Last Night at the Lobster

This is the first book I read by Stewart O'Nan. It chronicles the final day that a Red Lobster restaurant is open. It closes for good the next day. Manny is the manager and main character. He is taking 4 or 5 other people to his next job at Olive Garden. Only a skeleton crew reports to work on the last day. A couple people desert the team during the day.

Manny seems to continue to be in love with coworker Jacquie. Unfortunately she has moved on. Manny actually has a girlfriend who he got pregnant. He does not think he will ever marry this new girlfriend. He keeps trying to reconnect with Jacquie. But she has a new man now.

The lunchtime crowd is pretty good. There is one group of women with a nasty kid. There is a large group doing a retirement party. After lunch, a lone older couple comes and eats. The power goes off on them briefly. A bus comes later. But it is just people who need to use the bathroom.

The author has written a short book at under 150 pages. He has the ability to write about minimal plot, but can get you to know and love the characters we meet. I have already ordered 4 more books written by this guy. Look for more updates here.

Beautiful Outlaw

This book outlines the personal side of Jesus Christ. Different stories from the Bible are studied, with emphasis on Jesus' character. For example, he meets a Samaritan woman at a well. Normally the Jewish people did not associate with anybody from Samaria. Jesus asks the woman to draw him some water. She asks why should she. He says that he can offer her water which, if drank, will mean she will never be thirsty again.

Jesus later asks this woman to bring her husband to the well. She replies she has no husband. Jesus knows all. He tells her it is true that the man she is with is not her husband. He also informs her he knows she had 5 husbands in the past.

The Samaritan woman acknowledges that Jesus is at least some sort of Jewish prophet. She also seems to know a thing or two. She tells Jesus that a messiah will be coming who will be able to answer all her questions. Jesus responds that he is that messiah.

97 Things Every Data Engineer Should Know

I am interested in the job called data engineer. So I am going to read some books about it. I started with a compendium of essays from people in the thick of data engineering. These were detailed insights into specific situations in the world of data engineering.

I liked that the essays were done by different authors. There were not 97 different authors. Many of the essays were done by the same author. But there were a lot of different voices sharing their opinion.

The main idea I got was that a data engineer takes data from different sources and gets it into tables. Then the data will be consumed by other people such as analysts or data scientists. There are a lot of tools involved.

Invest Like a Shark

This book tries to share a technique to make money in the stock market. It advises the use of charts and technical analysis. It debunks some other popular techniques like buy and hold. It tries to paint the picture of a shark that can profit with stocks.

I was able to follow some of the ideas. Some were general and more of a description of the right kind of attitude. The author says the ultimate routine is to trade stocks for a living. The author does talk about other famous and rich stock traders.

My Name is Tani

Tani and his family lived in Nigeria. The Boko Haram came after his dad. Initially they wanted dad to print up some propaganda. When dad refused, they wanted to kill dad. The dad prayed as Boko Haram members came and tried to break down his front door. The door held. The family fled to a secret location in Nigeria. But Boko Haram found them. So they came overseas to Dallas, TX to stay with relatives.

After a few months, the family was surprised that they wore out their welcome in Dallas. This was contrary to their belief that family should support family for years. But Tani's great uncle was married to an American. So the family went to New York City. There they got cramped homeless shelter housing. Tani's dad worked a tough job in a kitchen for cash under the table. Then he decided to rent a Camry and do Uber while he studied for a real estate license.

Tani discovered the chess club at school. They waived the monthly fee that his family could not afford. Tani was diligent in doing chess exercises. He had early success at tournaments. He surprised his chess coaches by pulling some Paul Morphy level gambits in his tournament play. His coaches thought he would fare better in some real housing. They had an article written about him coupled with a Go Fund Me. It bought in hundreds of thousands of dollars. The rest is history.

Over Her Dead Body

Ashley is an aspiring actress. But she does not have much to show after living in LA for seven years. Her dog gets loose one night. She chases her pupper into the yard of a former casting agent named Louisa. Now Lousia is rich but estranged from her children.

Louisa concocts a plan to have Ashley audition for a role. But Louisa uses the audio to fake her own death. Louisa has modified her will to leave everything to Ashley. When Ashley finds out that she was tricked, she is seething. Ashley recalls a prior script that matched Louisa's plan. So she figures out Louisa is hiding in a bunker under the house. Ashley makes sure the air duct to the bunker is blocked.

Louisa's children figure out their mom is down in the bunker. They go down to find their mom dead. Turns out Charlie, Louisa's oldest, is having problems with his wife. The wife thought all the money went to Louisa's children, so she plots to lock the kids and Louisa down in the bunker. The wife also plans to get all the inheritance and live instead with Charlie's cousin.

The Art of Learning

This book chronicles of life of Josh Waitzkin. His early years are the subject matter for the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. Josh was a young chess prodigy. He lived in New York, and learned chess from the hustlers on the street. Quickly he became strong enough at chess to beat everyone his age.

The first third of the book is about his early life and chess. The second part delves into his foray into the martial arts, specifically Tai Chi. I did not read past the first part of the book. I was only interested in his chess life.

Startup Land

This book tells the story of startup Zendesk. It was created by three guys in Dennmark. They created a software as a service for help desks. That is, you sign up for their product online. You pay for it online. There was initially not any heavy sales people involved.

The CEO is the narrator of the story. They had trouble getting funding in Dennmark. So they got an initial investment from a company in Boston. The 3 guys moved to Boston with their families to be close to their venture capitalist investor. That lasted for about a summer.

Later, the company had bigger follow on investments from venture capitalist firms in California. They moved to San Francisco to be close to those firms plus other startups. They eventually did an IPO and$9 a share. The share jumped up 50% on day 1, and quickly went up 100%.

The Legend of the Christmas Witch

This tells the story of young Santa Claus and his sister the witch. Santa was taken away by a couple that wanted a kid. The sister was taken in by a witch of the wood. The sister had powers. And they grew under the tutelage of the witch.

Eventually people got wind of the sister's powers. They wanted to hunt her down and kill her. So she set off in search of her brother, who she heard was at the north pole. She took a boat but landed at the south pole instead. There she met some penguins who became her friends.

Eventually she builds another boat and goes in search of her brother. She does find him. But the town folk want to kill her because she is a witch. She reunites one more time with her brother briefly. Then she became mad. And she stomps her feet, causing the ice to crack and the penguins and her to fall deep into the water and freeze.

Invest Like a Pro

I decided to give Amazon a little extra time to deliver a package to my house. In return, I got a $1 credit for digital goods. I spent it on this eBook: Invest Like a Pro (A 10-Day Investing Course). The title made me think I might learn some professional stock trading tips. Turns out this was a very basic small book on investing.

I did learn that a 403b was just like a 401k retirement plan. The only difference being that a 403b is run by a non-profit organization. That is not going to help me make money on stock trades. Neither did any other information from the book.

Little Children

Todd appears to be the main character. He was a college football star who wanted to go on to become a lawyer. But he can't pass the bar. His wife is a knockout who works at the Veteran's Administration hospital. Todd takes care of his young son Aaron. He is supposed to be studying to take the bar for the third time. Instead he has a summer affair with Sarah.

Sarah also has a young daughter. She has a weird distant husband. The husband himself has been fantasizing about an a deviant Internet model. Sarah eventually makes plans with Todd for each of them to leave their spouses behind.

Todd plays football with Larry, a retired cop who killed a kid. Larry has is out for Ronald, who is a child sex offender. At church, Larry breaks Ronald's arm by tossing him onto the pavement. Larry later causes Ronald's mom to have a stroke and die. Ronald dreams of purchasing a computer to take advantage of all the alleged porn on it.