BOOKS THREAD

Maybe it's just me -- and I haven't scanned through the entire thread -- but I'm looking forward to Harry Potter 6 coming out this summer.

Just fun reading and it gives me and my oldest daughter a connection and something to talk about. And we need that.

Sarah Vowell -- the voice of Violet in The Incredibles.

 

Modaho, if it makes you feel any better, I am very much looking forward to HP6 as well. The parents pre-ordered it for me for my birthday, so it should arrive promptly on July 16.

Since we're on the subject of "children's books," I was in Waldenbooks not too long ago and came across a reprinting of C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, in one extremely large volume, in their intended order. Tres cool.

 

Idaho:
I'll be buying the Harry Potter book, too, and I don't even have a daughter to use as an excuse.

 

Have you and your daughter tried Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy? Much bigger in the UK than here, it's a wonderful, imaginative work of fantasy aimed at the junior high/high school range but read by as many adults. As an added bonus, the main character is a girl, beautifully written and completely non-cliched.

As a fellow Harry Potter fan, I recommend these without hesitation.

 

vowell also does great work on this american life on npr

 

Don't know if anyone mentioned it, but the Miracle of St. Anthony about Bobby Hurley Sr. was excellent and Emperors and Idiots about the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry was good too.

 

Must second "Confederates in the Attic" and "Kingdom and the Power," although -- in one of the truly up-yours instances I've ever dealt with -- my copy of that book (which runs more than 600 pages) was missing the last 25 or so pages.

Of course, I didn't discover this until I was at the "end" of the book.

Let's add "Paddy Whacked: The True History of the Irish-American Gangster in America" to this list. It's a revealing, insightful look at how the Irish co-opted power in cities like Boston, New York and Chicago, then were muscled out by the Italians and the Jewish gangsters in the 30s.

It talks about Joe Kennedy's machinations on both sides of the law (revealing and refreshing to see this A-hole so deservingly eviscerated) and concludes with James "Whitey" Bulger's rise and fall in Boston.

That car door you just heard slam was Fenian Bastard rushing out to his local B&N to find this tome.

 

if silliness, verbal mastery mind-bending passages are your thing, check out Tom Robbins' first, Another Roadside Attraction. THis is a pretty dissimilar recommendation for the books that have previously been mentioned (fiction vs. non-fiction), and who knows - everyone may have already read it/heard of it, i don't know. but hell, i'd never heard of it, and it's just excellent.

 

Admittedly I never read any of the book club threads and now I kinda wish I had. I'm an avid reader, primarily non-sports books because I like to get away from the games a little when I'm not at work.

Besides, between a couple newspapers, a few magazines and a load of websites, I read enough sports. However, I just got a birthday gift in the form of "Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers" by Curt Smith.

I've read through about 1 1/2 chapters and really like it. Primarily about radio baseball announcers, it gives a lot of history and, obviously, ranks them. Solid, in-depth rankings based on a load of criteria. I'm a huge baseball fan and work in radio so this book is probably of greater interest to me than it will be to a lot of you but I'd recommend it if you're looking for something on the lighter side. I think it's a bit akin to Dr. Z's annual post-season NFL broadcast crew rankings, but a little more celebratory and less critical.

And I guess it's a recently published book because the acknowledgements is dated Feb. 2005. Anyway, I have leafed through this thread and ordered some books...just so the fine moderators know there is appreciation for things like this.

 

when you finish that, try voices of the game, which is an history of baseball broadcasting also by curt smith. it's a little old as the edition i have is 1992 but still a good read even now..

 

If you were ever a fan of Saturday Night Live, I cannot recommend Live From New Yorkhighly enough.

It will hold you the entire way, if only to find out who was a fuck-up and who was doing whom.

Who would've thought Chris Rock was one of the most thoughtful, well-spoken cast members ever?

 

Webby-
Shouldn't you be able to raise some money off this thread? I've seen other sites that link to Amazon with a small percentage or credit going to the webpage.