The Testament by John Grisham

I have to admit I’m not a John Grisham fan, but I needed something to read on an airplane and had heard this was one of his better books. I liked maybe the first 50 pages, but after that, the story is predictable and the characters seemed caricature-ish.

Julie & Julia by Julie Powell

Flaky, almost 30-yr-old New Yorker with a boring, dead-end job decides to cook every recipe (524 of them) in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year. So for a year, she cooks and blogs about it. Very amusing and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.

To Conquer the Air by James Tobin

About the race to fly. Everyone knows the Wright Brothers won, but the story is fantastic. The brothers took a very meticulous approach and were competing against contemporary luminaries like the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (who spent >$70k on his attempts vs. the Wright Brothers’ expenses of <$1k), and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as a bunch of French competitors. Even after the Wright Bros’ successful flights at Kitty Hawk, it was years before they got the recognition they deserved. Really great story.

Sacred Hoops by Phil Jackson

With an approach largely shaped by Zen Buddhism and Native American principles, Phil Jackson brought “mindful” basketball to the NBA. Fascinating look at how an alternative approach had great success, and fun stories about the Chicago Bulls in the early ‘90’s. Very easy to read.