BOOKS THREAD

Wasn't that the point of the book.

 

Received The Best American Sports Writing 2010 as a Christmas gift. So far I've read guest editor Peters Gammons' introduction and Glenn Stout's foreword where he touches upon something of particular interest about each book since 1991. At one point he writes that if he was editing a collection titled The Best of the Very Best of the Best, the book would have just three stories. They would be Bill Nack's "Pure Heart" from 1991 about the death of Secretariat, J.R. Moehringer's "Resurrecting the Champ from 1998 and Bill Plascke's "Her Blue Heaven" from 2002. Stout writes, "if you have never read any of thses stories, well, you should. Like right now."

This ties in nicely with the journalism thread about the best Sports Illustrated story.

 

I realize I'm a bit late to this train, but I recently finished "The Accidental Billionaires," which is the book "The Social Network" was based off of.

I thought it was very interesting. While the movie was good, the book provided what will probably be the closest thing we'll ever see to how Facebook came to be.

Worth a read.

 

Just finished the book two days ago. Good stuff, especially the profile pieces.

 

Working on "Play their Hearts Out" by George Dohrman. A great, yet disturbing look into the world of youth grassroots basketball.

 

Just finished The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett. Great read about a guy who can't stop stealing rare books in hopes of building a dazzling personal library, and a rare book seller who is trying to catch him. Similar to The Orchid Thief. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Next up is Flyboys by James Bradley.

 

I finished 'World War Z' last week. It's an oral history of The Great Panic aka the zombie war. You're reading from the perspective of survivors, doctors, military personnel, government officials, etc. as they're being interviewed by the book's author. The interviews take place 10 years after the war. You get detailed and plausible explanations for how the infection started, how bad shit got and how it was overcome (or was it??? Ha ha - I won't spoil.). Max Brooks crafts some excellent narratives and characters, and makes you feel like you're part of their experiences. It's roughly 340 pages, and despite being a slow-ish reader who likes to re-read entries to help myself become a better writer, I finished this book in less than three weeks. I loved it.

 

Finally read Franzen's "Freedom." I'll echo some of the thread's earlier comments and say that Franzen just didn't make me care at all about his characters.

I mean, I get it, they're supposed to be realistically flawed characters, and that's great. But there are plenty of flawed characters in literature that I've cared about. Even though both Walter and Patty, for example, underwent significant change throughout the story arc there still seemed to be an element of flatness, if that makes any sense. I guess I can't really explain it. For all of the pieces of great writing, the book just wasn't that rewarding.

 

The further Freedom is in my rearview mirror, the more I think it was a series of interesting set pieces stitched together and not really a novel. I think the writing was very good, and the section with Patti in college was probably my favorite part. There is a detail in there about female college athletes going to class with their hair still wet from showering after practice that -- as a guy who dated a volleyball player in college -- was such a remarkably true detail, I sort of fell in love with Franzen again.

But overall, I feel like the novel just wasn't a novel. It was commentary on our times, which is ok, but it left me a little empty in retrospect. There is some of that in The Corrections, but it worked because the main focus is the family saga, and the unhappiness and uneasiness caused by none of the kids really able to find their place in the world.


If anyone wants to read very funny, biting satire, I'd recommend they pick up either Home Land or The Ask by Sam Lipsyte, who is the son of sports writer Robert Lipsyte. Home Land is one of the more inventive pieces of fiction I've read in the last few years.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout is also a remarkable book.

 

As if anyone requires my endorsement of anything DD says, but "Home Land" was truly fantastic. I haven't read "The Ask" but am grateful for the reminder.