writesdave's reviews
356 reviews

A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

adventurous challenging emotional reflective fast-paced

4.75

Rebecca Solnit's prose is beautiful, reflective of a life well-lived in this collection of essays drawing parallels between her life and getting lost — which doesn't always spell disaster. 

Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference by Warren St. John

adventurous challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

The Street Where I Live by Alan Jay Lerner

emotional funny informative lighthearted reflective medium-paced

4.0

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I read this in high school after my sister left behind the contents of her bookcase after graduating college. Might be worth a reread.

The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain by Mark Twain

adventurous challenging dark funny slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Be warned — this is not the lighthearted Twain of "Huckleberry Finn," "Tom Sawyer," or "Connecticut Yankee." This is a darker, more cynical and angry Twain. Fed up with the human condition and enriched enough by the aforementioned works to go his own way, he really let fly his discontents. My rating sort of averages all of them out; some are brilliant, other less so. And it took me six years to read them, all of them, one at a time. Makes for good reading on public transit.

This volume combines all 159 of Twain's short stories, including a couple of novellas that stretch the definition of "short;" "The Mysterious Stranger," which closes the collection, is 70 pages long. It opens with a classic, "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Didion's meditation on mourning and grief as her world crumbled around her just rattles you with its beauty and universal truths. This should occupy the shelf next to Kübler-Ross's "On Death and Dying" in the canon of end-of-life planning and reflection. As much a tribute to the man Didion loved as to their life together, "Year" is a lovely and devastating tale. 

The Well-Built Triathlete: Turning Potential into Performance by Matt Dixon, Kessler Meredith

challenging informative inspiring medium-paced

4.5

I should have read this book years ago, when I was still serious about the sport. I should have read it during the pandemic when I felt like a rudderless ship sitting within sight of a milestone age that begged for an attempt at excellence. Alas.

This should be *the* definitive manual for the intense, passionate, drive, motivated and self-coached athlete because Dixon covers all the bases. Anyone with the mental bandwidth to take on triathlon seriously will gain a great deal from Dixon's insight, and not just because he has coached pros to glory with his methods.

Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk by John Lingan

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

I picked this up for a look at music I haven't enjoyed very much over the years and I got a history lesson about America's unspoken caste system and how it continues to inform modern cultures — along with more insight into the origins of country music and how the modern crap is light years away from where it started. 

The town of Winchester, Virginia, distanced itself from Patsy Cline, and only the lobbying of her distant family and a group of fans got an acknowledgement in the form of a road sign as well the restoration of her childhood home. A stone's throw from town, a genuine roadhouse of a bar owned by the radio DJ who discovered and championed her sits on the edge of closure. Author John Lingan then goes deep into the history and culture of that corner of the world to find out why and how the world seems to have passed it by.

As others have pointed out the anecdotes don't seem to connect to each other, but they do tell the story effectively — that of Berkeley Springs, W.Va., and how it reinvented itself; and how Winchester remains stuck in its caste-informed past. Thus the book probably needed another edit, this one for smoothing out the narrative. Lingan did his research and homework, though, and I can't imagine the countless hours required to gain the trust of the locals to tell their stories.

Worth a read for its strong sense of place and history, as well as some insights into the world at large, and how we all struggle to cast off old habits to live in the new world.

Finally, want irony? Winchester's upper crust, donning their starched Wrangers and shined $300 Tony Lamas, drunkenly screaming along to Luke Aldean Jason Rhett Thomas Bryan while scorning those who planted the seeds of true country music from which the weeds of Nashvegas Bro-country have sprouted — in particular one of the legends of the genre from their own hometown, only because she came from the wrong side of the tracks. 

Stand: A memoir on activism. A manual for progress. What really happens when we stand on the front lines of change. by Kathryn Bertine

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced

4.25

This should stand as a blueprint for activism, but also as a cautionary tale for what could happen when you devote your life to service and uplifting others. That life requires a certain type of person, and Kathryn Bertine has the minerals to do it. Again, every activist, potential or current, should read this book if for no other reason than to realize how not alone-they are, and to sharpen their activism.

Some highlights:

• Track cyclists getting behind the idea of Tour de France for women, without actually wanting to race. "My races are three minutes, I have no desire whatsoever to race for three weeks, but I'm all for a women's Tour!" That cracked me up. This illustrates Bertine's lively and versatile sense of humor, and I'm insanely jealous of anyone who can write funny, even over such a heavy topic. This was also some fun insight from within the sport; track cyclists and road cyclists (to say nothing of mountain cyclists and cyclocrossers and so forth) are different breeds.
• UCI head Brian Cookson would be right at home in our Democratic party — campaigning on a platform of change, getting elected/appointed to the big chair, then giving up because change is too hard and the status quo too comfortable—and lucrative. He deserves every bit of smoke.
• Along with her humor, Bertine's courage and vulnerability in telling *every* part of her story are impressive. This makes the book a bit of a cautionary tale, but well worth the telling.

One single lowlight:

• It needed another edit. The narrative remained straightforward from Point A to Point B, no holes in the plot or anything like that, but I found typos throughout, though I'm willing to consider she left them in as evidence of humanity in the face of TBI. The editor in me never sleeps, for better or worse. This keeps it from the coveted (hah) Dave S. five-star ranking.

Highly recommended, though.

Baja Oklahoma by Dan Jenkins

emotional funny lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75