BOOKS THREAD

Loved the concept of this book and, as a huge Glavine fan, loved the subject matter even more. Loved the access that Feinstein had, as always. ... But for some reason, I just didn't love this book. Perhaps it was the simple editing errors that made it in, but more than that, it was the style of writing -- too much play-by-play of each start, not enough insight into the minds of the pitchers. The quotes scratched less of the surface than a typical AP gamer the next day. Maybe Glavine and Mussina didn't want to spill their secrets or maybe Feinstein just didn't know enough about pitching to ask the right questions. And maybe he would have had more passion for this project if he had completed it the way he wanted to -- with David Cone a decade ago.

With the exception of the information gleaned from the personal access that Feinstein had, I could have learned just as much about Glavine and Mussina's 2007 seasons by studying their gamelogs on Baseball-Reference.com. Overall, it was a disappointing read.

 

The Mickey Mantle book is $11.99 on Amazon, btw.

 

A little more than halfway through Living on the Black and I agree with the earlier assessment, there is too much play-by-play, I find myself zoning out during those parts, though I imagine it would have been tough to write the book without it. It started off well and has gotten fairly slow, but I'll continue to move through it.

 

Well... after finishing this on my flight back from Bermuda last week, I was totally let down by the ending. Talk about running out of gas and mailing it in, that's what Furst did with "Spies of Warsaw."

I get emotionally invested in these characters, because Furst did a great job of getting me invested in them. Then, he gets to the last 25 or so pages and decides, "Well, that's that. Time to wrap it up..." and does so in a half-ass, mail-it-in fashion.

It's almost like he was on a word/page count and was about to hit the wall. Very, very disappointing.

 

A lot of his books don't build into big climaxes, they just kind of end somewhat ambiguously. I could see where people might not like it, but it doesn't bother me. (And I'm not saying "big climaxes" as in shoot-outs and bombs exploding or ticking down etc, I mean endings that satisfactorily wind everything up. I read him for the atmosphere along the way, if that makes sense.)

 

Feinstein? PADDING?

Nah.

 

It does make sense and while I wasn't rooting for the epic shootout, I was rooting for an ending that didn't just, well, end with the effort of a 95-year-old man's fart.

What happened to the SS officer, what happened to Mercier at the end... just not good enough for a writer who WAS good enough for 230 pages.

 

Read a few lately, since I have some time on my hands, these days.

"Steel My Soldiers' Hearts," by Colonel David Hackworth is a look at a self-absorbed asshole's attempt to transform a rag-tag bunch of losers into a solid fighting unit in Vietnam. He does it, but sucks himself off on every other page. Overall good book if you're into military history -- especially Vietnam-era action books.

"They Fought For Each Other," by Kelley Kennedy is a pretty decent look inside the hardest hit unit in Iraq, C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, who lost more than 30 Soldiers during their time in one of Baghdad's worst neighborhoods at the height of the Sunni-Shiite civil war. From a Medal of Honor winner to a First Sergeant who killed himself in front of his Soldiers, it's a pretty good look at the characters who made up the horribly disfunctional group. The story first appeared as a series called "Blood Brothers," in the Army Times a few years back. Kelley, who also served in the Army, was embedded with us recently for The Times and wrote a pretty good piece about my Shadow Dustoff brethren that was published last week, or the week before. Not exactly sure.

"The Innocents Abroad," by Mark Twain. Having been educated in Oxford, Mississippi, I was beaten repeatedly about the head with William Faulkner. I never thought anyone would approach him in terms of reading difficulty. Well, Twain got close on this one, but it was still a delightful tale of a group's exploits aboard a steamship while traveling the world.

"Three Cups of Tea," and "Stones Into Schools," by Greg Mortensen were both absolutely wonderful looks at his organization's attempts to educate Pakistani and Afghan children. Building secular schools in the heart of bad-guy territory and getting the locals to do most of the work is genius. Just goes to show you how wrong we're fighting this war. 'Nuff said.

Just started "Empires of Mud," a doctorate-level study of warlordism in Afghanistan by Antonio Giustozzi. Read the first two pages the other night and fell asleep. Unfortunately, this one is what we in the Army call "mandatory fun." Battalion commander's decision for us to read it. I'm fucked.

 

There's a very good reason it's already on the $5.99 remainder stacks at Borders. No mystery.

 

Keeping with the military theme, I just read Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. It's about a platoon of Marines operating on the Laos border circa 1969.

The author served there himself around that time and reportedly spent the better half of three decades writing and polishing this tome before it was finally published. I thought it was a good, engrossing read -- one where the 600 pages flew by.

 

I have been trying to read Wolf Hall, which won the Booker Award last year and has been recommended to me by many. It's very confusing. Many times the author doesn't make it clear which character is talking or doing something. It's a historical novel based on the Tudor era of King Henry VIII and so features many people named Thomas. That doesn't help. Very disappointed in this book.

 

Just finished Around the World with LBJ by the guy who was his pilot when LBJ was vice president and then president. Good, quick read (knocked it out in two days). LBJ comes off as a mean old man, but the author says the prez stuck up for him when necessary and made sure his promotions were set before leaving the White House.

And now for something completely different, I'm about a third of the way through Geek Love, which was recommended on reddit on a thread that asked for the most disturbing book you've ever read. It's about a carnival family, and the parents decided that since their sideshow exhibits (the "freakshow" participants) kept leaving, they would breed their own. Carnival-owner dad forced his wife to take all kinds of drugs when she was pregnant and they ended up with their own brood of sideshow-worthy children.

Yes, it's quite disturbing, but fascinating.