BOOKS THREAD

peter hessler. and you're right, it's excellent.

 

Thanks. Hessler's River Town is also top notch. I've just started his latest, Country Driving; I'll report on it when finished.

(That's pretty bad, to get the guy's name wrong when citing a book that's the culmination of years of work. So, sincerely AD, thanks.)

 

Just finished Anne Marie MacDonald's "The Way the Crow Flies". Actually enjoyed it even more than "Fall On Your Knees". She really seems to remember what childhood was like.

 

no worries: we're usually all in a distracted rush here....SportsJournalists.com: where all the cashiered copyeditors went to die....

 

'Annie Duke: How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions at the World Series of Poker' by Annie Duke
with David Diamond

Very early in the book, but Diamond seems pretty good. Good breezy, anecdotal style mixed with a little technical poker stuff.

 

Just finished Team of Rivals by Goodwin, a great read. Nothing better than a well-written history book. Amazing to think that I still learn new stuff about Lincoln after all these years and how relevant that period and Lincoln's decisions still teach us today.
I'm about halfway through "The Opposite Field" a book by Jesse Katz about his experiences (good and bad) as a Little League dad. I'd say its somewhere in tone between Bill Bryson's stuff and JR Moeringer.

 

just finishing up mark harris' "pictures at a revolution" about the five best picture nominees of 1967 -- guess who's coming to dinner, dr. doolittle, bonnie and clyde, in the heat of the night, and the graduate.

it's superb -- gives a great portrait of hollywood at the point of generational change, of warren beatty, of what it took not just to get bonnie and clyde made but marketed and paid attention to, of the role of luck and whimsy in what retroactively seems to be one-foot-in-front-of-the-other doggedness. really great stuff -- and i'm not usually a film book reader.

i don't know how to put this, other than to say that it makes me happy to read quality stuff. i mean, not just satisfied -- but really happy. i felt that way when i saw "leaving las vegas" -- the most downer movie, on paper, of all time. to see someone create a vision, no matter how uncommercial it seems, and then find a way to realize it...it's exhilarating. i left that movie -- and i know a lot of people didn't like it -- all but cheering. and i feel that way about this book.

 

Having finished it last week, I've changed my opinion. I little too breezy.
Needed a little more substance, either about her personal life or about the game. Everything seemed glossed over.

 

Midway through. It IS breezy, but she covers a lot of ground, and to her credit, was far more candid than she needed to be

 

Curt Smith's Pull Up A Chair, on Vin Scully, is drop-dead wonderful.

 

Recommendations for a mob non-fiction book? Classics will do.

 

The most recent good one is Havana Nocturne.