BOOKS THREAD

I just finished Ryan Boudinot's (I think that's his name, at least -- doing this from memory), "The Littlest Hitler." It's a great, sometimes-disturbing-but-in-a-good-way collection of short stories. Highly recommend it.

 

Anybody read "Letters from the Editor" by William Woo?

http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Editor-Lessons-Journalism-Life/dp/0826217559/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205125303&sr=8-1

 

He was one of the "Boy Generals" of the Civil War, a group that included Nelson Miles and yes, one George Armstrong Custer -- one of the most overrated figures in American History.

I didn't know, however, that Ames was from an old-line New England family. Interesting.

 

I read that book when I was 12 or 13 and I loved it. Joe G also wrote It's Anybody's Ball Game, and I thought that was good, too. I remember him when he was a Yankees announcer in the 1960s.

Maybe he wasn't a crusader in the 1940s, but he was far from the worst. Nasty bench jockeying was an accepted part of baseball through the 1960s even through high school level. It's not appropriate - people who are high school coaches obviously have higher obligations and umpires have to show they have control - but it happened.

Joe G has also done a lot of fundraising to help former major leaguers who have faced hard economic times and he has worked to try to eliminate chewing tobacco. Maybe he's not perfect and I disagree with some of his opinions, but I think he is someone who has tried to do good things and has written two entertaining books.

 

Bird, the Ames almanacs were frequently plagiarized. It's one of the things that made them so grumpy. They loved to bitch at their printers, too. There was no effective legal protection for almanac authors until the Federal Copyright Act was passed in 1790.

 

But... what about the end? In any way satisfying?
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One of the heroes finds religion--but its not what you think. The story has everything from Tech football, to Freaknik, an earthquake, to millionaire developers and bankers looking to screw each other. Its the biggest book (700 plus pages)I've ever read, but it was an easy read.

 

Assassination Vacation, Sacred Games and Dianetics arrived in the mail today. Book clubs rock. Has anybody read on of these? I hope to get a closer look at Scientology. But it's a long one. I don't expect to be converted. But I admit it's a little scary.

 

Some pockets were worse than others. In toto, the postwar/early '50's Phillies was one of the most concentrated collections of racist assholes ever assembled.

 

I recommend "A Free Life" by Ha Jin. It's about a Chinese immigrant family who starts off in the northeast then, oddly enough, moves to greater Atlanta. At face value it's the same story everyone has read already, but somehow it was incredibly captivating. It was a little long, but for the most part I didn't notice -- except when I was carrying this fat hardcover book around on the subway!

 

I got Sacred Games to read as a book club selection (not my choice). At hardback 900 pages, I have a mental block to overcome simply to open it... and commit to it, I suppose. Does this sound familiar?

 

The thing is big. No doubt about it. Right now, it's on my end table. I've been using it to prop up my laptop. Hell, if it had legs, it could be an end table. I also got Dianetics. That's another 500-600 pages of reading. I'm definitely going to need a week's worth of steady commitment to even put a dent in one of these suckers.

 

Finished up three books this week, loved two of them, liked one.

Into The Wild. Way late to the party on this one, but thought it was an incredible piece of reporting. For some reason I really, really liked the stuff where Chris was trying to sail his canoe to the Gulf of California. Liked that section even more than the Alaska stuff, I think. I thought Krakauer did a really good job of painting McCandless as neither a kook nor someone to be totally romanticized, although it's obvious he sympathized with him. I found myself really, really interested in Krakauer's part of the narrative where he's trying to climb the northern face of Devils Thumb. That was fucking intense. I was less interested in the the other Alaskan explorers who died because of poor planning or ignorance. At that point, I just wanted to get back to McCandless, to be honest. But it was a beautiful book. I'd like to see the movie now to see how it compares.

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta. I liked this, but I didn't love it. I wanted to love it, because I loved Little Children and am a big fan of all of Perrotta's other books, but this one was just ok. Some good moments. Basically the whole thing is a examination of how the religious right is slowly taking over our country, but doesn't paint the religious folk as crazy as much as intense, with the desire to belong to something. I though the ending was kind of blah. It was satire that didn't really sting, to be honest.

Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris. I really loved this book. It's funny and tragic, kind of like Catch-22 for the cubicle set. I thought it was really well done, and I laughed a number of times. It was probably a little bit long (380 pages), but I zipped through it in about two days. Just a really sharp piece of black comedy, and something I would reccomend to anyone who has worked in a newspaper office -- or any office -- for a few years. The whole thing is written using the collective "we" as the narrator, which was a really interesting decision and gives the book an added intimacy. It was a finalist for a National Book Award, and was a hell of a lot better than Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke, which won the award, and was a complete mess.

I didn't write about it after I finished it, but the best book I've read this year remains The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. It's just a wonderful take on the immigrant experience and what it means to be Dominican, male, and nerdy in the world. Also, it's very funny. It helps to know a little Spanish, because there is various Spanish/English patois throughout the book, but it's still a wonderful piece of fiction.