BOOKS THREAD

I read William Nack's RUFFIAN today, and I really enjoyed it -- it had a beautifully effortless flow to it (I'm going to have to read it again, to study the architecture of it), making for a tidy, almost flawless, little book.

And at just over 100 pages, it's perfect for a flight.

 

I just finished Cool Hand Luke. The movie is better than the book.

 

I just finished reading "The Last Coach: A Life of Paul 'Bear' Bryant," by Allen Barra. Outside of some minor editing issues (mostly gamer-type stuff, number of plays on drives not adding up, mention of kicking a field goal after a touchdown sted PAT), I found it a great read. Lots of information in there, and stuff I had no idea about his life. My brother's first word was allegedly "Bear," so I grew up in the middle of Bear's (figurative) den and remember watching Bear drink Coca-Cola and eat Golden Flake chips on Sunday afternoons. I was no neophyte, but still got big chunks of knowledge out of it.

 

I haven't been here in a while but I'll tell you, I'm almost finished one great book on a subject that on the surface held no interest for me: Charles Pierce's "Moving the Chains: Tom Brady & the Pursuit of Everything". I only picked it up because I'm a huge fan of Pierce's writing.

I always thought Brady was one of those vacuous pretty boy QB's that they churn out in U.S. college football factories, but boy did this book change my mind.

Pierce writes about Brady with a great deal of respect without degenerating into jock-sniffing.

Along with Brunt's book on Bobby Orr, this may be one of the best sports bios I've read in a while.

Brady, as they say, is a real mensch.

 

I'm in the middle of Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay." (yeah, it's been out a while) It's excellent so far.

 

My friend tried to get me to read that a few years ago, but I never got past the first few chapters. From what I did read, it was a fun start to the book. I've only heard great things about it.

 

Forgive me if this has been brought up before, but I just finished Mohsin Hamad's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist." A fascinating, passionate short work about the inner struggle of a relatively ordinary American Muslim in the aftermath of 9/11.

Definitely recommend it.

 

Tom Brady can slurp my dog's greatly distended left gonad.

It's been out a bit, but Louis Menand's "The Metaphysical Club" is better than decent summer reading. It is a vital compendium of the history of major American thought, a book about the history and manufacture of new ideas from old ones, using logicians Oliver Wendell Holmes and Charles Sanders Peirce to sort through the postbellum mess.

The book begins with the Civil War and ends with the bedrock for postmodern free speech liberties, U.S. vs. Abrams in 1919.

Tremendous flashpoints.

 

Agree with LJB here. "The Metaphysical Club" is terrific. I enjoy Menand's New Yorker pieces, too.

 

Just finished "Ivan's War," about one of my favorite subjects: the Eastern Front during WW II.

It was a look at the average Russian soldier and everything they had to deal with: a genocidal whack-job like Stalin, who considered POW's traitors to the Motherland and had his political goons stand behind the front-line soldiers with machine guns to prevent retreats, shortages in virtually everything and an opponent who regarded them as subhuman, it boggled the mind what these soldiers went through.

When you take into account that 27 million Russians died during WW II, including 300,000 (out of 500,000 who fought there) at Stalingrad and 70,000 the first 1 1/2 days at Kursk, it is simply beyond the pale as a poignant story.

Putting that into perspective, the Russians lost 62,000 more men between August 1942 and January 1943 at Stalingrad than the Americans did during the entire war.

All-in-all, a good -- if not particularly pleasant -- read.

 

Anyone read historical novels by a guy named Steven Pressfield? I just finished one -- The Afghan Campaign -- about Alexander the Great's incursion into Afghanistan.

Not elegantly written or plotted, but it gives a great grunt's-eye view of that war. Really remarkable, and it sounds like the guy knows his stuff.

I'm wondering if his other books will get repetitive, but I'll give them a try.

 

Haven't read that, but just finished "Flashman" by George MacDonald Fraser. It's the first in a series of "papers" written by the fictional Harry Flashman, a kind of Victorian Forrest Gump, but completely lacking in guts. In this installment, he gets drummed out of Rugby for drunkenness goes to Afghanistan and is one the few survivors of a doomed occupation of Kabul. Flashy also has a penchant for randiness and saving his own skin at the cost of many others. In later books, he survives the Charge of the Light Brigade, fights for the Union and Confederacy, and also with Custer. While fictional, it's supposed to be historically accurate. I enjoyed it.