The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

In the 1990's, an Amur tiger in Far East Russia attacked and ate several villagers. At the time, the Russian government (with the help of several international agencies) had set up an agency known as "Inspection Tiger", which had the authority to both protect the tiger population (from poachers), and the village population (from the tigers). This book is the story of the attacks, and the subsequent investigation and tracking of the tiger by the local Inspection Tiger team.

This was, by far, one of the best books I've read in awhile. The author both tells the story of the attack and subsequent hunt, and gives you tons of interesting background information. For instance, the stories of how the villagers and hunters ended up in that part of Russia (including plenty of Russian history - which I've always been interested in); the explanations and reasons why a tiger would hunt a villager; why a tiger hunts the way it does (solitary, rather than in a pack); how the village was created; why the poachers were so interested in getting the tigers. So much interesting information interwoven with the narrative itself. Plus, most of all, it's about a tiger attack! How much cooler of a story can you find?

I recommend this one to anyone. Even if it's not something you'd normally read, I think you'll find it pretty interesting.

Play their Hearts Out - by George Dohrmann

George Dohrmann is a reporter who writes for Sports Illustrated. In this book, he follows the stories of some 7th and 8th grade kids, as they compete and play in AAU basketball. (Mostly, it's the story of the coach who tried to bring them all together and win games, and the star player that he recruited for the team.) For those of you who watch college basketball (or even the NBA), this is a very interesting behind-the-scenes look at how many of the star basketball players get to the good college or NBA teams.

The author was able to trail the team for a number of years, doing interviews with the players, their parents and the coaches. He also attended a bunch of the games, practices and meetings/dinners. In other words, he had pretty good access to the people in the stories. Some of the stories he tells, and the characters that you learn about who are involved in the AAU basketball system, really make you open your eyes to what it really takes to get a good college to recruit you (or a good NBA team to do the same). Opens your eyes, and makes you sick, all at the same time. Overall, a very good book about something I didn't really know a whole lot about before.

The Litigators, by John Grisham

I've read almost all of John Grisham's books (there may be one or two nonfiction ones that I haven't read). For the most part, his books are good-quality legal fiction. The courtroom scenes are pretty close to how things really go. Sometimes the stories get a litle "slow" or "contrived". I especially enjoyed his earlier books (The Firm, The Chamber (HATED the ending of this one - which is what made it such a good book!), A Time to Kill (easily his best book ever!)). Some of his later books haven't gotten me as excited.

This one, however, was pretty well done. A small firm gets involved in some large tort claims (think large pharmaceutical cases). They bring in a new young associate who's had it with the large firm life (the scenes showing his meltdown are pretty hilarious). Unlike some of his more recent books, in this one you do actually start caring about the characters, and what happens with them. I think he spent a little more time developing their past and history, so by the end you're genuinely interested in what's going to happen to them. I won't say the ending wasn't predictable - it was. But, you still wanted to know what was happening to the folks.

On a different John Grisham note - is anyone watching the new series The Firm? It's a continuation of the Grisham novel by that same name - continuing the story ten years later. We've been recording it, but I haven't been able to watch it yet.

Son of Neptune

So - for those who follow this blog (both of you!), you already know I like Rick Riordan's heroes books (both the Olympus heroes, and the Egyptian heroes). For Christmas, Santa brought me this one, which is the second book, in the second series of Roman/Greek heroes in America. I won't mention much about the book, other than that I really liked it, and it easily lives up to the quality of all the previous books (and may be even a little bit better!).