BOOKS THREAD

Finished "11/22/63." Highly recommend. The ending is a bit bittersweet but there really wasn't anything else he could do.

 

Just finished reading "The Boys on the Bus" for the first time and felt it was okay, not justifying its solid rep. Some vivid passages about how the press operations worked back then and funny portraits of one of my favorites, Jack Germond, but needlessly mean-spirited in many places with little sense of time and place.

 

Started "The Marriage Plot." Pretty good so far. Lots of interesting locales.

 

I have a general point to ponder about books. Do you have an author that is such an intense read that you have to go several months or perhaps a couple of years before reading one of the author's works again? Mine is Joyce Carol Oates. She builds intense, unsparing narrative, detailing fully the thinking of rotted or damaged souls, often kind of mundanely without many writerly flourishes. She takes you to places you can visit only sparingly

 

Tipped off the reading year by finally picking up and plowing through Heart of the Game by S.L. Price. Beautiful. Made me almost cry at a few points.

Spent a week with Pulphead and the collected essays of John Jeremiah Sullivan. Loved Upon This Rock. Loved The Last Wailer. Read both of them three times.

Took a few days to read Hamlet's Blackberry by William Powers. Looked for it at the library after Wright Thompson mentioned it in his long story on test cricket last month. A good read, but not great.

Flew through Hark! A Vagrant, the collected comics of Kate Beaton. Learned only afterward that Beaton is about three months older than I am and now, even though I'm married to a great woman, I think I have a new literary crush. Beaton is intellectually hot to me (and she's pretty cute in real life, too).

Reading Live From New York by Andrews and Shales now. Exactly what I expected. Fun read, for the most part -- pretty much everything except Belushi's and Radner's deaths.

 

I just finished it. Seems like everyone I know has read it, so thought I would join in the fun.

It was good. Plot moved quickly. I enjoyed the story. But, oddly, I'm not that interested in reading the second book. I'm sure I will at some point, but I'm usually the type of person who would be at the bookstore an hour after finishing the first book in a decent series. Not sure what my hesitation is all about in this case.

 

For me, it's Cormac McCarthy.

On another note, I'm in the middle of The Orphan Master's Son. It's really good so far.

 

Pynchon does this for me. My brains are scrambled eggs afterwards.

 

Just finished Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge by Mark Yarm. Certainly not as good as the ESPN or MTV oral bios, it lacked cohesion at times and really should have been written as a narrative to flesh it out and connect the dots between the various bands and fill in some of the missing pieces.

There is some good stuff here, even if I wasn't familiar with many of the principals beyond the more prominent artists. It did a decent job of showing how this movement sort of blew up out of nowhere - in an unlikely place like Seattle - and seemed to disappear as quickly as it came. There are plenty of tales of drug and alcohol abuse and splits within bands and it shows without a shadow of a doubt that Courtney Love - who is quoted extensively - is totally batshit crazy.

Now reading Pearlman's Payton bio.

 

I'm new here, so I couldn't figure out what the right starting off point was. I'll go with books. I started 'The Physics of Baseball' again to get ready to cover another baseball season. It's become tradition.

 

I'm reading "The Leopard" by Jo Nesbo. Detectives tracking a serial murderer. Reminds me a bit of "Dragon Tattoo" trilogy. Fast-paced ... don't want to put it down. Good character development.

Also picked up "The Orphan Master's Son." Can't wait to read it.

Started "See a Little Light" by Bob Mould, but it's just not reeling me in Don't get me wrong, music-wise I love Bob. His autobiography? Not so much.

 

Just about finished with Thomas Franks' newest, "Pity the Billionaire." Awesome, as always. Spot-on political analysis with some great research and writing.