“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.
From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.
Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.
Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.
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Should have been more interesting than it was — it was evocative in parts, but often, Solomon is very clearly trying to be lyrical, but falls into cliches and works against herself. The writing …
You might remember Barry Glassner from Bowling for Columbine; I’d had his book on my wishlist for a while, but after seeing the movie, I motivated and bought it, and it’s very good. It’s …
Read it in one day. I got the feeling from the Behind The Music on David Cassidy, who came off as twelve-steppily full of himself all “I’m a survivor!”, that the book would be …
It’s very good, particularly since Cobb isn’t a player I had much interest in, beyond wondering why the hell nobody stood up to his crazy ass in twenty-odd seasons and traded him or suspended him …
The prose is a bit choppy in places, but it really carries you along — O’Nan is very skilled at giving a sense of the chaos and terror without overwriting. He’s also quite good …
Interesting, although I don’t agree with some of the implications and I don’t love that it refuses to draw any conclusions. I think it’s generally agreed at this point that Hauptmann didn’t act alone, …
It’s very good — but the Plimpton oral history gives you a better sense of him, and you don’t need both. (7/1/06)
Listy in spots, but Lechner undertook his watch-twelve-TVs-for-a-week experiment the same week Mighty Big TV launched back in 1999, so that’s a nifty time capsule; the writing is not the deftest, but given the parameters, …
A Hitchcock short-story compilation (remember when he had his brand on everything — books, TV shows, everything?). I don’t usually read much detective/suspense fiction, but the old-school stuff is good; the diction is more …
Lovely, friendly, quick read. Not what you might expect from Roald Dahl and all the more winning for it. (8/10/05)