When a whole bunch of the writers you’re a fan of are recommending a book, you should probably read it. I did, and they did not steer me wrong. This iWhen a whole bunch of the writers you’re a fan of are recommending a book, you should probably read it. I did, and they did not steer me wrong. This is a great one.
Billy Lowe is the star player of his high school football team in Denton, Arkansas, but he’s a dirt-poor kid with an abusive step-father, little understanding of social norms, and severe anger issues. When Billy assaults a teammate just as his team is getting ready for the state play-offs it puts Coach Trent Powers in a tough spot. Trent is a born-again Christian who screwed up his last coaching job in California so he’s brought his family to small town Arkansas to hopefully win big quickly and get a better job elsewhere. If Billy is suspended or arrested Trent has no chance of winning a state championship so even as pressure mounts he continues to insist that Billy can be transformed through reason and patience. Things get even more complicated when Billy’s step-father is found dead in their trailer.
That’s an excellent set-up for a crime novel, but what boosts this one up to the next level is the outstanding character work that’s done. We get shifting perspectives, mainly from Billy and his coach, and the differences are stark. In some ways, Billy is little more than an abused animal who has gone feral. His entire family is viewed as trash by the town, and nobody thinks he is worth anything unless he's on a football field. For Billy, the only thing he puts any value on is toughness, and he has nothing but contempt for those around him he sees as soft. He has his own reasons for lashing out, but to anyone not any Billy’s head he just seems violent and dangerous.
Powers isn’t exactly the win-at-any-cost type of coach you’d expect either. While he’s in a bad situation he also has his own tough background as a foster kid, and he tries to turn Billy into a decent young man by using the same sort of methods that worked on him. Yes, he’s rationalizing a lot to justify keeping Billy on the team, but he also seems to be buying what he’s selling even as everyone around him thinks he’s crazy to try because you can’t appeal to a rabid dog with reason. Instead of seeming cynical and opportunistic, Powers comes across as extremely naive.
There are several other complex and well-developed characters, and the whole atmosphere of a small town that was happy to use Billy to win football games even as they all treated him like shit on their shoes is incredibly authentic.
Overall, it’s a riveting character-based story that always zigs when you think it’s going to zag....more
It’s too bad that this book has been so forgotten. If only somebody would do a really good TV adaptation of it then….What’s that? Oh. Never mind.
AfterIt’s too bad that this book has been so forgotten. If only somebody would do a really good TV adaptation of it then….What’s that? Oh. Never mind.
After her mother dies Beth Harmon is sent to an orphanage, and it’s just as much fun as that sounds. However, she manages to get by thanks to daily doses of tranquilizers they give to all the girls, and she discovers a natural talent for chess thanks to a gruff janitor who reluctantly teaches her the game. Beth is eventually adopted by a less than ideal couple, but she finally manages to make her way to chess tournaments where she’s an instant sensation despite her fondness for her little green pills and a growing taste for booze. As she grows into adulthood she tries to become a player capable of beating the Soviet grand master who is the world champion, but Beth’s personal demons always threaten to overwhelm her as she struggles to live up to her full potential.
The amazing thing about this story is that it sounds like it could be pure misery porn, but it really isn’t. Yes, the lead is an orphan who has a very hard life in many ways including coping with addictions. Yet author Walter Tevis manages to keep the story from feeling grim, even when the circumstances really are.
I think this is because he’s more interested in how Beth reacts and copes with her problems rather than just dwelling on the ugliness of them. Even when she hits rock bottom and goes on an extended bender, we don’t wallow in the seedy picture of a young lady doing her best to drink herself into oblivion. Instead, by being in her head we see how she slides into this pattern because she doesn’t know how to deal with her issues rather than being some kind of narcissistic exercise in self-destruction.
Another thing Beth has to resolve is that the very nature of chess and studying it often means she spends a lot of time alone and in her own head which as a socially awkward person is how she often likes it, but she also has abandonment issues and also doesn’t really want to be alone. Since she’s her own worst enemy this is often a recipe for disaster. Plus, there’s been some chess masters who had mental health problems so for a woman who has her own issues, she’s uneasy about how going deep into the game might not be the best thing for her.
At the heart of the entire story is what it means to be a genius at anything. Beth has a natural talent that allows her to achieve a lot without much training, but because it’s all been easy for her she has to learn how to apply herself if she wants to become the world champion. When it’s been easy to be the best, it’s often hard to dig in and take the next step because talent will only get you so far in any field. When things get tougher, failure is always a possibility, and if there’s one thing Beth is frightened of, it’s failure.
Tevis also manages to make chess interesting in this. Like a lot of people, I know how to play, but I have no particular talent for it. His accounts of Beth’s games and study of it provide a glimpse into what it must be like to be a player at that level, and I actually found myself looking up some famous chess games and finding them fascinating.
It’s an extremely well written and sympathetic portrait of a woman struggling with her past and her talent. I’d already seen the Netflix show based on it, and it’s pretty faithful so there were no real surprises. Yet, I still found myself getting anxious about Beth and how she was doing both in her chess matches and in her life all over again....more
This novel should win some kind of award for Best Character Names. Check some of these out: Henry Skrimshander. Guert Affenlight. Pella Affenlight. AdThis novel should win some kind of award for Best Character Names. Check some of these out: Henry Skrimshander. Guert Affenlight. Pella Affenlight. Adam Starblind.
No John Smiths or Jane Does allowed in this one.
Mike Schwartz is a hard working and ambitious student athlete at second rate Westish College in Wisconsin. At a summer league baseball game, Mike sees Henry Skrimshander play and instantly recognizes that he’s seeing the kind of fielding talent that can only be called genius. Skinny Henry has just finished high school and assumes his days in organized baseball are over because all the college scouts passed him over because of his lack of size and below average hitting ability. Where Henry excels is at playing shortstop where no ball gets past him and all of his throws are right on target.
Mike arranges for Henry to get a baseball scholarship to Westish, and begins putting him through a rigorous training regimen designed to turn him from a talented fielding shortstop into a complete baseball player. As eager Henry flourishes under Mike’s guidance, the Westish baseball team starts winning for the first time, and pro scouts have started talking big money just as Henry is on the verge of breaking the record of his idol for most consecutive games without an error.
Then one bad throw with disastrous consequences shatters Henry’s confidence and suddenly leaves him unable to complete the simplest toss during a game. As Henry struggles to get his mojo back, Mike is realizing that his own ambitions may be bigger than his actual talent. The school president Guert Affenlight, a Herman Melville fanatic, has fallen in love with Henry’s gay roommate Owen, and Guert’s daughter Pella has just come to the campus looking to jumpstart her life after a bad marriage.
You don’t have to be a baseball fan to enjoy this one. The author doesn’t engage in the practice of trying to sell the readers on the greatness of the game. Henry loves it because it’s what he was born to do just like a great painter was born to paint, but other characters complain that it’s boring. Even Owen, who is on the team, bitches about it and prefers to read in the dugout rather than watch the games.
For the first half of this book, I was completely sucked in by the characters. Any one of these could have made a great book by themselves: Pella’s backstory about leaving high school to marry an older man and coming to Westish to finally pick up where she left off. Guert’s falling for Owen after a lifetime of heterosexuality and fearing that he was making a fool of himself. Mike’s bitterness over thinking that he’d never be truly great at anything himself while completely dismissing his own talent for motivating and getting the most out of people. All of these were excellent and the writing makes you feel for all of them.
Where it really hits a next level is with Henry’s struggles. Harbach spends a lot of time in the early going telling us about Henry’s development into a top baseball prospect and his incredible grace on the field. And he’s also just a helluva nice guy, the kind of student who doesn’t like to talk in his English class because he’s worried that he’ll hurt his sensitive teacher’s feelings. He works his ass off not for fame and fortune but because he wants to be the best. Then he's helpless to keep it from falling apart just as he’s about to achieve his dream. It’s painful, particularly the way Harbach puts you into Henry’s head on the field where he’s over thinking every play to the point where I almost found myself yelling aloud, “Just throw the fucking ball to first, Henry!”
That’s why I almost consider this a horror story with it’s notion that no matter how much work has gone into something, talent is such a mental thing that it can be destroyed in moments if the wrong set of circumstances cause self doubt to creep in.
Unfortunately, things got a bit too drawn out in the second half of the book, and the various self-destructive cycles that some of the characters enter when things get rough almost turned them from sympathetic into tiresome whiners. Shaving about a hundred pages from this book and tightening it up would have made this a five star read. It’s still an excellent book with some great characters and very good writing. ...more
The 2016 Summer Olympics are getting ready to start this week, and after reading this I’ll be leery of any heartwarming features about athletes and thThe 2016 Summer Olympics are getting ready to start this week, and after reading this I’ll be leery of any heartwarming features about athletes and their families because it seems like they won’t scratch the surface of the toll it probably took on all of them to get there.
Devon Knox is an extraordinary young gymnast with a real chance to become an Olympian, and her parents, Katie and Eric, have made this goal the focus of their entire lives. However, the shocking death of someone connected to their gym causes a disruption that unveils secrets, lies, jealousies, and manipulations that threaten to undo everything.
As with her other recent novels Megan Abbott once again uses a backdrop dominated by adolescent girls as the basis for the story, but this one has a more decidedly adult point of view with most of the story told to us via Katie’s third party perceptions. As a mother who has sacrificed enormous amounts of time, effort, and money to support Devon no one could question her dedication, but Katie sometimes worries about what their relentless pursuit of this single dream has cost their family including the often overlooked younger brother Drew.
The book digs deeply into the whole sub-culture of gymnastics and creates the environment and characters so vividly that the reader is completely immersed in it. Whether it’s explaining how a minor misstep can hurt a score or describing the various injuries common to the girls it all feels incredibly authentic. Explaining that world to us is probably the easiest challenge Mighty Megan had in this one because once again it’s her incredible knack for putting us in the head of a conflicted character who has to face up to some ugly truths where the book really shines because that’s where it asks how much you can know someone else even if they’re the ones closest to you.
I especially like the theme about greatness requiring sacrifice and the questions that get explored regarding that idea. Devon might be able to do something that very few can, but does that mean she should have had to give up a normal childhood and teenage experiences? Is she doing this because it’s her dream or because so many adults around her have their own reasons for wanting her to succeed? Should the Knoxes have dedicated so much of themselves towards a single goal of one child, or does a parent of a kid with an extraordinary talent have a responsibility to do anything to see it fulfilled?
This might be the best book that Megan Abbott has done, and it’s because of the way that she weaves all that together in a story that is crime story, family drama, and reflections on the real cost of the pursuit of excellence in almost any endeavor. ...more
It's a quickie hardcover thrown together to sell at grocery stories in Kansas City toThis is the greatest book ever written!
Ah, but seriously folks...
It's a quickie hardcover thrown together to sell at grocery stories in Kansas City to capitalize on the Royals winning the World Series. The articles are presented as if they were news stories written at various stages of the season, but there's no attribution so I highly doubt they came from any real sports writing.
Still, it's got a lot of great pictures, and the price is right if you receive it as a Christmas present. It's also got the happiest ending ever going for it. So it's a decent coffee table book for Royals fans....more
Eli Sharpe is a former baseball prospect whose career flamed out after a brief stint in the big leagues. Now he works as a private detective specializEli Sharpe is a former baseball prospect whose career flamed out after a brief stint in the big leagues. Now he works as a private detective specializing in issues that come up with the personnel of ball clubs. It seems like Eli has a good business plan because recent events have shown that investigating professional athletes is probably going to be a growth industry.
The book starts in the traditional way of the classic literary private detectives. Eli is just trying to get a little drinking done in his office when a beautiful woman walks in to hire him. Veronica Craven is a sports agent representing Almario ‘Go Go’ Gato, a baseball player who defected from Cuba and got a big money contract with a pro club. Unfortunately, Almario has been struggling in the minor leagues and has now vanished. Eli starts looking for the missing man and quickly learns that the pressure of living up to his potential may have made Almario crack and sent him down a dark path with bad companions.
This is a solid and polished debut novel from Max Everhart who obviously knows the PI genre and came up with a fresh approach with the baseball angle. Some of the best parts revolve around Eli’s ability to empathize with Almario despite having never met him because he knows exactly what’s it like to have your entire future hinge on your ability to hit a curve ball. Eli’s also thankfully not a relentless smart ass like a lot of PI characters are, and he comes across as a good guy who genuinely wants to help people. That nature reminded me a bit of Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole character.
However, Eli was just a little too quirky for my taste in the early going when it seemed like every description and line of dialogue was done just to illustrate how offbeat he is. (This eagerness to establish his personality leads to a wicked continuity error early on when Eli proudly shows Veronica that he is wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt under his seersucker jacket, and then points out his Wilco t-shirt to her about 30 seconds later.) Plus, there are times when it seems like Eli can’t open his mouth or have a thought that doesn’t reveal his eccentric history as the child of hippie (*shudder*) petty criminals as well as his time in baseball. Fortunately, this dies down after a while and the story takes over.
I also found the dialogue just a little too polite at times. When confronting a drug dealer and referring to him as a ‘scumbag’, it’s odd that Eli and his mentor still call the guy ‘Mister’, too. But overall this was an entertaining PI novel with a likeable main character and a nice hook to it. ...more
Considering the image conscious nature of the National Football League and the recent legal problems of a certain former member of the New England PatConsidering the image conscious nature of the National Football League and the recent legal problems of a certain former member of the New England Patriots, I was more than a little shocked that Ace Atkins was able to use the actual team name as well as reference real people like Tom Brady and Bill Belichick for a story that involves a talented but trouble prone player. I would be willing to bet that more than a few lawyers from the NFL, the Patriots and the publisher got to bill some hours while they worked out some kind of arrangement.
Spenser goes to work for Kinjo Heywood, a star linebacker for the Pats. Kinjo has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, but he claims that men have been following and harassing him. Spenser thinks this may be linked to a night club shooting that Kinjo was investigated as being part of, but he was eventually cleared by the police. Things take a darker turn when Kinjo’s young son Akira is kidnapped and no ransom demand is immediately made.
I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating that Ace Atkins has turned out to be an excellent choice to carry on with the Spenser series after the death of Robert B. Parker. Atkins has brought a new energy and edginess to a series that had gotten pretty formulaic and stale, but it’s all been done in subtle ways that still respect the elements fans love about the character.
Spenser is still the same smart-mouthed tough guy with a code who can cook a delicious dinner from scratch while enjoying a couple of beers, but Atkins has modernized him a bit like when Spenser notes that an hour of computer research gets him more than running around all day used to. He even uses a GPS tracker to tail a suspect at one point although he still thinks of it as ‘cheating’. There are also some jokes about Star Wars, hobbits and Twitter that make Spenser seem more up-to-date than he had in RBP’s later books although he still retains his old school nature.
The supporting characters are also feeling more lively and engaged these days. Hawk is a bit rougher around the edges and a little meaner than he had been in the later books so that he feels like a different person, not just another version of Spenser. Z, the protégé Spenser took on in RBP’s final book, is fast turning into one of my favorite parts of the series, and even Susan Silverman is a lot more likeable now. She even gets one of the best ‘Hell, yeah!’ moments of the entire book.
Kinjo is also an interesting twist on the old RBP standard of having Spenser’s clients usually turn out to be terrible people It would have been really easy to play him as just the kind of stereotypical famous bad-boy athlete that is all over ESPN these days. However, Atkins (A former college player at Auburn who was once on the cover of Sports Illustrated.) does a great job of making Kinjo a real and sympathetic person, not just a cliché. He’s actually a decent guy who loves his son deeply and brings a level of dedication and talent to the game that Spenser can respect, but he’s still got some of the ego and flaws that come to many people who achieve fame and fortune.
Another factor I like about how Atkins is a bit different from RBP is that he’s leaving some loose ends and subplots unresolved which I assume will come into play later. These are still self-contained and satisfying stories but leaving a few things simmering on the back burner adds a little tension and anticipation as to what we might get in the future.
The idea of a writer being hired to continue the work of someone who passed away can be a touchy one, and in a lot of cases, probably not a good thing. However, with three remarkably solid and entertaining books now done by Ace Atkins, I’m certain that they couldn’t have found anyone better to carry on with the Spenser adventures, and I’m already looking forward to the next one.
Next Up: Spenser gets a free sandwich in Kickback.
In 1952 the National Football League started an expansion franchise called the Dallas Texans, but the team was a miserable failure and played only oneIn 1952 the National Football League started an expansion franchise called the Dallas Texans, but the team was a miserable failure and played only one year there. They were eventually sold and moved to Baltimore where they became the Colts. Only the Colts would later leave Baltimore for Indianapolis, and the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens, then Cleveland got an expansion team again named the Browns. In 1960 Lamar Hunt started another team in Dallas and again called them the Texans, but they eventually had to leave town for Kansas City and became the Chiefs. However, there is again a NFL team called the Texans only they play in Houston because they got an expansion team after their Oilers moved to Nashville and became the Tennessee Titans.
Got all that?
OK, let me try to simplify it.
Once upon a time there was a guy named Lamar Hunt who was the son of an uber-wealthy oil tycoon. Hunt was a sports nut who dreamed of owning his own professional football team, but at that time the NFL had no interest in expansion. With the league giving him the cold shoulder, Hunt came up with the idea of starting his own. After rounding up some other rich folks to help him out, Hunt’s vision of the American Football League became a reality with his own Dallas Texans among its teams.
However, the NFL panicked at the idea that a rival league might drive up salaries and attract their fans so they tried to put Hunt out of business by starting another team in Dallas. After recruiting another Texas oil millionaire named Clint Murchison to pay the bills, the Cowboys were born and the war to win the hearts and minds of football fans of Dallas was on.
The two teams fought in courts and the media but oddly enough never on the football field. The Texans managed to win more games in those early years and Hunt was a tireless promoter who worked every angle he could think of to attract fans, but the Cowboys had the backing of the established league as well as the Dallas business community. After winning an AFL championship but playing in a mostly empty stadium, Hunt cut a deal to take his team to Kansas City. He lost the battle but won the war since the league he formed went on to merge with the NFL and become the version of pro football that has gone on to dominate the American sports landscape.
As a Kansas City area resident and Chiefs fan (And do not take that as an invitation to mention that last play-off collapse against the Colts. I’m still not speaking about it.) I was pretty familiar with most of this story, and I’d watched a fun documentary series about the old AFL vs. NFL war called Full Color Football that had tons of interesting history and anecdotes about how the two leagues fought over players and territory. I was hoping that this book would provide more juicy tidbits about the fight to become Dallas’s team, but I’d heard most of this already.
While it gives a decent overview of the situation and the key figures involved, the book spends far more time providing blow by blow recaps of action in individual games the Texans and Cowboys played rather than detailing the war between them off the field. Several lawsuits are mentioned, but few details are provided. Plus, while some effort is made to show how some players and fans hated the other team, there’s no real heat between Hunt and Murchison. In fact, the two men liked each other and would often engage in pranks like Hunt jumping out of a birthday cake at a party to surprise his rival. In the end this feels less like a war than a civilized battle for market share that eventually found both teams thriving.
Another thing that had me scratching my head is that a lot of focus is put on Abner Haynes, a terrific running back for the Texans who was an early AFL superstar. We get a lot of material about what he thought about the situation as well as many accounts of spectacular plays he made on the field. Then he suddenly vanishes from the book, only to get the casual revelation in one sentence that the Chiefs cut him after the 1964 season. It’s really odd that so much time was spent on him as a player, but then have almost nothing about his leaving or what he did after that.
If you don’t know much about the AFL/NFL or Texans/Cowboys feud and are interested in it, then this is an entertaining book, but if you already know the basic story and are looking for something more in depth, it won’t tell you much you didn’t already know.
Pat Peoples has been confined to the ‘bad place’, but he finally gets to leave and live with his parents until he can get back on his feet. Pat’s mainPat Peoples has been confined to the ‘bad place’, but he finally gets to leave and live with his parents until he can get back on his feet. Pat’s main goal is to continue on a path of self-improvement including working on being kinder, strenuous exercise and reading books so he'll be a better husband when he finally sees his beloved wife Nikki again after their ‘apart time’.
Pat likes being home, but his moody father refuses to talk to him unless the Philadelphia Eagles win. Plus, his mother and his therapist are both encouraging him to spend time with Tiffany, a very strange woman who was recently widowed. It’s almost like no one understands that he’s still married to Nikki. As he works on becoming a better person, Pat gets to attend the Eagles home games with his brother and makes a lot of friends at the pre-game tailgates. As they start winning, the superstitious fans think that Pat is good luck, and even his father becomes much friendlier. As long as he can control his temper and continues to work hard, Pat is sure that he’ll get the kind of happy ending you see in the movies.
Since this is about a guy whose life has been shattered and he doesn’t even realize it, you’d think Pat’s story would be incredibly sad. Instead, the bittersweet humor that Mathew Quick has laced the book with makes it a pleasure to read instead of a depressing slog. Pat’s devotion to the cause of reuniting with Nikki can be simultaneously infuriating and endearing, and while we only get his usually slightly bewildered view point, you can also completely understand how those around him are feeling.
Quick also does a particularly nice job of detailing the highs and lows of sports fandom. Pat bonds with his brother and becomes part of a community while tailgating. The team provides him a link to his emotionally distant and stubborn father. Even his therapist is a rabid Eagle’s fan, and this helps Pat to trust and like him. While the games provide great entertainment and instant connections, there‘s also a big downside to them. An ugly incident with a rival team’s fan in the parking lot illustrates how sports fans can be merciless and brutal. (It also shows that wearing a rival team’s jersey to a game in Philly is a spectacularly bad idea.) Pat’s dad is so wrapped up in the Eagles that a loss can make him even harder to live with. When Pat makes a commitment to Tiffany that causes him to miss some games, everyone begins blaming him for the losses.
(However, I couldn’t be too critical of the characters being superstitious because I wore the same red t-shirt on game day when the Kansas City Chiefs started their season with 9 straight wins. After they lost 3 in a row, I decided the shirt had run out of mojo and switched to a gold one. Since they won the next 2 games, it’s obvious that the shirt I wear has a profound impact on the team.)
I also very much enjoyed the movie version of this. Even though it’s a fairly faithful adaptation there are also several big differences that made reading the novel surprising in several ways so this is one of those incidents where it’s well worth checking out both versions. ...more
This story is kinda like if Coach Eric Taylor on Friday Night Lights and Nick Stefanos from the crime novels by George Pellecanos were brothers who haThis story is kinda like if Coach Eric Taylor on Friday Night Lights and Nick Stefanos from the crime novels by George Pellecanos were brothers who had been pulled apart by a family tragedy and now faced a killer.
Actually, I’m just being glib and that’s not doing justice to this book. Let’s start over:
In 1989, Adam Austin was a high school football star and his younger brother Kent looked to follow in his footsteps. As their team was in the middle of a season that would culminate in a state championship, Adam blew off giving their sister Marie a ride home one night, and that moment of teenage irresponsibility had horrible consequences when Marie was abducted and murdered.
Over 20 years pass. Adam now works as a bail-bondsmen with a private detective’s license, and Kent became the football coach of their old high school team. While Adam is a hard-drinker who spends his nights hunting down criminals who miss their court dates, Kent is a sober church going family man and community leader. Adam wallows in his guilt over Marie’s death by living in their childhood home and preserving her room exactly as it was when she died, but Kent tries to avoid any mention of his late sister. The two brothers have barely spoken in years after Adam became enraged at Kent for visiting their sister’s killer in prison and praying for the man.
As Kent prepares his undefeated football team for the play-offs, a young woman visits Adam with a request that he track down her father who was just released from prison. Adam makes a quick hundred bucks without missing his next beer, but this act results in a brutal murder that again links the two brothers in tragedy and rocks their small Ohio town.
I thought this one would be a straight up thriller, and while it has a few of those elements, it’s really more like Lehane’s Mystic River in that it’s about the impact to a family and a community caused by a crime, and all the ways that people try to make their peace with that. It’s the different lives and attitudes of the two brothers that really make this book hum as it examines how they dealt with their grief and loss, and how they both took it to extremes that are sadly understandable.
Adam thinks that Kent committed an unforgivable offense to Marie’s memory by offering forgiveness to her killer without understanding that it was how Kent was able to get some closure. Kent believes that Adam’s refusal to move on is just a stubborn decision on his part, but he can’t see that Adam has never found a way to forgive himself for her death.
Koryta does an excellent job of making both of these men sympathetic. Instead of the caricature of a screaming football coach who only cares about winning, Kent is a thoughtful and kind man who truly believes that he’s helping teenagers become upstanding adults, and he holds himself to extremely high standards. Adam seems like a cynical and lazy drunk at the beginning, but he’s also a determined man who refuses to let anything stand in the way of dealing with what he feels responsible for.
And oddly enough, this is also a book about sports. Kent sometimes feels silly at worrying about football games in the midst of everything going on, but he also knows that carrying on is the only way to get through something terrible. He struggles to strike a balance between letting his players know what’s really important versus what a championship would do for their struggling small town. Football is one thing that Adam and Kent can still talk about, and as Adam notes, sometimes it makes you feel better to just to hit the shit out of somebody.
I got to meet Michael Koryta recently, and I wish I had read this before that because I would have heaped praise on him. (Read about that encounter at Shelf Inflicted.) ...more
It’s probably a bad idea for the US military to allow the troops overseas to get the news from back home. I have this fear that someday the service meIt’s probably a bad idea for the US military to allow the troops overseas to get the news from back home. I have this fear that someday the service men and women in places like Iraq and Afghanistan will finally snap after seeing the people they’ve pledged to defend are less interested in what they’re doing than TV reality shows and celebrity gossip. If the military ever decides that the pack of assholes back in America isn’t worth fighting and dying for, we could find all that hardware aiming back at us someday. I really wouldn’t blame them.
Billy Lynn is a young soldier who was serving in Iraq with Bravo squad. After Bravo got into a hellacious firefight with a band of insurgents that was captured on camera by an embedded Fox News crew, the members of Bravo become national heroes. To capitalize on their popularity, the Bush administration has Bravo brought back to the US and sent them on a ‘Victory Tour’ (Which just so happens to run through critical electoral states for the next election.) to drum up support for the war.
The Victory Tour culminates at a Thanksgiving Day pro football game at Texas Stadium in which Bravo is supposed to play a part in the half-time show. While Billy and the other Bravo members have been enjoying some of the perks of being heroes on tour, it also means putting up with the people who want to prove their support of the troops by fawning over them as well as being used as PR props by anyone with an agenda like the owner of the Cowboys.* Bravo would also like to sign a film deal before they have to deploy back to Iraq in a few days so they can at least get a nice payday for their efforts, but the producer they’re working with is having problems getting Hollywood interested in a war movie set in Iraq.
(*Ben Fountain avoids a lawsuit by creating a fictional asshole owner of the Cowboys instead of naming Jerry Jones, the actual asshole owner of the Cowboys.)
I started noting passages I wanted to quote in this review, but I hit a point where I was finding something on every page so I gave up on that plan. There was so much about this one that I loved, that I don’t really know where to start.
Young Billy Lynn is one of the best and most sympathetic characters I’ve read in a long while. He’s a 19-year-old virgin who can’t legally drink, but he’s gone to war and had more experience with death than most would have in a lifetime. Billy is nervous when dealing with the older, wealthier good old boys who want to glad-hand Bravo at the game, and he has a somewhat naive belief that there is someone wiser than him that can explain all the feelings that combat and the aftermath have stirred in him. However, he also has a grunt's hyper-awareness of hypocrisy and bullshit.
As Bravo endures a long day of being used as props for photo ops and a half-time show, Billy’s musings and observations about the people and events in the stadium showcase a society that will spend billions on sports but pays it’s soldiers a pittance while patting themselves on the back for the way they support the troops by offering them applause and trinkets before sending them back to war.
That’s a powerful point, but what makes this so great is that the message is delivered so deftly and without the heavy handed political left or right wing political manifesto that is part of almost any writing done about these kinds of subjects. It’s also funny and absolutely nails many things that are great and ridiculous about America.
It’s only March, but I think I may have an early winner for Best Book I Read This Year....more
Myron Bolitar makes me feel lazy and unmotivated for being a simple cube farmer. He could have been a basketball star but blew out his knee after beinMyron Bolitar makes me feel lazy and unmotivated for being a simple cube farmer. He could have been a basketball star but blew out his knee after being drafted by the Celtics. His consolation prize was a law degree from Harvard and then a job doing some shady stuff as some kind of secret government spook. After he got tired of that, he decided to be a sports agent and started his own business.
Myron’s got a new client in rising tennis star Duane Richwood who is tearing through the US Open. Valerie Simpson is another tennis player whose career was derailed after she had an emotional breakdown, but she is now looking to resume playing and wants Myron to represent her. As Myron watches Duane play a match at the Open, Valerie is shot and killed in the middle of a crowd at the event. When the cops find a link between Duane and Valerie, Myron starts investigating to protect one client and avenge another.
This is only the second book by Coben I’ve read, but I intend to check out more of his stuff in the near future. Like the first book, Deal Breaker, the idea of a former government bad ass turned sports agent who gets embroiled in mysteries could be ridiculous, but Coben keeps it grounded enough to work as well as delivering a well-plotted and entertaining story. He’s also got a knack for incorporating some humor while having the crime portions remain deadly serious.
There were a couple of problems with this one though. I figured out the central piece of the mystery fairly early, and it seemed kind of obvious to me so having Myron not figure it out until the end was a little frustrating. There’s also an obnoxious asshole cop character that is right out of central casting and is completely unbelievable.
What took this from being a fun but flawed 3 stars was Myron’s buddy Windsor Horne Lockwood III. Win may be a preppy who looks like Niles Crane, but he ranks right up there with the likes of Hawk and Joe Pike in the Bad Ass Friend department. Win is a stone cold killer with a casual cynicism that I greatly appreciated, and I was a bit disappointed that he wasn’t a bigger part of the book at first. However, while he may not appear on many pages, Win ends up being a critical part of the story in several disturbing and surprising ways that elevated this to a 4 star read. ...more
Having the misfortune of being a Kansas City Royals fan, I thought I’d had any interest in baseball beaten out of me by season after season of humiliaHaving the misfortune of being a Kansas City Royals fan, I thought I’d had any interest in baseball beaten out of me by season after season of humiliation. Plus, the endless debate about the unfairness of large market vs. small market baseball had made my eyes glaze over years ago so I didn’t pay much attention to the Moneyball story until the movie came out last year and caught my interest enough to finally check this out.
Despite being a small market team and outspent by tens of millions of dollars by clubs like the Yankees, the Oakland A’s managed to be extremely competitive from 1999 through 2006. They did this when their general manager Billy Beane embraced a new type of baseball statistics called sabermetrics that had been championed by a stat head from Kansas named Bill James.
James had pored over box scores and started seriously questioning the traditional ways of measuring the performance of players with his initially self-published digests that eventually became must reads for hardcore baseball nerdlingers. As the digital age made mountains of baseball stats available on-line, fans with a mathematical frame of mind (And there are a lot of them.) started coming up with ways of looking at the data that called the old ways of evaluating players into question.
Beane had plenty of reason to distrust the old way of scouting since he had once been identified as a can’t-miss prospect who ended up quitting as a player to take a job in the front office after his career flamed out. By coming up with new ways to grade performance and ignoring things that other teams deemed flaws like being overweight or having a peculiar throwing motion, the A’s went after low dollar high-impact players who made them one of the winningest teams with the lowest payroll in baseball.
The sport has always had a weird intersection of nerd and jock, and this story illustrates that dynamic very well as Beane and his staff decided to trust the numbers rather than conventional wisdom. The conflict between the two worlds is a fascinating story, and the brash Beane makes a great focal point.
It’s a great book not just for sports fans, but for anyone who likes stories about people trying to shake up an established way of doing things. And if you’re a math geek or have a thing for hard nosed business deals, there’s a lot to like here. By framing the story in terms of the people involved, Lewis keeps it relatable in human terms and not just a dry recitation of on base percentages.
The movie is also extremely well done and entertaining (Hence the Oscar nomination for Best Picture.),but the Aaron Sorkin screenplay vastly simplifies the story and Hollywoodizes it to an extreme degree. Still, it’s a great flick for anyone who has a soft spot for stories about underdogs. ...more
Yet another 2011 Bouchercon story about how Kemper-Met-An-Author….
Christa Faust was one of the speakers at a panel on sex and violence that was being Yet another 2011 Bouchercon story about how Kemper-Met-An-Author….
Christa Faust was one of the speakers at a panel on sex and violence that was being held later than any other discussions, but there’d been some kind of snafu and the room wasn’t set up ahead of time. It was Miss Faust who took charge, ascertained that somebody had screwed the pooch, led the effort to commandeer another room, and essentially had moved everyone down the hall and got the whole thing going within about ten minutes. And she did all of this while wearing a dress tight enough to kill most mortals. After watching her in action, I was pretty sure that if zombies had burst into the convention hall, Miss Faust would have whipped off her high heels to use as skull impaling weapons against the undead and led us all to safety.
The next day, she walked up while I was chatting with another author to see if he’d be attending her next panel about fighting sports like boxing and crime fiction. When I asked if there would be actual fighting at the panel, she launched into an imitation of a professional wrestler ranting about all the ways she was going to destroy everyone in the room.
Later on, Dan had accompanied me to get some books signed by her, and she admired the Hard Case Crime shirt he was wearing while showing off her own HCC tattoo, and then she did a hilarious bit about how she’d been forbidden from using the profanity she wanted in the Supernatural tie-in novel she’d done.
In other words, Christa Faust is the shit.
And by the way, she writes a pretty mean hard boiled crime novel, too.
In her previous HCC book Money Shot we met Angel Dare, a retired porn star who was now an agent for others in the adult entertainment industry. Poor Angel got mixed up with some very bad people, and the ensuing events left her life in ruins. Now she’s hiding out and working in a diner under an assumed name in Arizona. Angel gets a shock when a former boyfriend and fellow veteran of the porn industry Thick Vic walks in. A few minutes later she gets an even bigger surprise when a gunfight breaks out in the diner.
Angel ends up on the run with Vic’s son Cody as they flee from a local gangster. Cody is a mixed martial arts fighter whose big break is waiting for him in Vegas in a few days if he can make it there alive. Along with Cody’s trainer, a punch drunk former fighter, Angel will have to confront some very dangerous men as well as her own past.
Angel is a unique character to base a crime novel around. As a former porn star, she wields her body as an asset to be used, and seemingly doesn’t let trading sex for favors bother her. However, she also uses the sex as a way of distancing herself from her own emotions. She’s tough and capable, but she’s not an ass kicking super woman.
The plot doesn’t end up anywhere near where I thought it was going, and I was genuinely surprised by the ending. Christa Faust doesn’t pull her punches, and Angel’s story here is as painful and brutal as a swift jab to the nose....more
Treasure of the Rubbermaids 13: Are You Ready For Some Football Under the Friday Night Lights On Any Given Sunday?
The on-going discoveries of pricelesTreasure of the Rubbermaids 13: Are You Ready For Some Football Under the Friday Night Lights On Any Given Sunday?
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containers previously stored and forgotten at my parent’s house and untouched for almost 20 years. Thanks to my father dumping them back on me, I now spend my spare time unearthing lost treasures from their plastic depths.
This book had crossed my mind several times over the past year before and during the NFL lockout while I heard many fans moan and wail about how it was greedy players ruining the game. I always disagreed with that, and Peter Gent’s novel has been a big influence on my thinking about it for years. You’ve got about 1600 guys on earth capable of playing at that level who generate tens of billion of dollars for a handful of owners, so it only seemed fair that they get a decent slice of that pie. While you’ll sometimes hear grumblings about ‘billionaires versus millionaires’, some people seem to think the players should go out and wreck their bodies for minimum wage and simple love of the game. Anyone who has romantic notions along those lines should read this book immediately.
Gent died recently and that gave me the nudge to dig this out of the Rubbermaids and reread it. He played for the Dallas Cowboys for several years in the late ‘60s, and this fictionalized account of a player named Phil Elliot was obviously modeled on his time there. Elliot is a talented receiver, but he’s injury prone. After just a few years in the league, he already needs huge doses of painkillers and hours in the therapy room just to get on the practice field.
Even more than his injuries, Elliot’s resistance to blindly follow the team’s mandates has gotten him in the doghouse with his coach and general manager. As a quasi-hippie with a love of marijuana and a habit of making smart ass comments, many of his fellow teammates don’t like him much either. Playing for the princely sum of $16,000 a year and routinely screwed over by the corporate side of the team, Elliot realizes he’s not a person to management, he’s a piece of equipment that’s rapidly in need of replacement. If he wasn’t a good drinking buddy and favorite receiver of the team’s star quarterback, he’d already have been cut or traded. Elliot copes with the pain and stress by indulging in heavy drinking, drug abuse and casual sex all while marveling at the hypocrisy and self-deception practiced by the team’s coaches and management. Phil‘s humor and compassion make a stark counter point to the serious violent world he works in.
Despite the injuries, the team’s bullshit and the insanely violent nature of many of his teammates, Elliot still loves playing and lives for those pure moments of athletic achievement where he can make a tough catch and fears the day when he won’t be able to compete any more.
You don’t have to be a football fan to enjoy this book. The broader theme of an individual being crushed by a system that can’t stand individuality is universal. Phil could have been a coal miner or a cop or a teacher or a cube farmer, and his plight would still be just as familiar to anyone who has held a job where the people in charge piss down your back and then insist that you say it’s raining. But for those interested in the football aspect of it, you’ll get the impression that nothing much has changed since it’s publication almost 40 years ago.
Oh, and the movie version with Nick Nolte is pretty faithful to the book although the novel ends on a much darker note than the film....more
I’ve played just enough golf to appreciate what a difficult and evil game it is, and while I’ll sometimes watch the last round of a major championshipI’ve played just enough golf to appreciate what a difficult and evil game it is, and while I’ll sometimes watch the last round of a major championship, I don‘t spend a lot of time following it. Thanks to middle-age and sand volleyball leaving me with one good shoulder and one good knee, I think it’s unlikely that I’ll be playing 18 holes again anytime soon. Yet I bought a book about improving your golf swing.
Actually, I wanted the book because Tom Watson is one of the sports gods of Kansas City and buying this got me a ticket to see a Q&A session with Watson hosted by my favorite sports writer, Joe Posnanski. (Check out his book about Buck O’Neil The Soul of Baseball if you’re looking for something inspiring.)
Watson was one of the leading players in the world in the late ‘70s into the ‘80s. He won eight majors and dozens of other tournaments, and he shocked the world by very nearly winning a British Open at the age of 60 a couple of years ago.
Pro golfers fascinate me because it is such a tricky bitch of game and it takes an insane amount of control over one’s body to play at that level. Looking through this book and listening to Watson talk about the game was an interesting experience because it was a chance to watch someone who was once the best in the world at what he did break down his craft, and you don’t get many opportunities to see something like that.
During the Q&A, Watson stood up several times to demonstrate something in a swing he was talking about, and he showed the issues he had with his own swing that ended his dominance of the sport. He could also mimic other golfers and do accurate imitations of their good and bad habits. It was eye opening to realize the level of detail that Watson could see in a swing and how he could tell you exactly how each small change in the mechanics would impact the flight of the ball.
Watson also showed flashes of the competitive nature it takes to rise to the top of a sport. He expressed outright scorn and contempt for ranking lists saying that the only thing that made him respect another golfer was the ability to win consistently. Posnanski told a funny story about Watson’s competitive streak. They both sponsor youth baseball teams in KC for inner city children. Posnanski had stopped by Watson’s office to discuss something else with him, and they had a very pleasant chat. As he was leaving, Posananski casually remarked that their two teams were playing each other that week. Without hesitating a moment and being completely serious, Watson said, “We will DESTROY you!”
And how’s the book? Looks good to me, but I was a shitty golfer so take that with a grain of salt. Every page features large photos with graphics of Watson describing the do’s and don’ts. It’s comprehensive with dozens of pages just about the proper grip alone. It’s also got a nifty feature with tags for smart phones on some pages so that you can download an app to watch videos of Watson’s demonstrations. Watson said it’s focused towards helping break the bad habits of all the hackers he’s seen so I think it’d be helpful to any of us who have regularly watched a ball slice into the woods while using all our best profanity....more
I’ve been aware of Harlan Coben’s series of crime/mystery novels starring a sports agent named Myron Bolitar for some time but never read one because I’ve been aware of Harlan Coben’s series of crime/mystery novels starring a sports agent named Myron Bolitar for some time but never read one because I thought it’d be something like Jerry Maguire crossed with Murder She Wrote. I figured Myron would always be tripping over dead baseball players killed by pitching machines or discovering the bodies of basketball players hanging from rims.
What I should have realized sooner is that modern sports can offer a great backdrop for a gritty mystery. You’ve got an industry with huge amounts of money involved with famous personalities always getting caught up in gambling scandals, dog fighting, rape accusations, domestic violence, drug abuse, manslaughter and the occasional player shooting someone else or themselves so sports is the perfect environment to set a crime novel.
Myron was once a college basketball star with Duke (Boo Duke!) before a knee injury ruined his chances for a pro career. Myron went on to get a law degree from Harvard, worked as some kind of secret undercover agent for the FBI, and now has taken up being a sports agent. One assumes that he’ll also be a cowboy and an astronaut someday, too.
Christian Steele is Myron’s biggest client. A talented, clean cut quarterback who looks to be the next Aaron Rodgers, Steele is every agent’s dream. Myron is in the midst of negotiations with a tough and unscrupulous NFL owner over Christian’s first contract when the player gets a shocking piece of mail. Christian’s girlfriend, Kathy, had disappeared a year ago from their college campus and everyone assumes the worst. Christian receives a pornographic magazine with a nude photo of Kathy in a phone sex ad.
Fearing scandal or some kind of set up that will ruin Christian’s NFL chances, Myron begins checking into the ad and what happened to Kathy. Things are complicated because Myron’s ex-girlfriend, Jessica, was Kathy’s sister, and their father was recently murdered. If that isn’t enough, Myron has to deal with another sleazy agent and his gangster pal who are trying to strong arm one of his clients into leaving Myron for them.
Fortunately, like most heroes of a crime series, Myron has a bad ass friend he can count on for help. Windsor ‘Win’ Horne Lockwood III seems like the kind of preppy who would make Niles Crane look tough, but Win is Myron’s former FBI partner and a ruthless killer when need be. Plus, he uses his financial business to advise Myron’s clients so he can get your portfolio squared away in between ass kickings.
The whole premise for this is obviously far fetched, but Corben gets it grounded enough to make the story enjoyable. Myron is a likeable smart-ass with a wry sense of humor, and Win is hilarious. I also liked how Corben built up the idea that Myron’s skills as a lawyer and former detective are also valuable as a sports agent and vice versa. In one scene, Myron deals with a brutal negotiation with the NFL owner and in another he’s working out a deal with a vicious gangster. There’s precious little difference between the two.
This book also has a big time warp element since it was written in 1995. Like Michael Connelly’s The Poet, I found some of the things like car phones and print pornography to be almost quaint now. But the biggest laugh is that Corben named the team that Christian is going to play pro football for the Titans. I assumed this meant the Tennessee Titans, but then the story describes their facilities at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. It was only then that I realized that the Tennessee Titans were still the Houston Oilers in 1995, and that Corben had invented a fictional team at the time but later that name would be used for real. It was a tad confusing for a minute.
There’s a few too many coincidence for my taste, and I could have lived without the backstory between Myron and Jessica, but overall I still enjoyed this one. The sports stuff gives it a fresh angle, but you don’t have to be a big sports fan to enjoy it. Plus, I thought Win was a great addition to the ranks of bad ass friends in crime fiction like Hawk, Mick Ballou, Bubba Rogowski, Mouse, Joe Pike, etc. I’ll be revisiting Myron’s series again sometime soon. ...more
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