Playing for Pizza by John Grisham

If you have ever had a conversation with me about John Grisham, you know that I cannot stand his legal books. They're so boring, and they're about lawyers and laws and all that boring stuff. But, amazingly, I enjoy his non-legal books. The first one I ever read was given to me for Christmas by the best gift-giver ever, my Aunt Judy. She gave me Skipping Christmas by Grisham while I was in college. It is a delightful tale about all the commercialism at Christmas, and what would happen if we avoided it. If you saw the movie, Christmas with the Kranks, with Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis, it was similar, but of course the book is always better.

Anyways, back to Pizza. This book is about an NFL quarterback who, through a series of circumstances, basically ends his NFL career through one game. He is only 28 and not ready to be done with football, but football seems to be done with him. So, his manager Arnie manages to get him onto a team in the Italian version of the NFL. Each Italian team is allowed a maximum of 3 American players, and the Americans are the only ones who get paid, and not well at that. The Italians play for the love of the game, and they are treated to pizza and beer once a week by the team's owner.

The descriptions of Italian food, wine, scenery, and customs make me want to dash over to Italy and spend a week or five tooling around the cities and countryside eating and sunning on the beach. Wait until you read/hear the part about Rick trying to get his little Fiat out of a parallel parking place when there is a vehicle less than 12 inches from both front and back, and Rick has never driven a stick. Reminds me of a couple of friends of mine who learned to drive my little blue truck in high school=).

All in all: great book. Read it and crave pasta with me.

Schooled by Gordon Korman

I read this book because a 6th grade teacher told me that her class just finished it and loved it. I have to admit that I loved it to. The story revolves around a boy named Capricorn Anderson otherwise known as "Cap". He has lived his entire life in a hippie commune called Garland Farm. Only, he and his grandmother, "Rain", are the only people still living there. The commune has been around since the 1960s, but it is now over 40 years later.

Things really start happening when Rain falls from a tree and shatters her hip. Cap, who has been driving since he was 8, drives her to the hospital and gets arrested for driving without a license. Since Rain needs several weeks of rehab, and she is his only living relative (and also his home-school teacher), he moves in with a social worker's family temporarily.

Next, Cap is sent to Claverage Middle School a.k.a. C Average Middle School. He has never been to school before. He dresses in clothing that he and Rain made, as in grew the cotton, made the thread, wove the cloth, sewed the clothing and tie-dyed it themselves. Even his shoes are made from corn husks. You can about imagine the reaction of the rest of the students at this school. Next, he is elected 8th grade president, even though he is against government. Little does he know that it is a tradition to elect the worst candidate and then try to force them to slowly go insane. He befriends the most picked on kid in school, Hugh Winkleman, president of the Chess Club. The popular kids start an all out campaign to torture him. Luckily, Cap's clueless-ness is on his side. This was a great book, even if you're an adult.

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

This was a book that I read for CENA, which is the Chesaning High School book club. I missed the meeting last week, but I still finished the book last night, which tells you that I really enjoyed it. Part of the reason is that my friends and I used to be really into Greek mythology. If you sat at our lunch table in high school, you had a Greek god or goddess nickname.

In this book, Percy is a 13 year old boy who has never stayed at one school longer than one year. These huge incidents keep occurring that force him to change schools. At the beginning of the book, the one that occurs is his math teacher tries to kill him on a field trip. Then, after he manages to save himself, killing her in the process, no one, including his friends and other teachers has ever heard of her.

It turns out that Percy is what they used to call a demigod. He is the offspring of a human (his mother) and a Greek god (his father). All of these incidents that have been occurring are monsters that have been sent to kill him by other Greek gods that feel he is a threat. After this latest incident, he manages to make it to Camp Half-Blood, where all demigods and demigoddesses go for the summer for training, since they are constantly being attacked.

There he finds that his best friend and one of the teachers at his last school are actually mythical creatures sent there to guard him. Once at Camp Half Blood, Percy longs to find out which god is his father. This affects what magical abilities he has and which of the other campers are his siblings. Ok, I think I've already said too much, so I'll just add one small thing. Percy and two fellow campers set off on a quest that involves visiting both Mt. Olympus and Hades. All this is set in modern times and the United States. Mt. Olympus is at the top of the Empire State Building in New York City, and the entrance to Hades is located in L.A. Pretty fitting, eh?

Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman

It took me a while to finish this audio because I've been bouncing back and forth between cars the last couple of weeks. The audio never seemed to be in the car I was in while I wanted to listen.

Anyways, while I have read many books by Faye Kellerman, I had never read any by her husband, Jonathan Kellerman. While they both write murder mysteries, hers center on a police detective and his 2nd wife, who is Jewish. Along with learning a lot about his cases, you learn a lot about the Jewish faith. Jonathan is a trained psychologist, so his main character, Alex Delaware, is a practicing psychologist who consults on police cases when his good friend, Milo, asks him to.

In Compulsion, Milo and Alex get involved in a series of cases that don't seem to have anything to do with each other. The only real correlation is stolen, expensive cars. Not like Lamborghinis and Corvettes, think Bentleys and other cars of that caliber. In one of the cases, a 25+ girl disappears while driving home drunk from the bar one night. In another, a kindly old ex-teacher is viciously knifed to death while getting her paper, by an old man in a blue cap who gets calmly back into a Bentley and drives away. At the same time as these cases, Milo is asked to re-open a 16 yr. old unsolved case of a 15 yr old kid who disappeared while selling magazines door to door.

I think I'll stop with the description there, because if I get too much further into it, I'll start giving things away. This was a really good book. I think I'm going to check out another JK book on audio for my drive home today.

Lady Killer by Lisa Scottoline

For those of you who know me, you know I can't stand legal thrillers. Sorry, I do not think John Grisham is a god. But...Lisa Scottoline writes the best legal books I've ever liked. Many of her books are about an all female law firm, and this was one of those. Mary DeNunzio is hired by that girl from high school. You know that girl, maybe you were that girl. She was popular, she wore tight sweaters, she smoked under the bleachers, and she hated you, for some reason. Anyways, Mary is hired by this girl to help her get out of an abusive relationship with...a guy who Mary used to date about 15 years ago, who the girl has been dating/living with ever since. He is now a fixture in the local mob scene and a drug dealer to boot.

Mary has a hard time reconciling what she knows of this guy with what the girl is telling her, but the girl is genuinely afraid for her life and she has documented the abuse. Now, Mary is a good Catholic girl and feels she must help no matter what. This leads all sorts of interesting places. I think I should stop now so I don't give away the entire book. I loved it.