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On the Bookshelf

The last five books I’ve read:

“Nothing’s Sacred,” by Lewis Black. The first book by the great comic and “Daily Show” ranter isn’t just another collection of recycled standup material. Black tells stories from throughout his childhood and formative years as a comedian, and while the stories are charming and funny, Black’s style ultimately isn’t as well-suited to the page as it is to verbal expression. His colleague Jon Stewart has the same problem; I didn’t think either of his books were all that great either.

“Faithful,” by Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King. While it lags in parts, the two novelists’ diary-style telling of the 2004 Boston Red Sox season rings true all over for any true fan, and by the time memorable moments are again and again revisited, “Faithful” has clearly emerged as the definitive book about Boston’s historic championship run (at least, until we get the Simmons version). A pleasant surprise is just how delightfully vulgar King is- he refers at one point to the “oh-god-my-ass-is-on-fire Boston sports media," which sounds like something Jeff Jarvis would write.

“To Be the Man,” by Ric Flair (with Keith Elliot Greenberg). The autobiography of the Minneapolis native and pro wrestling legend is a must-read for anyone who’s followed wrestling in the past 25 years. “The Nature Boy”- still an active wrestler at the age of 55- dishes all sorts of backstage tales, giving the behind-the-scenes versions of wrestling storylines from the ‘80s and ‘90s that I still remember like they were yesterday. “To Be the Man” is up there with Mick Foley’s two autobiographies as the best books ever written about wrestling.

“Shanda: The Making and Breaking of a Self-Loathing Jew,” by Neal Karlen. Seeing as how Karlen is a Jewish guy from St. Louis Park, MN, who later moved to New York to be a writer and has long struggled with the idea of what exactly it means to be a Jew, to say that I related personally to his book would be quite an understatement. In what could a be called a Semitic version of Tony Hendra’s “Father Joe,” Karlen combats the drifting of his personal Judaism by studying with a local Hasidic rabbi, and ultimately tutors a girl for her Bat Mitzvah. A humorous and touching story.

“The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty,” by Buster Olney. I’ve never been the biggest fan of Olney’s baseball writing, and have to question the wisdom of anyone who would leave the New York Times to write for ESPN.com. But I did enjoy his deconstruction of the 1996-2001 New York Yankees dynasty, as the former Yankees beat reporter cuts back and forth between Game 7 of the 2001 World Series and various other stories from the team’s past. It’s a very unorganized and sometimes hard-to-follow structure, and it appears at times that Olney felt he had to include every interesting anecdote he ever learned as a reporter, even if it has nothing to do with the subject at hand (a tangent about Dan Duquette comes to mind particularly).
But the central thesis of the book- the Yankees have gotten away from the values of their original dynasty, and that's why it's over- is one with which I wholeheartedly agree. And most of the stories are gems, my favorite being the tale that former Yanks manager Stump Merrill once cleaned his teeth with a game-worn sock in front of several reporters. And interestingly, the former Times writer thanks Joseph Lelyveld and Bill Keller, but NOT Howell Raines. Hmm.

Up next: Ross Douthat’s “Privilege,” Jon Avlon’s “Independent Nation,” and David T. Hardy and Jason Clark’s “Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man.” And probably a re-reading of “Hitchhiker’s Guide” at some point as well.

Posted by Stephen Silver at June 1, 2005 08:20 PM