A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

This was a great juicy read.   

The book begins when a man who has arranged for a bride through the classifieds is waiting for her arrival at a train station.  We learn that he is very particular and measured, and she is less simple than she lets on.  As it turns out, neither of them has signed up for pure companionship - each has an ulterior motive and the story unfolds in a completely unexpected way. 

There was so much to like about this book.  The plot was exceptional.  The characters were complex.  Even the town the characters live in is well-crafted: an author's note at the end of the book indicates that it is based on a real town whose occupants suffered from sudden madness at the turn of the 20th century. 

The other thing about the book I really enjoyed was that Goolrick created a Harlequin-Gothic-Trashy Novel-Spooky vibe but wrote an exceptional book.  Definitely recommended and hope to see more fiction from Goolrick in the future.

The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer

This was a fun quick read in the spirit of Robert Ludlum or (as many of the critics have said, John LeCarre).  A "tourist" is a top-secret CIA operative in a foreign country - you know, one of those people in one of the programs the government denies having.  Milo, the title tourist, is actually trying to leave the business of spying when the book starts, but is drafted into one last operation that of course does not end tidily - that would make for a boring book.  Naturally, he has a wife and stepdaughter who get thrown into the action as well.

What I liked about this book was that the plot was complex but the writing was very accessible.  I didn't always expect all the twists in the plot, and I didn't always understand the characters' strategies right away, but I enjoyed reading it all the way through.  I also thought that compared to other books of this genre, Steinhauer explored the Milo's personal anguish over some of his decisions more thoroughly and completely.  Ultimately this is more a character study of the loneliness of being a spy than it is an action novel, although it masquerades as the latter.  In that way it reminded me of parts of the Bourne trilogy - the books at least, more than the movies.

The Tourist was definitely a book that kept me up late reading several nights in a row.  I hear that George Clooney's production company has bought the rights to make it a film.  "LIKE."

Just Like Us by Helen Thorpe

This is an ambitious book.  Helen Thorpe is a journalist whose initial idea is to follow four high school girls who are Mexican-American, two of whom are in the country legally and two of whom are not.  Halfway through her research for the book, Denver (where the girls live) becomes embroiled in a huge immigration conflict, when an illegal immigrant kills a police officer.  Thorpe includes this incident into her book, with a particular vantage point: her husband is the mayor of Denver at the time.

So there is a lot going on in the book.  I most enjoyed reading about the girls' experiences as they grew into young adults in college.  They struggled with basic logistics of paying for school - doubly difficult for the illegal girls - a well as complex emotional issues around identity and belonging.  The girls each had families that spanned Mexico and America, and several of them had significant family pressures on top of everything else they were dealing with.  I was also interested to see what kind of private funding the illegal girls were able to find.

Slightly less interesting were the sections on the crime and trial of the man who killed the police officer.  While I'm sure it was central to Thorpe's life at the time, it confused the narrative for me.  I understood that it had a profound effect on the city and subsequently on the girls, but I am not sure she wove it together tightly enough. 

It is a testament to Thorpe's journalistic background that I finished the book unsure of what her take on illegal immigration is.  I did, however, finish the book left with the one thing I think she wanted her readers to ponder: what do we do with young adults who have been in the U.S. illegally their entire lives, once they become adults?  I don't know the answer to that question and I'm not sure that Thorpe does either.  But I did see that as a complexity in the immigration debate I had not thought about previously.

I liked that this book made me think, I just wish it had been more cohesive.

As They See 'Em by Bruce Weber

Every once in a while, there is a book that I hear about and decide to save until its season rolls around.  This one waited patiently on my book list until summer time because it is about Major League Baseball umpires and after hearing it on Fresh Air last April I didn't get to it in time.  I'm glad I waited because it was really fun to read this during baseball season.  It was really fun to read this book, period.  Unlike other non-fiction, this was interesting all the way through - sometimes I find the idea of a book fascinating, and the first half interesting, but then I lose a little steam.  Not so with this one!

Bruce Weber is a reporter for the New York Times who began this book by traveling to Florida to attend one of the two accredited umpire schools.  Umpiring is a very competitive business - there are fewer than 100 positions in MLB, and umpires don't often leave their jobs.  The salaries are high - upwards of $250K for the ones with a lot of experience, but to get there, they go through years, sometimes even decades, of harsh travel, school, politics, and barely enough salary to live on.  All that, and they are disliked by fans and players alike.

So at umpire school, the candidates (and Weber) learn about all sorts of rules - Weber relates several scenarios in the book with calls that I was very surprised to learn the answers to.  The other big thing that umpire school covers is how a crew of two or three or four men (and yes, they are almost exclusively men) cover a field.  There are clear rules at to who runs where during every particular type of play and umpire school has hours and hours of practicing that too.  In fact, Weber suggests the next time the reader watches an MLB game that he or she watch the umpires instead of the players, and you may find that there is what seems like a completely different game going.  I did and it does.

Interestingly, one topic not covered in umpire school is how to call balls and strikes.  Weber covers it extensively, however: both what the actual rules are as well as how the umpires use it to communicate with pitchers.  In his commentary on balls and strikes, Weber makes one of his most enlightening points about umpires - umpires are distinct from officials in other sports in that they are essential to the game play.  In other sports, officials determine if any rules have been broken, but in baseball, umpires' calling balls and strikes is necessary for each play to continue. 

The book continues on to detail how umpires are chosen and rated.  A significant portion of the book is focused on labor relations between umpires and MLB, culminating in an ill-fated attempt by umpires to all resign at once in 1999.  The book also details several umpires famous for their controversial calls.  Weber also covers many ancillary topics like life on the road and instant replay.  Finally, he details his own umpiring of a game - minor league, but legitimate MLB.

I really liked the book.  Weber made it easy to learn about the world of umpiring with a lively-paced book and plenty of anecdotes.  Interestingly, I was reading this book during the controversy around umpire Jim Joyce's incorrect call that cost Armando Galarraga his perfect game.  To see what Weber had to say about it (and to get a taste of his writing style) check out this article in the New York Times.

Every Last One by Anna Quindlen

I have been a fan of Quindlen's for a long time - Object Lessons is one of my all-time favorite books, and I read and re-read Living out Loud several times. 

This book is about a normal American family - Mary Beth and Glen are happily married with three teenage children - Ruby, Max, and Alex.  The first half of the book is about their everyday lives, and I enjoyed this part of the book.  I liked Quindlen's rendering of Mary Beth's distinct relationships each with her children.  I also enjoyed reading about Mary Beth and Glen's marriage: imperfect but solid.

After the family is victimized by violence, their lives take a different turn.  The family has to rebuild and figure out who they are after a vicious attack.  The book ended with my having the feeling that family takes many different forms and that people can be very resilient.

I'm not sure I really enjoyed the second part of this book.  While the writing was excellent (it always is...), the story did not hold my attention as much as the mundane descriptions of the family's life before the violent episode.  I felt like I was watching the evening news - or a made-for-tv movie - that was very dramatic but somewhat hollow.

I'll always try the next book Quindlen writes - hopefully it will be engaging all the way through.