One Shot, by Lee Child

I'm really liking the Reacher books. Good stuff.

American Band : Music, Dreams, and Coming of Age in the Heartland, by Kristen Laine

Calling all Marching Band Geeks! If you had a band director like the one I had in high school, this book will bring it all band: the practices, the shouted commands from above to "START OVER--THAT WAS AWFUL!", the exhaustion, the all-weather marching...the pride when things come together at competition.

This book follows the Concord (IN) Minutemen as a group and as 5 or 6 individual members. It's really fascinating to see all the different strands of the season weave together. There's also an awful lot of church-related stuff that I could certainly relate to, but the focus rarely wavers on the question of what makes a leader in a group. Is the most important member the teacher, the popular kid, the hard-working quiet kid, the one who doesn't pull it all together until the week before the end of the season?

Good book. Highly recommended.