2011 Ehlers Family Christmas BOok

I read lots and lots of mysteries. I’m not choosy. I like police detectives, private detectives, detectives that cater, preach and practice medicine. Give me a book with a big, fat question mark by the end of the first chapter and I’m happy.
I read lots of other novels, too. About those, I am more selective. I want a tightly woven plot. I don’t want lots of characters who come in and out of the story for no apparent purpose. I don’t like books that confuse me with flashbacks or portents of the future. Just tell me a story. Make the characters vulnerable enough that they seem human. Everyone has flaws; so, author, show me where your hero acted less competently, less wisely, just human. If I don’t care about what happens to the characters, I often don’t remember to finish the book. I’ll just put it aside somewhere…..my bedside table, coffee table or car seat and abandon it.
I also like books with good stopping places. Books with chapters fifty pages long don’t fit into my stop-and-go lifestyle. If I’m ready for work early, I may read a few pages before leaving home. I read through my lunch hour. We do have a library staff policy that says if one is within ten pages of the end of a book, the staff member is allowed to finish the book before reporting back to work. I read until I fall asleep at night. I need chapters that have something to say and wrap it up succinctly.
Well, I just read the best book! I was looking for my annual Christmas book. The one that I give all my kids in the hope that they will have fodder for a sane and civil discussion amongst themselves. It’s a hard task to find a book that all my kids will read. My oldest child is about to become a first-time father, the middle two are employed and lead busy lives and my baby just started law school. It must be a truly remarkable book to interest all of them.
Not only does it need to be a book that they will be interested in, it must be something interesting enough to have caught my attention in the first place. About all the five of us (seven, if I add in my daughters-in-law) have in common is a ridiculous love of all canines and shared passion for summer sports. They spent as much time in the bleachers watching one another play baseball and softball as they did on the playing field.
The 2011 Ehlers Family Christmas Book Award goes to The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. It has a baseball thread running throughout to tie all the characters together, but it isn’t about baseball. It is about life. About the challenges each of us faces, about the quirks and foibles we all possess. About parents, children, goals and growing up.
Library staffer Demi and I have vastly different reading tastes. But, we do share a great fondness for a few particular books. I told her that the characters in this book aren’t as miserably messed up as in Memory of Running. Not as magical as in A Prayer for Owen Meany . Nor as innocent as in Boys Life, but they make for just as good a book. It’s one of the handful of books that I will read again every few years.
Give it a try. We ordered extra copies for you at your library.