my mom suspected i was gay because i liked to read wodehouse in highschool

Since spring training started, I've been reading Bunts by George Will.

It's a collection of his columns on baseball from the mid 70s through the late 90s. This coincides nicely with the time when I was a pretty big baseball fan as a kid & young adult. Nice memories when he writes about players and topics from that era.

Not sure I knew this before, but he grew up in central Illinois and is a huge Cubs fan. So, a lot of these columns are "The Cubs are doomed again this year."

He's a very good writer, but his passion for the game and his team really comes through in those pieces.

I didn't like Wodehouse when I was in high school because I didn't believe people could behave that idiotically. Ten years later I had realized the truth.

Add to that Will's Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball. Analyzes the game by interviewing 4 people: Managing - Tony Larussa; hitting - Tony Gwynn; pitching - Orel Hershiser; defense - Cal Ripkin, Jr.

Funny story was he was going to use Frank Viola for pitching, but Viola's NY accent so grated on him that will went with Hershiser.

Yep, read that over the winter, was good. Bunts came after it, and contains a back-and-forth from some magazine between another writer and Will.

The first guy gave his analysis of Men at Work (disagreeing with Will's writing a lot), and then Will defended his choices. Pretty interesting.

Will writes about how he ended up on Hershiser as opposed to someone else that I can't remember now. Not Viola, he didn't tell that story. That's interesting though.

just gifted a copy of bobos in paradise, think i'll enjoy it a lot and will report back, especially how i loved fussell's class an unreasonable amount - class is a book i think every american should read

much like if you study film, it'll forever change the way you will watch movies, reading that book will forever impact the way you previously blindly interacted with large crowds

Just finished: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, a 2005 book by Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. This book is a biographical portrait of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and some of the men who served with him in his cabinet from 1861 to 1865. It also includes much personal information on the important men and woman that surrounded the President and his cabinet. Well written and researched, it is overall a great read and an intimate portrait of arguably our Greatest and most Important President.

If you liked this, CNN has been running a series on him recently. Maybe 7-8 episodes.

I was surprised that Kearns Goodwin wasn't one of the historians they talked to, I thought she was the acknowledged expert.

But, I've learned quite a bit of interesting stuff.

I'm reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders, the brilliant short story writer who I've liked since the mid 90s. Ostensibly this book is a way for normal non-MFA people readers like me to learn how he teaches writing up at Syracuse there, where he learned himself. I'm liking this quite a bit, he's going thru these old Russian short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy etc. and taking them apart to see how they work. I damn sure never want to try to write fiction, but this book is gonna help me understand what I read a little better. Plus it's very well-written (go figure!), and he has that appealing everyman vibe to his style that sits great with me.

....................

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad




an amazing but not easy to read book published in 1899

the most important thing about it is how it depicts the Europeans brutalization of the natives in the Congo

the Europeans have never really come clean about what they have done in Africa

Almost finished Motorworld by Jeremy Clarkson.

He's gone around to several countries to film the show, and writes about their cars/driving habits/motor sports. Pretty fun for fans.

Just started Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. It'll be beyond me, but I enjoy reading these sort of things and scraping off the little I do understand.

Of course, this is about the nature of reality, string theory, etc. He does a good job of opening it to the layman, but a lot will still be above me.

I thought that was about Vietnam!

The Lessons of History, by Will and Ariel Durant. I read this years ago but decided a re-read would be useful. And it was, very much so. Written ~1968 it really has much that is universal and very relevant about the human condition and how humanity acts, reacts, and organizes itself. The book has general and very relevant conclusions (as limited as they are) about humanity and the human condition. Highly recommended. A very illuminating read, whether you agree or not with the conclusions. There is also a guide to books mentioned in the text. Which is a very worthwhile reading list.

I've gotta come back and re-visit this one.

Read it in 10th grade AP English (where I'm sure it's still a staple), but I'd be impressed if anyone that age can really grasp the depth of the horrors that book dives into...I certainly couldn't at the time.

Finished Here Be Dragons which was fantastic and immediately jumped into Falls the Shadow. Really enjoyed this depiction of King John, since I knew so little of his reign and mostly only knew of him from his portrayals in things like Robin Hood or The Lion in Winter, when he's still young and immature. Really a fantastic supporting character in this story. The main characters were just as good. Sharon K Penman was such an amazing writer, really sad to see she's passed away.

I think you're probably joking..............but anyway

the movie Apocalypse Now was set in Vietnam during the war

the Director - Coppola - used the book Heart of Dakness which is set in colonial Africa - the Congo - to get themes for the movie

thanks for explaining the joke, it really made it better!



Klara and the Sun was typically good Ishiguro, but not great. However, near the very end he has a paragraph about loss that brought tears to my eyes.


An improvement over The Buried Giant, for sure, imo.

Re-reading Dibdin's Zen mysteries, up to number 4. They are just so good. Both as world-class murder mysteries and as humorous commentaries on Italy/culture.

.......................

favorite short stories - keep re-reading them:



Ward Number 6.............. by Anton Chekhov



in Czarist Russia a Doctor is in charge of a ward in a mental institution. he begins conversing with one of his patients who he finds very intelligent and interesting. the rest of the staff is watching this Doctor because this behavior is inappropriate. The Doctor himself is then committed to the institution because of this. Chekhov himself was a Doctor




https://nmi.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/1332.pdf





My Old Man..............by Ernest Hemingway




especially good if you love horse racing as I do. A son remembers his father, a jockey who was killed in a Steeplechase accident




https://cafelitt.ca/down/My%20old%20man.pdf

Oh man I love a good murder mystery and I love stories set in other countries

There's a short novel about this old, broken-down guy, in New York I think, who's supposed to be writing the Great American Novel, and indeed has written a couple of chapters that publishers may long ago have expressed mild interest in. At the end, we learn that all he's really doing now is rewriting those same chapters over and over, because he's finished, and God help us all.

What's it called?

Larry McMurtry has died.

I’m sorry to see him go. Although Carolyn See’s assessment, in The Washington Post, is no doubt an overstatement (“Lonesome Dove [is] considered by many to be our absolute greatest American novel—yes, better than Moby-Dick”), I do think it’s a tremendous achievement.

I was working in the Rice Library in 1962, when McMurtry had his first teaching stint there. He made a tremendous impression on me for the way he would regularly come up to the circulation desk with his infant son James in his arms: I'd never seen a father like that in Texas!

Later that year I went, with some of my friends, to the annual Skidmore College travelling book sale. They kept the book tables roped off until the opening and there was quite a rush forward when the ropes were finally dropped. Leading the pack was McMurtry, who moved rapidly from table to table as he filled the two boxes he'd brought with him. He was the best book-picker I've ever seen.

I like Larry McMurtry a lot, but Lonesome Dove is fan fiction.

Had no idea he has a new novel out, thanks for the heads up. I loved The Buried Giant, so can't wait.

Lonesome Dove is excellent.