at me and said, “Has he stopped?” I gave no reply. I have never wasted any time encouraging drunkards or show-offs. He said, “It don't look like to me he has stopped.” He was holding Papa's revolver down at his left side and he fired twice without aiming. The noise filed up that little room and made the curtains jump. My ears rang. There was a good deal of smoke.

Lee sat up in his bunk and said, “Outside is place for shooting.”


TH1RTE3N

Richard K. Morgan

Science fiction readers will love this.

From the back cover: “Forced into exile on a desolate Mars colony, Carl Marsalis is a Thirteen: the result of a failed U.S. government experiment to produce the ultimate lethal military fighter.”

Marsalis sneaks back to Earth, becomes a bounty hunter and hit man, gets entrapped by the police and thrown into jail. His only chance to get free? Use his altered genetic makeup and lethal skills to help the government find a murderous fugitive. Unfortunately, that fugitive is also a Thirteen.

Let's just hop into our time machine, shall we, and bring this book back 1987 where we can drop it on some Hollywood producer's desk so that Arnold can duke it out with some other roid ingesting action hero.

It's got everything you could want for a dark science fiction read.

Nervant looked up. Carl saw the twitch of a suppressed fight instruction flowing down the nerves of one arm. Like most thirteens, the Frenchman was physically powerful, broad in chest and shoulders, long limbs carrying corded muscle, head craggy and large. But somehow, in Nervant, the bulk seemed to have whittled down to a pale, lycanthropic coil of potential. He'd lost weight since Carl saw him last, and his nose and cheekbones made sharp angles out of his flesh. The narrowed gray-green eyes were muddy dark with anger, and the smile when it came was a slow-peeling, silent snarl. He'd been fast, back in Arequipa three years ago—it had taken the mesh for Carl to beat him. If he came across the table now, it would be like a whip, like snake-strike.


The Book Thief

Markus Zusak

Here's the description from the Amazon web site: “Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.”

The really neat thing about this book is that Death is the narrator. And as written in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, Death is a “kinder, gentler Death, who feels sympathy for his victims.”

Great concept.

Even though this may have been geared toward young adults, it is a sophisticated story that everyone will appreciate.

Of course, I'm being rude. I'm spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it. I have given you two events in advance, because I don't have much interest in building mystery. Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me.

There are many things to think of.

There is much story.

Certainly, there's a book called The Whistler, which we really need to discuss, along with exactly how it came to be floating down the Amper River in the time leading up to Christmas 1941. We should deal with all of that first, don't you think?


The Confession

John Grisham

I've always enjoyed Grisham's books. If you like his writing style you'll like The Confession.

Donte Drumm, a local football star, is on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Travis Boyette, the real killer, comes forward at the last minute to try to stop the execution.

A Kansas preacher hears Boyette's crime in a confession and it's a race to get Boyette to Texas to save Drumm.

Fast-paced, with good dialogue and typical Grisham characters.

“Mr. Flak is in a meeting.”

“I'm sure he is. Listen, this is very important. My name is Keith Schroeder. I'm a Lutheran minister from Topeka, Kansas. I spoke with Mr. Flak yesterday. I'm driving to Slone as we speak, and I have with me, here in my car, a man by the name of Travis Boyette. Mr. Boyette raped and killed Nicole Yarber, and he knows where her body is buried. I'm driving him to Slone so he can tell his story. It is imperative that I speak with Robbie Flak. Now.”

“Uh, sure. Can I put you on hold?”


The Phone Book; The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One Reads

Ammon Shea

Edison like to say hello…Bell preferred to answer with Ahoy.

I picked this up before Borders closed. It was in the discount area and I thought I might get something out of it.

It was well worth the price.

Not only does Shea cover the history of the phone book, but also the history of the phone as well.

Witty, entertaining, fun.

For several decades in San Francisco, there existed a telephone book unlike any other. The names, numbers, and addresses of the telephone subscribers in this book (between two and three thousand) were all painstakingly lettered by hand. The hand-lettered book was then given to a printer, who would use it as a template to make an engraving, which would then be used to print the several thousand copies needed for subscribers.

The reason these books went though such an unorthodox printing process is that they were written entirely in Chinese exclusively for the use of the Chinatown customers of the Pacific Bell Telephone Company in San Fancisco.


Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

Jon Krakauer

Mormon Fundamentalists are nuts.

Claiming to receive a commandment by God, Ron and Dan Lafferty kill an innocent woman and her baby girl.

Krakauer recounts the appalling double murder and provides a history of the Mormon faith, as well as insights into the more isolated Fundamentalist sect of Mormonism.

Don't let the San Francisco Chronicle lead you on. I did think it was a good book and “Fantastic,” but it is not “Right up there with In Cold Blood.

Eight months later, shortly after midnight on the appointed day, Joseph and Emma went to the Hill Cumorah. After being denied the plate on his previous four visits, this time Joseph left nothing to chance. Carefully adhering to the time-honored rituals of necromancy, the young couple were dressed entirely in black, and had traveled the three miles from the Smith farm to the hill in a black carriage drawn by a black horse. High on the steep west slope of the hill, Joseph again dug beneath the rock in the dark of night, while Emma stood nearby with her back turned to him. He soon unearthed the stone box that he had been prevented from removing four years earlier. This time, however, Moroni allowed him to take temporary possession of its contents.


Red Harvest

Dashiell Hammett

Honestly, I can't remember what this was about. I just know I liked it.

I think there were “dames” involved, and guys with guns, and detectives. And shoot-outs.

Written in 1929, it still holds up.

A bullet kissed a hole in the door-frame close to my noodle.

More bullets made more holes in door, door-frame and wall, but by that time I had carried my noodle into a safe corner, one out of line with the window.

Across the street, I knew, was a four-story office building with a roof a little above the level of my window. The roof would be dark. My light was on. There was no percentage in trying to peep out under those conditions.

I looked around for something to chuck at the light globe, found a Gideon Bible, and chucked it. The bulb popped apart, giving me darkness.


On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery

Robert M. Poole

Everything you would want to know about Arlington National Cemetery and more.

Poole goes into some detail about different sections of Arlington, but he really has written a small history book with the cemetery as a main character.

Great for history buffs.

Both sides agreed on a price of one hundred fifty thousand dollars. Congress quickly appropriated the funds. Lee signed papers conveying the title on April 24, 1883, which placed the federal claim to Arlington beyond dispute. The man who formally accepted title to the property was none other than Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the Civil War president so often bedeviled by Custis Lee's father. If the sons of such enemies could bury their differences at Arlington, there might be hope for national healing.


And Then the Roof Caved In: How Wall Street's Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to its Knees

David Faber

About as basic and easy a read as you can get that explains exactly what happened during that crazy time period where everyone was looking the other way.

I always like watching “The Brain” on CNBC, and his book is easy enough for me to understand.

In 2006, roughly $3 trillion worth of mortgages were originated in the United States. In that year, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac accounted for only 30 percent of the secondary market. In three years, the share of mortgages they bought had gone from 70 percent of all the mortgages originated to 30 percent. The guidelines for lending that Fannie and Freddie had so diligently applied to the mortgage market were no longer operative. So who stepped in to fill the void and buy all those mortgages made during a period of declining lending standards? It was Wall Street.


These Were Okay

Nerd Do Well: A Small Boys Journey to Becoming a Big Kid

Simon Pegg

I love Shaun of the Dead. I laugh my butt off when I see that movie.

Nerd Do Well didn't have me doubled over in laughter, but I did chuckle a lot.

I especially enjoyed how Pegg included a short, silly, science fiction story that was revealed a chapter at a time throughout the book. We learn what it was like for Pegg to grow up as a science fiction nerd, and we also get to read a “story of a tricked-out vigilante, with innumerable gadgets, a silver tongue and deadly fists; like Batman without the costume and a more pointed ‘gay subtext.’”


Bossypants

Tina Fey

I love Tina Fey but was left wanting more after reading this.

For me it was tough to get her brand of humor through just words, but I did chuckle at her descriptions of her dad.

I'd almost consider getting the audio book of this. I hear (no pun intended) that it's more entertaining.


Heaven is for Real

Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent

A quite remarkable story of a little boy who goes to heaven and returns.

What was initially thought to be a stomach flu quickly turned into a burst appendix and a trip to the emergency room for Colton Burpo. Only four years old, Colton was rushed into surgery while his parents prayed and argued with God.

The little guy pulls through, and the parents are overjoyed at their good fortune.

Four months later, little Colton starts talking to his dad and telling him that he almost died and met Jesus.

And then he starts telling them what he saw, what Jesus was like, what heaven was like, that he met and could recognize from old photos family relatives that has passed away before he was even born.

A quick, thought-provoking read.


Netherland

Joseph O'Neill

In his New York Time's review, Dwight Garner called Netherland the “the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we’ve yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Center fell. On a micro level, it’s about a couple and their young son living in Lower Manhattan when the planes hit, and about the event’s rippling emotional aftermath in their lives. On a macro level, it’s about nearly everything: family, politics, identity.”

I didn't get that out of it.

I thought it was a book with great characters and fun descriptions of people. The main character essentially goes through a mid-life crisis, has marriage trouble, takes up cricket again, and falls in with a few unsavory characters.

I totally missed or ignored the 9/11 angle and enjoyed the story.


Senior Year: A Father, A Son, and High School Baseball

Dan Shaughnessy

It's a coming of age story about Dan Shaughnessy's son, Sam.

But it's also a reflective story where Shaughnessy looks back on his life growing up, while focusing on the final senior year of his son in high school.

Each chapter is a month of his son's senior, and we learn that a kids life can be more complicated than we think, and that a father's love has no bounds.

I read it on the beach, while watching my two sons playing, while thinking that they will be seniors in high school in the blink of an eye.

I started to get a little depressed until the younger one took a bucket of sand and threw it at his older brother's face.


Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker

Kevin Mitnick with William L. Simon

Ride along with Kevin Mitnick as he describes all his social engineering during his time as a phone phreaker and hacker.

Mitnick describes how he conned unsuspecting folks out of passwords and how he acquired inside phone numbers that allowed him to make phone calls for free and download source code for different computer systems and cell phones.

Interesting to read, but after a while it gets to be the same thing over and over.

You'll like it if you like to root for the devious type, or want to learn a little more about the man who was once the most wanted computer criminal in the United States.


Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles

Anthony Swofford

A raw, in-your-face account of what a man faces when he becomes a marine.

Gilbert Taylor of Booklist described it the best when he wrote, “Writing graphically and in the marines' defiantly vulgar argot, Swofford candidly exhibits his negative feelings--and his comradeship with buddies belly to the sand.”

It's an eye-opener.


Whatever it Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America

Paul Tough

The book description from Amazon: "What would it take to change the lives of poor children--not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the Harlem Children's Zone, a ninety-seven-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America. His conclusion: if you want poor kids to be able to compete with their middle-class peers, you need to change everything in their lives--their schools, their neighborhoods, even the child-rearing practices of their parents.

Paul Tough tagged along as Geoffrey Canada tried to educate children by educating a community.


The Lock Artist

Steve Hamilton

I got sucked into buying it because Michael Connnelly said it was “gutsy, genuine, and flat-out, a great read.”

Interesting story with good characters.

At age 18, Michael (mute since a childhood tragedy) discovers he has the ability to pick locks, as well as open combination locks and safes.

Using flashbacks, Hamilton shows us the whole story about Michael's past, as well as his current predicament with shady characters.

The reviews might make it out to be a better book than I thought it was, but I still enjoyed it.


Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

Ben R. Rich & Leo Janos

The SR-71, the stealth fighter, the U2.

Neat insider stories of how these planes were put together, with a slant toward Mr. Rich's take on the job that he did. As one reviewer put it on Amazon, “The book seems to be Ben Rich's carefully drawn out case as to why he ran the Works better than Kelly Johnson.”

Lots of info on the behind-the-scenes action at Lockheed's Skunk Works. I would like to read more about Johnson, but it should be obvious from the subtitle (A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed) that this was more of a book about Ben Rich.


Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

Mary Roach

A Christmas present from the lady.

The title is a little misleading. Roach doesn't really explain what will be required for the trip to Mars as much as she details all of the “curious science” involved in past space excursions.

Probably a good book for a space enthusiast, but not shocking and inspiring reading for the anyone with just a casual interest in space.

Roach devotes whole chapters to showering, “Houston, We Have a Fungus,” and crapping, “Separation Anxiety.”


Jet Age: The Comet, the 707, and the Race to Shrink the World

Sam Howe Verhovek

Originally conceived as biography of Bill Boeing, this book eventually morphed into a history of the design of jet aircraft.

Good insight into the birth of the jet with nice background on not only Boeing, but also Geoffrey de Havilland.


A Week at the Airport

Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton is invited to spend a week at Terminal 5, Heathrow's relatively new passenger hub. Officially, he was asked “to conduct an impressionistic survey of the premises and then, in full view of the passengers and staff, draw together material for a book at a specially positioned desk in the departures hall between zones D and E.”

The result was this roughly 100 page book billed as “simultaneously poignant and terribly funny…”

A quick read, with fun insights into what most people glance over when they travel from here to there.

I give Botton credit for comparing a haiku of Basho's to Sofitel's catering description of a green salad.


9 Dragons

Michael Connelly

I'm a big fan of Connelly, and I usually love his Harry Bosch books. But this one let me down.

In 9 Dragons, Bosch investigates the murder of a liquor store owner and gets drawn into battling a Chinese crime ring. His daughter is held hostage and Bosch flys to Hong Kong to find her.

This doesn't feel like the usual Bosch novel. Since Harry is personally affected by the situation he goes maverick and storms through the investigation…even more so than usual.

I miss the interaction Bosch used to have with his partners and the more interesting cases he worked.


The B.***S.___ of A.: A Primer in Politics for the Incredibly Disenchanted

Brian Sack

This book is billed as “a straight-talking, partisan-busting look at politics from humorist Brian Sack, who mercilessly pokes fun at The B.S. of A. with a double helping of objectivity and wit, pulling no punches and giving partisans, politicians, and their politics a well-deserved shellacking. ”

I would have liked a little more of a punch, and even more shellacking.


The Few: The America “Knights of the Air” Who Risked Everything to Fight in the Battle of Britain

Alex Kershaw

“It was the summer of 1940…The Few tells the dramatic and unforgettable story of the Americans who defied their own country's neutrality laws and risked their very citizenship to fight side-by-side with England's finest pilots.”

Neat subject, not-so-great read. Kershaw jumps around a bit while detailing the journey from America to England and the main characters involved in the fight.