Any Other Name

Any Other Name

By Craig Johnson

This is one of the installments in the book series that inspired the Longmire TV show. It features Walt

Longmire as a beleaguered but talented Wyoming sheriff who tackles outsized crimes in small-town America -- in cowboy style. I saw this at my friend Chris Sickel's house during a February trip to Montana, and I thought it would be an apropos read. I was right.

In this particular Longmire adventure, Walt is lured outside of his jurisdiction to a neighboring county, where the wife of the sheriff there wants him to look into his death. It had been labeled a suicide, but she thinks its more. The book is heavy on foreshadowing, and we learn pretty early on that the wife isn't going to like what Walt finds out. It turns out that the reason for the sheriff's death hits closer to home than she imagined. Spoiler alert: her daughter was running a sex-trafficking ring out of the family basement. When the sheriff-father uncovered it, he was unable to either turn his daughter in or continue to look the other way. So he killed himself.

I can't say this was a great book. The plot was far-fetched to say the least, and there are lots of hard-boiled detective meets good ole Wyoming boy cliche and shtick. But it was entertaining. Might have to pick up another one next time I am out west.

String Theory

 String Theory 

By David Foster Wallace

I've been meaning to read this book since I discovered its existence several years ago, and, inspired by this year's Australian Open (now several months in the past) I finally requested it via interlibrary loan. The book contains a series of essays on tennis, including a reflection on Wallace's own time as a nearly-high-level junior tennis player and on Roger Federer's greatness.

The essays are without exception fun to read. I love Wallace's voice; his is an equal mix of cynicism, awe, and wit. And the vocabulary! The man loves words. Example: "Goran Ivanisevic is large and tan and surprisingly good-looking -- at least for a Croat; I always imagine Croats looking ravaged and katexic and like somebody out of a Munch lithograph -- except for an incongruous and wholly absurd bowl haircut that makes him look like somebody i a Beatles tribute band." He does this for pages and pages and pages. Katexic! And then there are the footnotes, with which Wallace famously experimented in his novels. He does here, too, and they often take up more of a page than the regular text.

I will say that the essays definitely repeat some of the same themes. One of which is that we mere mortal tennis players have no idea how good pros are until we see it in person. It would therefore be best to mete these out throughout the year. Perhaps one essay per major? This will be a good gift for Dad.