BOOKS THREAD

When I read the back cover, it seemed like "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair with how it's a historical tale told through the lives of fictional characters, but based around that true time.

 

No, I don't think that's an apt comparison. "The Jungle" isn't a historical novel, anyway -- it was written around the time it was set. And Sinclair set out specifically to write his story as a political vehicle and a social indictment, which Lehane has never tried to do.

Read "The Given Day." It's a phenomenal story. But there's really not much similar about those two books at all, other than the fact that they're both set in the early 20th century and deal, indirectly, with some immigration issues.

 

So far in 2009:

Baseball Between the Numbers by Baseball Prospectus
Finished off: Lardner on Baseball
Loose Balls by Terry Pluto
Days of Grace by Arthur Ashe
Only the Ball Was White by Robert Peterson
Best American Sports Writing 2008
Call The Yankees My Daddy by Cecil Harris
The Blind Side by Michael Lewis
Bowls, Polls and Tattered Souls by Stewart Mandel
The 100-Yard War by Greg Emmanuel
The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam (Finally finished, hooray long footbal playoff runs)

Just Started: Meat Market by Bruce Feldman

 

I got this book for Christmas. Ackerman is a VERY good researcher and writer. Highly recommend pretty much anything he writes.

 

Meat Market is great.

I got the Agassi book for Xmas from the wife, and I went out and bought Feinstein's Q School book for like $5. Reading that now while also trying to finish Hot House.

Hell, those books will last me through the rest of the year as slow as I read.

 

I'm about halfway through The Doaker's Story, a new novel about sports journalism by Neil Isaacs. To quote from the back cover The Doaker's Story "charts the career of Billy Doakes from champion schoolboy athlete to TV news reporter and his destruction by the cynical forces of the sports/media establishment." Has anyone else read it or even heard about it? I saw one mention of it somewhere, perhaps on a sports history book list, so ordered a copy from Amazon. Dave Kindred gave it a blurb so maybe he'll add a comment. Isaacs' novel, The Great Molinas, would be near the top of my list of best sports novels

 

Anybody know of any books about Mel Blanc and the Looney Toons? I'm just curious to know like what went on behind the scenes, battles they may have had with producers, studio heads, ect. THX in advance.

 

So far in 2010:
Meat Market by Bruce Feldman

Just Started: Secretariat: The Making of a Champion (renamed from Big Red of Meadow Stable) By William Nack

 

Della, if you wouldn't mind, please let me know how you like Secretariat. I've thought about that one but have yet to get it.....was hoping someone would tell me first if it's good.

 

I should finish "Heart of the Game" by S.L. Price some time tonight.

Debating between Agassi's autobiography and Vaccaro's "The First Fall Classic" for my next read.

I also picked up "The Great Gatsby" over the holiday to read again. It's a book that needs to be read again every few years.

 

Not sure how much Mel Blanc content is in it, but there should be a bunch of Looney Tunes content: Chuck Amuck by Chuck Jones. Chuck Jones, as you know is one of the head animators/cartoonists at Warner Brothers (home of Looney Tunes)

 

Just took a look at my reading list for 2009, thanks to the Visual Bookshelf app on Facebook. Here's what I read (in reverse order, from end of year to beginning):

The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (ed. Bruccoli -- started in mid-Dec. '09; 30/43 stories read)
Ragtime (Doctorow)
The March (Doctorow)
Assassination Vacation (Vowell)
Catch Me If You Can (Abagnale)
The Machine (Posnanski)
The Young Lions (Shaw)
Eddie Collins: A Baseball Biography (Huhn)
The Lost Symbol (Brown)
Chasing Moonlight (Friedlander)
Sam Rice: A Biography (Carroll)
A Game of Inches (Morris)
The Devil in the White City (Larson - audiobook version)
Glory Road (Haskins/Wetzel)
Sin in the Second City (Abbott)
Satchel (Tye)
The Black Prince of Baseball (Dewey/Acocella)
Living on the Black (Feinstein)
Opening Day (Eig)
For The Thrill of It (Baatz)
The Given Day (Lehane)
Larceny and Old Leather (Ham)
A Voyage Long and Strange (Horwitz)
When Pride Still Mattered (Maraniss - started just after Christmas '08)