BOOKS THREAD

JUst finished "The Last Coach," the biography of Bear Bryant. A few minor editing mistakes, but overall and outstanding, well-documented read. I'm not from the south, but grew up a huge Alabama fan because of the Bear.

 

i thought it was a little flat

the editing mistakes (and for a book like this, there were way too many) really hurt the flow for me

 

Hoops,
I'd agree about the editing mistakes. They left me scratching my head several times too (And he forgot a 2-0 record against VPI's Jimmy Sharpe in the "Bear's record vs. his ex-coaches/players" category).

I did really enjoy the stuff from when Bryant was a student at Alabama, and the Maryland/Kentucky/A&M years, of which we hear little.

And it did tell me why Yankee broadcaster mel Allen went to 'Bama. That always was a puzzler until I read the book.

 

anyone read "how to cook your daughter" by jessica hendra and blake morrison? i just finished it. thought it was an entertaining and quick read but it felt more like a pity party and i ended up not liking her.

 

I just finished "Next Man Up." There wasn't anything I didn't already know about a team's day-to-day activities, but it was a nice, quick read.

 

Next Man Up is quick? It's like 500 pages!

I do look forward to reading it next week though.

 

500 pages, huh?

Well, you're right. 493 pages.

Hmm. Well, I found it quick-and-easy...

 

Just read Nathaniel Bellows' "On This Day" and found it to be an interesting first novel (Bellows, who is about 31 or 32, is more well-known as a poet).

The gist is that a brother and sister lose both parents within about a year, dad to cancer and mom to suicide. It's all about how they carry on while trying to fend off wacky relatives and so forth.

It's not exactly engrossing in the manner of, say, John Grisham or the "Da Vinci Code," but it certainly is an interesting character novel.

 

The Beautiful Game? Searching for the soul of football by David Conn

Impressive look into the deplorable state of the English football league structure. Things learned from book: The amount of people who still work in "football" after being directly responsible for the deaths at Hillsborough is shocking. Old English men are greedy, evil fucks. Man U (or most of the Premier League) doesn't give shit to charities.

 

We should all be so greedy and evil.

 

The Children's Blizzard, a vivid telling of the 1888 killer storm that swept across the Dakotas. by David Laskin