BOOKS THREAD

Clockers was a great book. I also loved Price's earlier books -- Ladies Man, The Wanderers and Blood Brothers

 

Just finished Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America by Jonathan Gould, a book that got a rave review in Rolling Stone a few issues back. I've read all the prominent Beatle bios, including Shout! by Phillip Norman and the marathon effort by Bob Spitz a few years back so there was little here I hadn't already read elsewhere.

Not the cultural dissertation it claims to be (in my view, anyway), it is a more scholarly look at their music than those books, some of it was WAY over the head of this non-musician.

 

Just picked up "Last Days of Summer," by Steve Kluger.

Light read, but a good one. Zoom ... I'm already 100 pages in.

Just finished "The Soul of Baseball," by Joe Poz. Another very, very quick read -- excellent book. Makes you feel good, as it should.

 

Start on the Clemente book yet?

Also, I'm willing to send you Confederates in the Attic in exchange for The Echoing Green if you want to.

 

Getting to Clemente next. Got to finish this one and (finally) get it back to the coworker I borrowed it from first.

Actually, I still haven't bought "Echoing" yet. Picked it up from the library a couple weeks ago.

 

Oh, all right. Well, I'll send you "Confederates" anyway if you pm me your address.

 

In the middle of beautiful, heartbreaking book called All Things Must Fight To Live, by Bryan Mealer. He worked at Esquire a few years ago and quit his comfy desk job to write for the AP in Congo, right around the time millions of people were dying in a brutal civil war that no one cared about. It's very, very hard reading in spots, but it's also redemptive and pulls the strange trick of making me wish that I had covered a war in my career, even though I don't wany any of Bryan's memories.

Next up -- recommended by a bookseller in San Francisco who liked the book so much, she forced me to take it: The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace, about the world's most valuable bottle of wine. I haven't cracked it yet, but this woman was crazy for it, so I think it must be pretty good.

 

The movie Clockers is nothing like the book, as is the case with most books that are made into films

 

A friend of mine really enjoyed Billionaire's Vinegar, Jones. He told me a few anecdotes from it that sounded really interesting. I'm adding it to my wish list.

 

If you are looking for a quick, easy and funny summer read, I highly recommend "I Love You Beth Cooper" by Larry Doyle (ex-Simpsons writer). Imagine John Hughes directing a cross between American Graffiti and Superbad and you begin to get the picture. The valedictorian and debate team captain gives the grad speech and says the book's title. Beth Cooper is the head cheerleader who barely knows that he exists.

 

Just finished "Last Days of Summer."

Read it. Just read it.

Those two characters are going to stay with me for a long, long time.