Educated by Tara Westover

Educated by Tara Westover was a compelling autobiography about growing up in the mountains of Idaho, in a family ruled by a patriarch who preached of the evils of government and espoused a life lived off the grid, and then going off to college BYU, with subsequent study at Cambridge and Harvard.

Westover was the youngest of seven children, and like her closest in age brothers and sisters never attended school growing up or went the doctor. Throughout her youth, the dangers that Westover's father exposed his family to were remarkable, including his rash decisions and how he owned a junkyard and would scavenge it for scrap metal that could be sold, bringing his children into the exceedingly dangerous business, made even more so by the methods he forced his children to use in scrapping the materials.

Westover's mother was a midwife and herbalist, treating all injuries with plants, including those of her father who almost died when she away at school, with her mother's herbs getting the credit and her business expanding, strengthening her father’s grip on those around him as people began working for them.

Westover also had a violent and domineering older brother and her father's unwillingness to do anything to protect those around him was a sort of tipping point between she and her parents, leading as she wrote in the book blurb, to a choice between loyalty to self and loyalty to family. Westover's story and success is remarkable and very much appears to be in spite of her circumstances and showed that however she got to it, it’s her life, not that of others and what others want you to be or try to make you into. As is noted by Westover in the book, "who writes history? I do."

Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

Us Against You by Fredrik Backman follows up on his excellent novel Beartown and continues the tale of a small Swedish town, it's youth hockey team, and the people who play on it and whose lives are influenced by it, with the main high school-aged characters Maya, Ana, Benji, Amat, Bobo, and Vidar.

Just as in Beartown, Backman provides memorable and lyrical writing, including the following...

The section with Vidar's tough older brother Teemu going into elementary school-aged Alicia’s hardscrabble house and saying that her hockey gear would be paid for by the Pack for as long as she wanted to play, and she wouldn’t be hurt anymore.

How a character was said to "die the same way they lived, instantly" and the reaction to grief, with "Kira hands him the brush without a word. He washes, she dries."

About the support of Amat by others from his neighborhood, The Hollow, "he had no team. So they gave him an army."

About the Pack's support of Ana, "a section of the audience stands up, as if on command. They don’t shout out, but they’re wearing black jackets, and they all put one hand very briefly on their hearts when she looks at them. 'Who are they?', the ref asks in surprise. 'Those are my brothers and sisters. They stand tall if I stand tall.'"

Ana saying to Benji, "Don’t let the bastards see you cry."

The book's final sentence of "it’s a simple game if you strip away all the crap surrounding it and just keep the things that made us love it in the first place. Everybody gets a stick. Two nets. Two teams. Us against you."

The Man Who Caught the Storm by Brantley Hargrove

The Man Who Caught the Storm: The Life of Legendary Tornado Chaser Tim Samaras by Brantley Hargrove was a solid book about someone devoted to a pursuit, with that pursuit eventually killing him as Samaras, his adult son Paul Samaras, and fellow chaser Carl Young died in a May 2013 tornado near El Reno, Ok.

Hargrove wrote early on of how the elder Samaras a self-taught electronics whiz kid who then became fascinated by extreme weather and especially tornadoes. Samaras was married with three young kids at home when he started out as a volunteer storm spotter after enrolling in a 40 hour meteorology course.

He got started on his eventual path when someone who had sensors for measuring seismic pressure on the ground in a tornado wanted his help getting the sensors in front of a twister. Samaras then began building his own probes to measure conditions like temperature, pressure, and humidity as a tornado would pass over as the idea was to understand the conditions to predict better when one would form so more advance warning could be given to the public.

As Samaras built his probes and chased tornadoes for the purpose of placing them in front of their path, he became a main character featured on Storm Chasers, which ran for three seasons on The Discovery Channel. It was dangerous work that Samaras did, but interesting reading about someone completely into something that served a greater purpose, and Hargrove wrote a thorough account of Samaras and his life.

Beartown by Fredrik Backman

Beartown by Fredrik Backman is a novel set in a downtrodden town in rural Sweden that's described as "a hockey town" and Backman tells in the book an engrossing story of the things that occur in it.

The main characters are the high school-age Maya, Ana, Benji, Amat, and Kevin, along with adults Peter and Kira and the writing from Backman really lyrical with dramatic kickers delivered, including...

"Sport can only give us a few isolated moments of transcendence, but what the hell else is life made of?"

"You can’t live in this town, Maya, you can only survive it."

"This town doesn't always know the difference between right and wrong, but we know the difference between good and evil."

The story from Backman is a great one about hockey, the hold it can have on people, and the either horrible or heroic actions of the adults and youth in Beartown.