I finished Portobello this week and to my surprise, everything turned out satisfactorily for the people who met on Portobello street in London. Well, not all the people. A couple of them were killed (one innocent, one guilty), but their killer went to prison, so at least that part turned out well, for the reader, anyway. The rest did manage to redeem themselves in the end, to the extent that they were no longer unattractive, just humanly flawed. So I did enjoy the book and recommend it highly.
From Portobello I turned to non-fiction once more, choosing a volume of short pieces on sports, collected under the title The Best American Sports Writing, 2010. This is an edition in the series, The Best American Sports Writing, which comes out yearly and prints the best stories (fiction and non-fiction) that have sports as their main subject and were published the year before in magazines and newspapers of the U.S. or Canada. Each year a large selection is narrowed down by the series editor, and then around 25 of those are chosen for that year's volume by a guest editor, who is always a sports writer of some repute.
That means that the stories in the volume I'm reading came out in 2009 and cover a wide range of sports, from boxing to baseball, from cycling to football. I've read six of the 26 so far, and they've all been well written. And I've learned a lot that I didn't know: Jose Canseco is really a dirtbag; an obscure Central Washington softball player is revered for having helped an opponent who seriously injured her knee complete a homerun she would have otherwise lost (see the video here); Muhammad Ali was in 50 fights and some of those men he fought are still around to tell the tale; football players at all levels take many more serious hits to the head than most people realize; the man who was the first American to race in the Tour de France was convicted of child molesting; Greg LeMond is really a nice guy.
What's interesting about these Best American . . . series is the particular angle the guest editor brings to them. Each year there's a different collection with a different perspective. I haven't read enough of the sports series or this particular collection to say yet what the perspective is for 2010. But maybe when I'm done I will.
What's nice about the stories is that they're all fairly up-to-date and beautifully written. You can't go wrong with that. The only criticism I have of the collection is that there's no way to tell whether a story is fiction or non-fiction. They could at least say "short story" in the table of contents or something, but they don't.
Other Best American series are: Comics, Essays, Mystery Stories, Nonrequired Reading, Science and Nature Writing, Short Stories, and Travel Writing. I have one of the Science and Nature series, one of the Essays series, and many of the Short Stories series. I must say that so far I'm enjoying the Sports series much more than I did the Short Stories. That may be because good sports writing is evaluated differently than short story writing. By that I mean that a certain style seems to be prized in short stories (when evaluated by short story writers) that is not my favorite--a kind of cool, cynical style that can be at times depressing. The style of writing in sports stories is more journalistic and seems mostly celebratory--of the people and the excellence they strive for--and therefore upbeat.
But I have a ways to go with this book--twenty more stories, to be exact. I'll let you know how I feel about them as I read.
See you next time!
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Portobello: A Street of Destiny
I finished Sky of Stone this week, and it all turned out alright. But I won't spoil it for those of you who might want to read it. I highly recommend it!
I've started on Portobello, a recently published novel by Ruth Rendell, a very prolific writer of mysteries and other fiction. She's a British writer, and her characters tend to be from the working class or the middle class. There's always an element of what our politicians like to call "class warfare" that's central to the plot. The British are well versed in class struggle, having dealt with it for most of their nation's existence. We inherited it from them, but we like to think that somehow we rose above it when we split from them. And those of us who don't have to confront it every day believe that if they just don't speak of it that it will go away.
But Ruth Rendell has a way of rubbing our noses in it, to the point that some of her characters are quite unlikable and unattractive. But despite that, Rendell keeps me reading to find out what's going to happen to them. I guess I'm hoping they will surprise me with a quality that redeems them in the end.
Portobello is the name of a street where the classes meet--it's on the edge of a nice neighborhood, but is also a place where petty criminals can be found. The novel brings together a variety of people who come from different backgrounds and whose paths cross, quite by accident. There's an ominous tone to the action as the disparate threads draw together. Something bad is going to happen--or so it seems. I'll find out before long, as I'm about two-thirds of the way through.
I'll let you know next time how things turn out for these unattractive denizens of 21st century London.
I've started on Portobello, a recently published novel by Ruth Rendell, a very prolific writer of mysteries and other fiction. She's a British writer, and her characters tend to be from the working class or the middle class. There's always an element of what our politicians like to call "class warfare" that's central to the plot. The British are well versed in class struggle, having dealt with it for most of their nation's existence. We inherited it from them, but we like to think that somehow we rose above it when we split from them. And those of us who don't have to confront it every day believe that if they just don't speak of it that it will go away.
But Ruth Rendell has a way of rubbing our noses in it, to the point that some of her characters are quite unlikable and unattractive. But despite that, Rendell keeps me reading to find out what's going to happen to them. I guess I'm hoping they will surprise me with a quality that redeems them in the end.
Portobello is the name of a street where the classes meet--it's on the edge of a nice neighborhood, but is also a place where petty criminals can be found. The novel brings together a variety of people who come from different backgrounds and whose paths cross, quite by accident. There's an ominous tone to the action as the disparate threads draw together. Something bad is going to happen--or so it seems. I'll find out before long, as I'm about two-thirds of the way through.
I'll let you know next time how things turn out for these unattractive denizens of 21st century London.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Best Memoir I've Read So Far: Sky of Stone
I've thoroughly enjoyed reading Homer Hickam's memoir, Sky of Stone. What a great writer he is! He makes a work of non-fiction fascinating with all the story elements he employs. In this coming-of-age tale of a young man's summer working in a coal mine, Hickam has managed to include action, suspense, mystery, romance, humor, history and social issues.
This is a wonderful book! It's the third in a series of memoirs about Hickam's youth. I haven't read the other two, but I did see the movie based on the first book, October Sky, which was very well done. All three books were well received, as was the movie.
From this book, I'm learning a lot about what it was like to live in a West Virginia coal town in 1961, at the height of the cold war and America's industrial might. I'm also learning about Homer Hickam--especially how well he writes.
I'm getting close to the end now, where all the questions about what happened in the mine and who was to blame for the explosion will be answered, no doubt to my satisfaction. I won't tell any more than that because I'm hoping you all will read it!
I would like to read some of his other books in the future, but for the moment, I don't own any. So once I finish this, I'll be choosing another neglected volume from my collection. Stay tuned!
This is a wonderful book! It's the third in a series of memoirs about Hickam's youth. I haven't read the other two, but I did see the movie based on the first book, October Sky, which was very well done. All three books were well received, as was the movie.
From this book, I'm learning a lot about what it was like to live in a West Virginia coal town in 1961, at the height of the cold war and America's industrial might. I'm also learning about Homer Hickam--especially how well he writes.
I'm getting close to the end now, where all the questions about what happened in the mine and who was to blame for the explosion will be answered, no doubt to my satisfaction. I won't tell any more than that because I'm hoping you all will read it!
I would like to read some of his other books in the future, but for the moment, I don't own any. So once I finish this, I'll be choosing another neglected volume from my collection. Stay tuned!
Saturday, January 7, 2012
History, Sports, and Evotourism: Magazine Week III
This week was magazine week, so I read parts of a few different magazines. One was Sports Illustrated, the year-end double issue (December 12) that features the stories of their two Sportspeople of the Year awardees: Mike Krzyzewski and Pat Summitt, both college basketball coaches. That feature was very interesting. I learned a lot about these two people (including how to pronounce Coach K's name) that convinced me they are both truly worthy of the award; their lives and careers are exemplary and their stories just what we needed after a year of disheartening sports scandals.
Another interesting article in the same SI issue profiled Alex Kline, a 17-year old college basketball scout, who is apparently a prodigy in that field, having started with it at the age of 14. He's not being paid for his work, but he is certainly being paid attention to by college coaches and the many people who follow his Twitter, Skype, and Facebook posts. It was a fascinating story!
Also in that issue was a story about Hmong high school football players (to borrow from Shakespeare, though they be but little, they are fierce!), and an article by famous sports photographer Walter Iooss Jr. discussing his work. Both were worth reading.
In the Summer 2011 issue of Colonial Williamsburg (the Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation), there was a very interesting story about the continuing excavation of Jamestown settlement in Virginia. I also read a story about the Civil War Battle of Williamsburg. I had not even known there was such a battle, so I enjoyed learning how the townspeople dealt with having the Yankees take over their town (after a fairly short fight).
Another magazine I read part of was the latest issue of Smithsonian. It featured a new series called Evotourism, where different locations around the world showing some aspect of evolution are discussed as tourist destinations. What a great idea! I wish I could go to some of the places they point out. In that issue also I found a story about art and Gertrude Stein in Paris and an enlightening article about Roger Williams (who established a colony in Rhode Island) and his insistence on separating church and state, a new (and disturbing) idea at that time.
There was one fascinating fact I gleaned from one of Smithsonian's short pieces at the front of the magazine: woodpeckers' heads are protected from repetitive, high-impact pecking by "spongy spots in the skull, along with tissues of different sizes in the upper and lower beak" (5) that absorb the shock. Who knew?
This was a fun week of catching up on my magazines. Next week it's back to books, this time a non-fiction memoir I've had on my shelf for a while: Sky of Stone, by Homer Hickam.
Until then, happy reading!
Another interesting article in the same SI issue profiled Alex Kline, a 17-year old college basketball scout, who is apparently a prodigy in that field, having started with it at the age of 14. He's not being paid for his work, but he is certainly being paid attention to by college coaches and the many people who follow his Twitter, Skype, and Facebook posts. It was a fascinating story!
Also in that issue was a story about Hmong high school football players (to borrow from Shakespeare, though they be but little, they are fierce!), and an article by famous sports photographer Walter Iooss Jr. discussing his work. Both were worth reading.
In the Summer 2011 issue of Colonial Williamsburg (the Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation), there was a very interesting story about the continuing excavation of Jamestown settlement in Virginia. I also read a story about the Civil War Battle of Williamsburg. I had not even known there was such a battle, so I enjoyed learning how the townspeople dealt with having the Yankees take over their town (after a fairly short fight).
Another magazine I read part of was the latest issue of Smithsonian. It featured a new series called Evotourism, where different locations around the world showing some aspect of evolution are discussed as tourist destinations. What a great idea! I wish I could go to some of the places they point out. In that issue also I found a story about art and Gertrude Stein in Paris and an enlightening article about Roger Williams (who established a colony in Rhode Island) and his insistence on separating church and state, a new (and disturbing) idea at that time.
There was one fascinating fact I gleaned from one of Smithsonian's short pieces at the front of the magazine: woodpeckers' heads are protected from repetitive, high-impact pecking by "spongy spots in the skull, along with tissues of different sizes in the upper and lower beak" (5) that absorb the shock. Who knew?
This was a fun week of catching up on my magazines. Next week it's back to books, this time a non-fiction memoir I've had on my shelf for a while: Sky of Stone, by Homer Hickam.
Until then, happy reading!
Monday, January 2, 2012
Two Best-Selling Mysteries in One Week!
This week I was able to finish two novels: The Litigators, by John Grisham, and Kill Alex Cross, by James Patterson. The Litigators was enjoyable, though it isn't really a mystery of the type Grisham is known for. Kill Alex Cross is a standard mystery/thriller with a couple of interesting twists at the end. Both were fast, entertaining reads.
The Litigators taught me a lot about class action suits, especially those involving claims of harm caused by medications. Grisham brings us a flawed attorney in this one--in fact, three flawed personal injury lawyers with ethical issues, substance abuse problems, and questionable motives. The character who ends up being the main protagonist, though, is a good but inexperienced lawyer who decides to move from a highly paid corporate position to practice with the two barely successful ambulance-chasing attorneys as they decide to take on a giant pharmaceutical corporation over an allegedly harmful drug, mostly for the big payday they see at the end. When they combine with a big-time class-action attorney, lots of interesting consequences ensue. There's more than one suit being filed in the book, though, and more than one ending. All were satisfying.
I like Grisham--he can make any legal subject interesting. What was especially educational for me is learning what the plaintiffs have to go through during the suit--interviews, doctor appointments, depositions, and then if the case isn't settled out of court, testimony at trial. I can see it all taking up quite a bit of time, and if there's no money at the end, it's all wasted time and probably lost income. Of course, the lawyers promise big paydays to everyone, but I think at the end of some of these big suits, even those with a settlement, there may be very little for each individual plaintiff, whereas the lawyers still cash in. Of course, if they lose, the plaintiffs are better off than the attorneys who must absorb the loss of money they paid up front. Tort law can be very complex (though the media tries hard to oversimplify it), and the process of bringing suit to recover damages from harm done by others--though it could use some reform--is a process more people ought to understand and appreciate, especially since the right to sue is one of our most important freedoms. The Litigators helps with that understanding and I recommend it highly.
James Patterson's Kill Alex Cross is more conventional in its aims and methods, but there is an interesting structure to the novel. There are two crimes, seemingly related, that must be investigated and solved, as well as crimes yet to be committed that must be prevented, all within a very short amount of time (of course!). So it's a very fast paced book, with lots of action and suspense. I like Patterson, but he's not one of my favorites, mostly because his characters seem a little flat. Even Alex Cross is a bit shallow, despite his flaws. In fact, everybody is just a tad too macho and steely for my taste (even the women), but then that's the hard-boiled detective genre, I guess. Some writers are better at transcending it than others; Patterson's not one of them. He's wildly prolific, though, and (I'm sure) terribly rich. And he does write entertaining novels. What more can a reader ask?
This week is magazine week, so I'm setting aside books for now. But when I resume, I will take up a memoir by Homer Hickam, Sky of Stone, the third in his series about growing up in Coalwood, West Virginia. The first was October Sky, made into a very good movie; the second was called The Coalwood Way. I've already started it, and have learned something about what it was like to live in a town owned by the coal company who employed its residents. Apparently, in order to live there, you had to work for the coal company, and if you stopped working for them, you had to leave immediately, no matter the reason for losing your job. Even if you died in a mining accident, your survivors had pack up and find another place to live as soon as possible. Pretty cold, eh? Hickam's a very good writer; I'm looking forward to reading his story.
See you next week!
The Litigators taught me a lot about class action suits, especially those involving claims of harm caused by medications. Grisham brings us a flawed attorney in this one--in fact, three flawed personal injury lawyers with ethical issues, substance abuse problems, and questionable motives. The character who ends up being the main protagonist, though, is a good but inexperienced lawyer who decides to move from a highly paid corporate position to practice with the two barely successful ambulance-chasing attorneys as they decide to take on a giant pharmaceutical corporation over an allegedly harmful drug, mostly for the big payday they see at the end. When they combine with a big-time class-action attorney, lots of interesting consequences ensue. There's more than one suit being filed in the book, though, and more than one ending. All were satisfying.
I like Grisham--he can make any legal subject interesting. What was especially educational for me is learning what the plaintiffs have to go through during the suit--interviews, doctor appointments, depositions, and then if the case isn't settled out of court, testimony at trial. I can see it all taking up quite a bit of time, and if there's no money at the end, it's all wasted time and probably lost income. Of course, the lawyers promise big paydays to everyone, but I think at the end of some of these big suits, even those with a settlement, there may be very little for each individual plaintiff, whereas the lawyers still cash in. Of course, if they lose, the plaintiffs are better off than the attorneys who must absorb the loss of money they paid up front. Tort law can be very complex (though the media tries hard to oversimplify it), and the process of bringing suit to recover damages from harm done by others--though it could use some reform--is a process more people ought to understand and appreciate, especially since the right to sue is one of our most important freedoms. The Litigators helps with that understanding and I recommend it highly.
James Patterson's Kill Alex Cross is more conventional in its aims and methods, but there is an interesting structure to the novel. There are two crimes, seemingly related, that must be investigated and solved, as well as crimes yet to be committed that must be prevented, all within a very short amount of time (of course!). So it's a very fast paced book, with lots of action and suspense. I like Patterson, but he's not one of my favorites, mostly because his characters seem a little flat. Even Alex Cross is a bit shallow, despite his flaws. In fact, everybody is just a tad too macho and steely for my taste (even the women), but then that's the hard-boiled detective genre, I guess. Some writers are better at transcending it than others; Patterson's not one of them. He's wildly prolific, though, and (I'm sure) terribly rich. And he does write entertaining novels. What more can a reader ask?
This week is magazine week, so I'm setting aside books for now. But when I resume, I will take up a memoir by Homer Hickam, Sky of Stone, the third in his series about growing up in Coalwood, West Virginia. The first was October Sky, made into a very good movie; the second was called The Coalwood Way. I've already started it, and have learned something about what it was like to live in a town owned by the coal company who employed its residents. Apparently, in order to live there, you had to work for the coal company, and if you stopped working for them, you had to leave immediately, no matter the reason for losing your job. Even if you died in a mining accident, your survivors had pack up and find another place to live as soon as possible. Pretty cold, eh? Hickam's a very good writer; I'm looking forward to reading his story.
See you next week!
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