Read for Cannonball Read Bingo: Throwback Thursday For the second time this summer, I re-read a middle school classic that stuck with me. The Giver was as good as I remembered. This one, The Outsiders, was a little less so but still maintained its charm. The negatives though are small ones and they don’t outweigh the the book’s empathy and understanding. SE Hinton wrote this when she was 16 so she gets how teenagers talk. There’s no patronizing or condescension the way there often is when adults write […]
Italian Football (Soccer/Calcio): Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction
Read for Cannonball Read Bingo: place I want to visit. It’s tough to know where to begin describing this book because it is a wild 528-page ride. John Foot is a competent writer and a quality historian but he’s been tasked with a subject that’s overwhelming: the story of soccer in Italy. Foot does a great job at covering the history of Italy as a backdrop to its nation’s favorite sport and I learned a lot. I had no idea how young of a nation […]
I’m Freaking Indifferent Towards Science
Read for CBR10 Bingo: Genre I don’t typically read. I feel like Ron Swanson in his famous commercial for Parks and Recreation… “Read ‘What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions.’ Or do not. I am not a beggar. (checks watch) Review over.” Ach, but I have 100 words left to go. Okay, here’s the deal. I’m not a science guy. I’m not anti-science. Though I am a Christian, I subscribe to the theory of evolution. Climate change keeps me awake at night. But I […]
Who Spies on the Spies?
Read for the CBR Bingo: Cover The challenge of Alan Moore’s legendary graphic novel Watchmen is how to make the superheroes in that universe accountable when they do things outside of their government’s control. This leads to the famous tagline “Who watches the Watchmen?” Such a lens is turned on espionage in Le Carré’s famed novel which, despite being in print for almost fifty years, was given a new cover for its recent round of Penguin re-publishing that will instantly be seen as iconic. I am middle-brow […]
Marlowe: The Dark Knight Returns
Read for CBR10 Bingo: Published in 2018 I was recently at a book signing for author Megan Abbott. A week before the signing, she published an article on trying to understand her love for Raymond Chandler’s work in the age of #MeToo. Chandler’s most famous detective, Private Investigator Philip Marlowe, is written as a notorious misogynist who is often quite brutal to women. I was fortunate to talk to Abbott a little about her piece and we both agreed that while Chandler has his problems, […]
The Ghosts of Anti-Semitism Haunt Holland Through Soccer
Read for Cannonball Run Bingo. Category: White Whale. The World Cup was on this past summer and anytime I see it, I’m inclined to read more books about soccer. I’m a big sports fan but my interest in soccer really only begun about 12 years ago when, bored out of my mind for the summer of 2006, I watched the World Cup fastidiously. Soccer is now perhaps my fourth favorite sport after baseball, football, and basketball and I’m wearing a New York City FC shirt […]