writesdave's reviews
360 reviews

The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry

4.0

Another one about a teenager trying to figure out what life's about. For me, it's another book about a place I used to live, which certainly made it for me; I clearly saw every one of those piss-ant Texas small towns along the way between Lubbock and Dallas. Alternately funny and emotive, McMurtry really brought to life a period of time most of us would like to forget but never will. Excellent work.

Memories of Summer: When Baseball Was an Art, and Writing about It a Game by Roger Kahn

4.0

It's hard to describe, truthfully, because Kahn destroyed all hope of me becoming even a competent sports writer. His approach is absolutely lyrical and his recollection is crystal clear. Cliche as it sounds, I felt like I was there with him as he covered the Giants, Yankees and his beloved Dodgers in the mid-1950s for one of the eight New York newspapers. I hear "Boys of Summer" is better but it will have to go a long way to exceed this one. There's nothing particularly revealing, other than the heretofore-thought-pious Jackie Robinson saying the s-word once, but I love books that can put me in a time and place and this, ladies and gentlemen, is how it's done.

The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

2.0

Jen told me it was a funny book that happened to be science fiction. Sorry, folks, but I found it to be a sci-fi book that was funny. Yes, it was very humorous, a laugh a page as one reviewer said, but I can't get past the sci-fi. I'm impressed with any author who can create whole worlds and societies in this way, and making it funny certainkly raises the bar. Sci-fi just isn't my cup of bosco, as I discovered here.

Zamboni Rodeo (Tr) by Jason Cohen

4.0

Funny as hell, very insightful. It helps that I lived this life myself (sort of) while covering hockey for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Cohen does a great job of capturing the dreams these guys carry and why they pursue them against all odds in places where there is no naturally occurring ice. It's an interesting phenomenon, hockey in the Sun Belt, and Cohen taps into it better than I could have.

You Gotta Play Hurt by Dan Jenkins

5.0

Story of my life as a sportswriter, only a hell of a lot more interesting. Dan Jenkins could write about golf and it would be -- oh wait, he does that and it is. Anyway, it's a year in the life of Jim Tom Pinch, who has appeared in several Jenkins novels previously. This time Jim Tom has the dream job: a columnist at a national sports magazine with three psychotic ex-wives, two crazy lovers, a "shitheel" for a boss, a good-for-nothing itinerant of a son and one terribly interesting and funny year on the job. Until recently, I held this book as the blueprint for my life. Impossible to find outside of used stores (best $2 I ever spent) but if you know me and put up collateral I'll let you borrow it. Priceless.

Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon

5.0

The first time I read it was my senior year of high school, which could have been the best or worst time to read such a book. I doubt there's anything I can add that hasn't already been said. This was the first book to inspire my wanderlust, and this book, along with the Rand McNally Road Atlas, are never more than a few steps away when I'm home (ironic, eh?). Heat-Moon got out of his van, Ghost Dancing, and met America. A journalism prof and photographer, he was just the guy to do it. He was at a crossroads in life and was likely more prone to introspection than most of us.

It remains in my top five, and will be read again before the summer.

If I Don't Six by Elwood Reid

4.0

Excellent read of an insider's look, which sometimes is not always that good. The character of the jock with brains has been done before but never this well. You can't be an idealist about sports after reading this. Hell, Reid's just a damned good writer and I'm interested to read his other stuff.

Wild Animus by Rich Shapero

2.0

It didn't suck as bad as some have said but, damn, that was weird. The book follows a disillusioned hippie as he drops a lot of acid and becomes a ram to discover himself. During this constant, LSD-induced fog of "discovery" he writes a manuscript and rejects everything and everyone close to him, including his long-suffering wife, Lindy — and, ultimately, the manuscript itself. He goes to one of the roughest patches of Alaskan wilderness (the Wrangell Mountains) to live among the sheep with which he communes and the wolves that hunt them.

I'm always interested in reading tales of self-discovery — Travels With Charley, Blue Highways, Into the Wild, Catcher in the Rye come immediately to mind. Nonetheless, this was over the top and off the charts strange, though Rich Shapero did his homework by doing the necessary travel. His descriptions are very vivid but at times overwrought, like he's trying to impress us with how colorful he is — or, more likely, with how many drugs he did to induce these images.

I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe

3.0

Wolfe could have been describing my freshman year because I was a somewhat idealistic Midwesterner headed to an Eastern, private school. Granted I'm not female but a lot of what I saw rang true. And yes, the people I encountered in college by and large were as one-dimensional as the characters Wolfe portrayed in "Charlotte Simmons."

Truth be told, I read this in less than a week and couldn't help but be bummed out by my college experience but it was nice to sort of re-live it through Wolfe. I give him lots of credit for doing the "research" necessary for the book but I did feel like something of a voyeur. It was an enjoyable read but not earth-shattering, and I look forward to reading other Wolfe works.

God Save the Fan: How Preening Sportscasters, Athletes Who Speak in the Third Person, and the Occasional Convicted Quarterback Have Taken the Fun Out of Sports (And How We Can Get It Back) by Will Leitch

4.0

If Chuck Klosterman really wrapped his head around sports, this is what he'd write. It takes to task everyone involved in sports for their preceived overimportance in our world, but Leitch spends a lot of time ranting on the owners, players and media for taking sports away from the fan.

Leitch is the proprieter of deadspin.com, sort of "The Onion" for sports fans, and his wit certainly gets his point across. At his heart he is a sports fan, and the book does not lack his loyalties to the hapless Arizona Cardinals and the not-so-hapless St. Louis Cardinals. He's just frustrated with the direction in which sports are going and he offers some theories for how it happened and how fans can take them back.

The main beef I have is that he completely ignored the NHL. While I acknowledge the league is run by buffoons who sold the TV rights to an obscure cable network for little more than a song, it's still major enough that it merits mention in any discussion about disgruntled fans, since hockey's costs have increased exponentially in the past decade or so. Plus, there are more sports than just the major team sports and fans of those are just as frustrated (and sometimes overly passionate) as fans of the major team sports, so he could have been a bit more all-encompassing in his survey.

Still, his point is well-taken and this book remains highly recommended.