The Good Wife

Patty's husband Tommy and his accomplice Gary break into an old woman's home to steal money. They end up killing her and torching the place. As the escape outside the house, they are caught by the police. Gary turns on Tommy and accuses him of the murder. Tommy gets a 25 to life sentence. Patty is pregnant with Tommy's baby.

Patty initially moves in with her sister. But once her son Casey is born, she moves in with her mom. Mom takes care of the baby. Casey asks Tommy's old coworker Russ to get her a job. They work on road upkeep. This involves plowing snow, patching holes, and such. It is tough work but the pay is good. Patty gets into good shape due to the physical demands of work.

Initially Patty visits Tommy in a jail that is a few hours away. She usually brought her son. Then Tommy gets moved to an upstate facility that is 12 hours away. She needs to take a bus to get there. Patty rotates through assorted jobs at places like Montgomery Wards, Ruby Tuesdays, and eventually a nursing home. She needs to sell her Dodge car. Eventually Tommy's pickup truck breaks down beyond repair.

Patty toys with the idea of being with a local NASCAR up and coming star. However he seems to have a beauty pageant girlfriend. She ends up remaining loyal to Tommy. Tommy gets denied parole a couple times. Eventually when he gets out, she arranges for a job for him at her work. He hates it and switches to Best Buy.

Casey is grown up, a college grad, and moved out West to work before his dad is released from prison.

Gamer Army

Rogan is a 12 year old gamer in the virtual reality world. He is a bit distant from his parents. His dad plays other games in VR. His mom is a VR rights advocate. Rogan has trouble paying his monthly rent for his VR apartment. He is a pretty decent gamer in one of the VR games.

Rogan gets an invite from the pioneer of VR, who is conducting a championship tournament to identify the best gamer in the VR game he plays in. He is up against 4 other gamers. He actually knows one of them online.

Little by little, the other gamers get eliminated. But there is something suspicious going on with the VR founder. Rogan gets down to the last two in the gaming contest. He gets alerted that the contest games are him actually controlling real world avatars to do the dirty work of the founder.

We Are The Nerds

This book tells the story of the co-founders of the Internet site Reddit. There is Steve Huffman, who was the programmer. Then there was Alexis OHanian. These guys had initially pitched the idea of a kiosk for gas station food offerings. They wanted to join startup incubator Y Combinator. There were initially denied.

Later the head of Y Combinator offered to let both guys in the cohort if they changed their company idea to the original Reddit. They agreed and the rest was history. Both guys seemed to exit once the company got some money. They both became millionaires.

Both guys returned to the company. Huffman eventually became CEO. And Ohanian became a sales man of sort. As an aside, this book track Ohanian meeting and eventually marrying tennis star Serena Williams. This book is the first one by author Christine Lagorio-Chafkin.

She's Gone

This is author David Bell's first foray into young adult fiction. Hunter finds himself in a hospital. He was in a car crash. Some unknown person brought him to the hospital. He can't remember much about the accident. All we know is that his girlfriend Chloe was with him. And now she is missing.

The cops think Hunter is the culprit. Chloe's mom has publicly declared Hunter to be a murderer. Hunter thinks that Chloe's ex-boyfriend may be involved. Hunter starts posting videos to the internet, trying to get any info on Chloe. The lawyer his dad hires wants him to stop.

Hunter later hears from some people that he was angry with Chloe right before he drove off with her and got into an accident. Hunter's little sister Olivia wants to help. She beats up a guy who trash talks her brother. Hunter has a prior friend who is working on a movie about Chloe and Hunter. Turns out this friend gets murdered and his movie materials are stolen. Hunter is the last person who saw him alive.

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.