#34– That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo

First, understand that I love Richard Russo’s novels. He writes about small town life, twistedly human families, and the inner working of human relationships. That Old Cape Magic comes from the same mold.

Russo’s hero is a middle-aged teacher, trying to confront his parents’ failed marriage and deaths, his daughter’s coming of age and marriage, the breakdown of his own marriage, and his own mortality. The relationship between the hero and his parents and his in-laws is at the center of the novel. As is often the case, strong emotions get mixed and overlapped, and everything falls apart.

I don’t think this is Russo’s best work. I’d reserve that for “Empire Falls”, and frankly, I think I liked “Bridge of Sighs” better as a chronicle of middle-aged understanding. That said, I’ve never read any of his books that failed to resonante with me on some level, and Cape is no different. It’s worth reading, but if you haven’t read Russo, you might not want to start here.

Joe

#33- Limitations by Scott Turow

I saw Scott Turow speak at the annual Kentucky Bar Convention and became very interested in this book from the short segment which was shared at that event. Fortunately, I saw it for $4 at Waldenbooks and picked up a copy.

Turow tells the story of an appellate judge who takes on a very interesting rape case. The case troubles him because it reminds him of something from his own life. The central issues is a statute of limitations question– essentially, how long after a person’s crime are they still subject to prosecution? In the meanwhile, the judge has acquired a stalker, who is moving closer and closer, and is trying to decide whether to retire or run for re-election.

Limitations is an interesting book and a very quick read. As the title implies, the central issue is human limitation. Who are judges to judge, and how can the rule of law, arbitrary though it is, serve the best ends possible. As a lawyer, I generally avoid reading about lawyers, but was not sorry to have picked this up. I would recommend this one.

Joe

#32 Rich Tradition by Tom Leach

I picked this book up at Kroger, which is something of an oddity for me. Leach, the play-by-play voice of the Wildcats, chronicles the uptick in the fortunes of UK football, as led by Rich Brooks. The book was an interesting review of the last six years (wow, this really is his 7th year) of the life and (usually) hard times of UK football. While Brooks seems destined like Moses to not journey to the promised land of football greatness, he has done a fair job of setting the table for those to follow.

Extra props to Leach for a game-by-game review of all six seasons, including the first three, which I generally spent trying to forget that there was UK football, much less that I cared about it. The book is enjoyable, if a bit expensive for a paperback.

Joe

#31- Meat Market by Bruce Feldman

Not a chronicle of slaughterhouses or pornography, this book is about college football recruiting.

Feldman spent a year following Ed Orgeron, then coach of the Ole Miss Rebels, through the gamut of recruiting experiences. We go from Orgeron challenging his players to a fight, to him watching illegal rooster fights, to him recruiting some of the guys who have made Ole Miss a great team over the last two years. Of course, Orgeron didn’t survive to see that happen. Not literally. He’s alive, he’s just a defensive line coach at Tennessee. When his players didn’t deliver overnight, Coach O got canned. Probably best for everybody, as he certainly was not a master strategist or tactitian. That said, Orgeron is/was a tireless recruiter, and a guy who seems to love the thrill of the hunt as much as the victory of the catch.

This was a very interesting book. It chronicled the insane inner working of a college football program, the immaturity of young athletes, and the pressure cooker of SEC football. It told all about a Cajun wildman and his quest for glory, and the bedraggled assistant coaches, who sounded about as confused as I am on a normal day in my work. I liked it, and would recommend this one. It’s a quick read and is rather educational.

Joe

#30- The Crowd Sounds Happy by Nicholas Dawidoff

This book was a memoir about a boy growing up with an insane father and a love of baseball. Frankly, it sounded like a great book. I was excited to read it. The early chapters were poignant and impressive.

And it all fell apart. Sorry about the old man, Nick, but seriously, you were one whiny kid. Maybe my perspective was ruined by the birth of my daughter just before I started the book, but I came away mostly feeling sorry for Dawidoff’s Mom. She kept his less than financially prosperous family taken care of, and appears only to have been rewarded with a pissy attitude and a recitation of her foibles. Seriously, if Dawidoff had griped one more time about (more or less) not having designer clothes in season, I’d have sold back the book, invested in plane fare, gone and smacked him in his overly-sensitive head.

I haven’t learned much in life, but here are two things I’m sure of: 1) Parenting is hard work, 2) Growing up is hard work. Cut the ‘rents some slack. They’re not perfect, you’re not perfect, I’m not perfect. At some point, life is less about the crappy hand that we’re dealt than it is what we can do with it. Dawidoff’s Dad was crazy. His Mom was overworked. I understand his attitude toward the first, but cut the Mom a break. I would.

Joe

Book #29- Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs

This is the first A.B. book I’ve read (after birth). Fortunately, Chuck Klosterman is basically an irrepressable smart ass who writes about pop culture in a funny, entertaining way. The book is a collection of essays. Some get a little ponderous (like his essay on Vanilla Sky), some are more than a little absurd (Saved by the Bell), and some are so dead on that you can’t help but agree (country music).

Klosterman is probably not for everybody. That said, if you’re between 25-40, have a strong interest in the pop culture of the ’70s and ’80s, and/or have strong opinions about things, you’d probably dig it. I think there’s something in here to offend the sensibilities of everybody, but also something that we can all remember and agree with. Plus, it does have a fun title.

Joe

Book #28- The Only Game in Town

The Only Game in Town is an oral history of 1930s-1940s baseball, edited by former commissioner Fay Vincent. The book talks with around a dozen players– some great, the other good, about their reminiscences of major league baseball. The high point of the book is unquestionably the chapter about Buck O’Neil. O’Neil, who sadly passed away recently, was a great American. An African-American, deprived of the chance to ever play major league baseball, Buck O’Neil instead spent his life as the great ambassador of the Negro Leagues. He was, as they say, strong enough not to hate. Instead, he was a delight– funny, poignant, always worth listening to, whether on Ken Burns’s excellent “Baseball” series or in this book.

The other players have some good stories as well. Bob Feller talks about his World War II experiences, Dom DiMaggio speaks about living in the shadow of his brother, Joe, and generally, everybody has a Ted Williams story or three.

If you’re a baseball fan, it’s a nice read. If you’re not, search of Buck O’Neil’s autobiography or Joe Posnanski’s “The Soul of Baseball”, a story of his year traveling with and chronicling an aging O’Neil. Those are worth reading for anybody and everybody. It’s beecause they are stories about adversity and life, and baseball sometimes just happens to pop up. On the other hand, this book is mostly about baseball.

Book 27 and the life of an expecting father

27. Land of Lincoln by Andrew Ferguson

Hands down, Ferguson’s book is one of the best I’ve read yet in my quest for 50 new books in 2009. He writes, not about the nuts and bolts facts of Lincoln, but more about what Lincoln means to people, and more specifically, what he is redefined into by people.

Ferguson goes to a conference of skeptics tearing down Lincoln as well as a convention of Lincoln impersonators. He talks with memorabilia collectors who have searched out pieces of hair and bits of blood from the assination of honest Abe and historians who build museums around Lincoln. He even goes on a vacation along the Lincoln Trail with his own family. His results are searching, insightful, funny and honest.

Surprise, surprise. Everybody has an agenda. Men who hate their wives (including Carnegie, the original self-help king) see him as a saint for dealing with that shrew Mary Todd, southern sympathizers think Abe was a closet racist and a nincompoop, historians see him in the bland politically correct terms of their modern historical movement, Ferguson’s children apparently think he was pretty boring. Ferguson tells us more about ourselves and our age than he does about Lincoln; history, he seems to say, is transfigured into a mirror, and whoever looks inside sees something that looks a lot like them.

But the book is a lot more fun than I’m letting on. He tells stories like that of a Lincoln historian and his wife in the 1930s or 1940s, trying to visit Mary Todd’s old Lexington, KY home. Now, it’s a nice museum. Then, it was a working whorehouse. I also could have laughed for hours at his depictions of the “humor” within the Lincoln impersonators convention– samples included an Abe plopping down in a booth for lunch and exclaiming, “Normally, I would try to avoid a Booth.” and tales of looking for a particular Abe at the convention and having another impersonator describe him as “the tall fellow, with the beard and the top hat.”

I really, really liked this book. There are a million books about that “What?” of Lincoln’s life. This is one about the “Why?” of his legacy. I recommend it.

T minus six days on the baby expected date. Starting to look like a late arrival could well be a possibility.

Also, I made my own hot chicken tenders yesterday. I nearly lit my internal organs ablaze. I’ll try to take pictures next time (of the chicken, not of my organs. Not another colonoscopy post!)

Joe

Book 26- Bragging Rights by Richard Ernsberger

Who would read a nine year old book chronicling a season of SEC football? Well, I would.

Ernsberger, who wrote for Newsweek, decided to chronicle the 1999 SEC football season. He has good stories of gameday atmosphere, recruiting chicanery, boosters manipulating whole universities to try to win another football game or two, and coaches eating, sleeping and drinking football.

Ernsberger’s book does a nice job of chronicling the energy that goes in to making SEC football the best college football in the nation, year in and year out. The 1999 season ended with Alabama winning the SEC championship. After the next season, Mike Dubose, their coach, was fired. It’s up and down and back up again, and it’s a game played by serious players, coaches, and boosters.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to find this book, but if you stumble on it for a couple dollars like I did, you might get some cheap entertainment.

Onward toward Fi’ty

25. The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw

Brokaw’s book works from his basic thesis that the WWII era generation was a truly great group of people, and attempts to ask how and why. He profiles dozens of people, from men and women who are backbones of their small communities to famous politicians who got their starts in that era. It is humbling and interesting to read many of the stories. Brokaw could be accused of nostalgia, but he does try to admit that the era wasn’t all heroic sacrifice, but that in many places and instances, women and minorities were still treated as second or third class citizens. Of course, Brokaw’s spin on this is that it is because of the heroes of that era that things have changed to whatever extent they have.

I enjoyed the book, even if Brokaw’s attempts to gentle up the conversatism of his subjects seemed to be pandering. Of course, George Bush didn’t think WWII soldiers needed any special advantages. It’s good that he could move the silver spoon in his mouth long enough to tell Brokaw so. Of course, people who are 70-80 years old view marriage as sacred and inviolate and are uncomfortable with divorce. Refusing to acknowledge the problem is real rather than always being a result of whiny self-centered people doesn’t make it go away.

I enjoyed the book, and I think I would have enjoyed it more if Brokaw let his subjects speak more, and editorialized less himself. I’m working on another book right now that does a similar thing to much better effect, and I’ll be discussing that shortly.

T minus 28 days (till due date) on my daughter!

Joe