Baseball

“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.

Culture and Criticism

From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.

Donors Choose and Contests

Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.

Stories, True and Otherwise

Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.

The Vine

The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!

Moneyball
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

Excellent read for fans of the contemporary game and/or of Bill James; the writing really purrs along (it could have stood better proofreading, though).

A Million Little Pieces
March 5, 2007 · One Comment

I actually finished this days ago, but I’ve been avoiding writing it up here, because…where to begin, really, with this whole <a href=”http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0104061jamesfrey1.html” target=”_blank”>flapdoodle</a>.   The story begins, for me, months ago, when I was …

McCarthy’s Bar
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

It’s very funny, and skillfully avoids a pitfall common to travel writing, namely that the diction starts to repeat itself after a while.   Hilarious bits about tourists in Killarney and the non-bird that flew …

Little Girls in Pretty Boxes
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

It’s a book about, basically, how shitty it is to try to make the Olympics as a gymnast or figure skater and what a giant psychopath Bela Karolyi is.   Good stuff — a little …

Leopold and Loeb: The Crime of the Century
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

Eh.   Too much detail in spots, not enough in others.   It’s a reissue of a twenty-year-old edition, and a certain creakiness pervades the prose; the book isn’t interesting enough to make it worthwhile …

Left Hooks, Right Crosses
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

It’s really a very good book; I just had problems with putting it down and then for some reason not wanting to pick it back up again, but I’d recommend it for a well-chosen cross …

Junk English
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

I liked Ken Smith’s book about social hygiene film, but this one is slight, and something about the tone isn’t fun; it’s hard to explain.   (2/16/04)

Joy in Mudville: A Little League Memoir
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

Didn’t love it.   Too many digressions, too much talking about Nyack, and in spots it felt forced, especially when the author was rising above some situation or another — some of the remembrances and …

Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

The Marilyn parts did not disappoint; a less gossipy person might have cared that the book just stopped cold being about Joe D and was just about Marilyn for fifty pages, but I didn’t mind …

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

It’s beautiful, and Ware’s rendering of everyday sound is amazing.   But I’m never reading it again because it’s so goddamn depressing.   (7/11/06)