BOOKS THREAD

Been reading Dave Cullen's exhaustive research of the Columbine massacre. Took him 10 years to write. It is an unflinching view.

As much as the general public knows about the event, it's amazing how much of his material comes new and surprising.

 

Waterytart -- I did not care for "The Man from Beijing," and I love Mankell. I echo HC: read the Wallender series. I didn't even start in order, and I loved every bit of it.

 

Finally got The Hunger Games boxset today and have been reading through Catching Fire. So far, it's damn good.

 

I talked about 11/22/63 so much, that for Valentine's Day, the bride got me King's Under the Dome. Started it a couple of nights ago. Looks good so far, but it's going to take a while. It's about as many pages as 11/22/63.

 

I've been reading a book called Red Summer by Cameron McWhirter about the race riots of 1919. Baseball is only mentioned once when Griffith Stadium is mentioned during the section about rioting in DC that year.

The most famous of the riots of that year occured in Chicago. Using Retrosheet I was to find out that the White Sox were playing a home game the day the riots started. The catalyst was at a beach on a Sunday afternoon where a black kid drowned after a white guy threw a rock at him and hit him. The White Sox had a home game that day (probably finishing up about the time that crowds were gathering at that beach. Their next game was at the Polo Grounds, so they may have boarded a train the same day the riot started. I was surprised to see that the Cubs played a home game while the riots were still going on. They went on for about five days.

I would recommend this book to anyone who thinks that baseball could have been integrated in the first three decades of the 20th century.

 

"The Marriage Plot" by Jeffrey Eugenides

I thought it was very good, but I thought that the protagonist was the least interesting of the three major characters in the central love triangle. Since the other two were males, I'd be interested to know if a female reader felt the same way, or if I am just identifying with the men because of our commonalities in a way that I did not with the woman.

 

Flip, I zipped through Under the Dome. Enjoyed it very much! Next up, 11/22/63... looking forward to it.

 

Dick, I just read this a few weeks ago and I agree with you. She came off as a spoiled boring brat. Although I'd had enough of the one guy by the end, too. Actually, I didn't find any of them really that likable.

 

Little late to the party with this one, but picked up Andre Agassi's autobiography at the library and just blazed through it. Not much of a tennis fan but it is among the best memoirs - by any subject, not just sports - I have ever read.

The first 50 pages or so should be mandatory reading for all sports parents pushing their kids to excel in something they couldn't do. Agassi's candor about his old man and the sport that made him a very wealthy man is staggering.

 

My sentiments exactly, Huggy.

 

Agree with both of you. It's one of the most enjoyable sports bios I've ever read. He's very honest and even though I covered a lot of this, I enjoyed it immensely seeing it from his perspective.

 

Didn't take me long to get through Death To The BCS. Tough to argue with their idea for a playoff and I will admit I was shocked at the economics of the bowls, chiefly the obscene amounts paid to bowl directors and the ridiculous expenses teams incur to play in these things.

Virginia Tech's expense sheet for the 2009 Orange Bowl was an eye opener: they had a traveling party of band and cheerleaders (and their staffs, presumably) of more than 400 people for a week in south Florida? More than 130 people in the official party, probably including hangers-on, flunkies etc.? Almost $150K in awards and equipment?

Doesn't anybody at these schools look at this stuff?