BOOKS THREAD

Pressboxramblings,

You may find this original thread about Deathly Hallows worth your perusal:

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/44467/

 

I feel pretty good that I've read 34 of those and I was happy to see Lonesome Dove by McMurtry in there because I think it is a piece of fantastic literature that all too often is cast aside as a cowboy book.

One of my beefs with that list though is the inclusion of Ambrose's Undaunted Courage. I really like Ambrose, despite the knocks on him, just because he does a good job of making sometimes tedious history quite compelling, but this book was filled with repeated paragraphs, crazy sidetracking and was just not nearly as good as his WWII stuff or his book on the start of the railroads.

I remember my parents printing out a list of the greatest English works of the 20th Century in 1999 and challenging the rest of our family to race to see who could read them all first.

I ran out of steam at about 49 or so, but I ran across the list while I was moving the other day and I think I may have to see if I can kill off those other 51.

 

An Ayn Rand work is considered a mark of Manliness?

Gotcha. Off you go.

 

I just finished the new Willie Nelson bio by Joe Nick Patoski. Exhaustive look - warts and all - at Willie's life with a great overview of the history of country music and Texas music. One of the best music bios I've ever read.

Now on to the new Halberstam anthology that I picked up at the library on the way home.

 

I just put the Willie bio on hold at the campus library; I'll pick it up today. Thanks for the reminder, Huggy.

Update: I guess my online hold didn't work, because someone checked out the book one minute before I asked a librarian help in finding it.

And I found this pretty funny. Nelson's book is in Section 420 of the music library. How very appropriate.

 

I read the Nelson book in a week (mind you I had a stint at jury duty to make a dent in it), but it wasn't anywhere near as exhausting as reading the Sam Cooke bio (which is excellent, by the way).

 

I'm back reading The Hobbit right now.

On the waiting list:
Into The Wild, Jon Krakauer
Quiet Strength, Tony Dungy
The Innocent Man, John Grisham
... and anything interesting I might come across

 

Has anyone read Gerry Adams' autobiography?

I'm thinking about picking it up.

 

Anyone have an idea when David Maraniss' book on the 1960 Rome Olympics is due out? I read the excerpt in SI this week and was impressed -- as I figured I would be.

 

There was a thread on this a few weeks ago. Randy Pausch is a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon and a father of three young children. He has been sentenced to death with 10 tumors in his liver. He's dying and he knows it. This is his final lecture.

This man has been selected by some higher power not for computer engineering, but to impart pearls of wisdom he came across before, during and after his fatal diagnosis. It's not your typically mawkish chicken soup for the soul book, his truths are thundering.