BOOKS THREAD

I'll always have my issues re Breslin, but his latest mini on Branch Rickey is constantly delightful.

 

Not sure what that means?

 

Finished the ESPN book. Entertaining read. Not surprisingly, most of them come off as pretty unlikeable.

 

Finished "Popular Crime" and really enjoyed it. He has some interesting ideas and has certainly given me a list of other books I'll be looking into.

At JR's sister's insistence I read Colum McCann's "Let the Great World Spin" and am very glad that she pushed me. Beautiful book that uses Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in 1974 as a central event around which a number of stories - linked in various ways - are woven. The characters are a diverse bunch - monk, hookers, Park Avenue socialite, judge, artists - but their stories connect in interesting and unexpected ways. Hard to describe what it's 'about' but very, very highly recommended.

 

Can't get enough of these guys. This book is better than you might think, since Tim Keown is the ghostwriter.

 

After my 11 yr. old and wife raved about it, decided to try "Hunger Games" since its coming out. Wow, really enjoyable, thrilling ride. Well paced, interesting protagonist.

Just finished a sweet thriller set on Northern California coast called "The Hidden." Fun ride.

 

Just finished Stolen World, a fascinating look into the world of reptile buying, selling and smuggling. Smith worked on the book 10 years. Heard her speak at a writers' conference last month. She's really cool, and this was a good read.

 

Finished Lost in Shangri-La. Good story, something I didn't really know anything about, but didn't go in the direction I thought it would. Part of it was billed as these survivors lost in the jungle with hostile, native Stone Age tribes but there pretty much was no hostility from the tribes, which was great for the survivors but made the book less entertaining. I enjoyed the similarly-themed Unbroken much more, found it more compelling. Now starting Finding Everett Ruess by David Roberts.

 

Reading original "Planet of the Apes" from a recommendation on the movie thread. Fascinating read, a nice reminder of how literature, good stories, are timeless. About 3/4 through. (unfortunately at times see Heston as protagonist.)

 

Finished "My American Unhappiness" by Dean Bakopoulos and it wasn't bad (but also not great).

Just started Ben Mezrich's new book, "Sex on the Moon." We'll see how that is.

 

The next great American (baseball) novel is due out in a couple weeks. It's got blurbs from Jonathan Franzen, John Irving, David James Duncan, Jay McInerney, and many others. The author's story is great, too. He spent nine years writing the book before he finally sold it for $650K. Of course, he was unemployed and working for free for some small literary journal at the time of the sale. The excerpt in the current SI left me wanting more:

 

I was just perusing Time's 100 greatest works of nonfiction list. As what often happens with these lists, I have read only a few on the list despite having read countless works of nonfiction.

---Robert Hughes' the Fatal Shore is the only book on the list that I have read that I would consider an all-time classic. A phenomenal book about the founding of Australia.

----All the President's Men, in my opinion, is not nearly as great as its follow-up, the Final Days.

----Ugh, Howard Zinn. In my graduate school training in history, Zinn was never assigned as he his not taken seriously by academic historians. In fact, Zinn's name was not mentioned once in any class or discussion I had during grad school.

----The second volume of William Manchester's The Last Lion (about Churchill) is on the list but it is not nearly as good as the first volume.