One Hour to Read

I seem to have a thing lately for history books that were written at the time. This study of the 1960 election was published in 1961, and I love how I can read about Kennedy and Nixon without having to think about Kennedy's assassination, Watergate, Vietnam, or anything else that was to happen later. This book is so firmly in the moment, and that's what great about it.

It's something of a classic. Whereas now it seems that just about every reporter came out with an instant book about the 2008 election, this was really the first behind the scenes account of a political campaign. It helps that 1960's race was one of the most interesting in history. White had access to all the major players, well, except Nixon himself, but that's understandable. Nixon didn't seem to be talking to anyone.

Speaking of Nixon, from reading this, it doesn't really seem that Kennedy won this election as much as Nixon lost it. Throughout the book, Nixon comes across almost as a sympathetic figure. He never recovered from an infected knee for which he spent part of the fall in the hospital. He forced himself to campaign in all fifty states in an insane schedule that practically destroyed him. That's part of the reason he looked so sick in the debates with Kennedy. He also refused to consult with his staff much of the time, insisting on making decisions without consulting anyone. Some of the odd decisions he made seem to have  doomed his campaign, and it feels surprising that he came so close to winning. 

White talks a lot about each candidate's all-purpose speech, the one each trotted out at every ordinary campaign stop. Every day, Kennedy would talk about how he wanted to get the country moving again and Nixon would talk about Peace and Prosperity. It made me realize how much tougher it is for candidates these days. With so many of their events on cable news, there must be an incredible pressure to come up with new material each time. 

I remember watching Obama and Clinton's primary speeches every week in 2008 and feeling bored because they were saying the same thing each week. Well, they're supposed to do that. Back then, the candidates seemed more like stand-up comedians, using the same trusted material each night and only gradually working in new material.

I skipped enough stories in this book that I think I barely read it. I'm not entirely sure that I should even mention it here. Thurber is funny, but this just doesn't seem as interesting a collection as "My World and Welcome to It." The humor here just seems a bit too topical to remain funny today. Some funny pieces are scattered within here, but overall it was a little disappointing.

If you're ever inclined to read 70 pages about radio soap operas, however, this then is the book for you.

This was quite a gripping espionage story. This isn't one of my normal genres, but the novel was very entertaining.

My mother read it before me. She liked it too, but she had one complaint. She didn't like what the author Noel Hynd (who I know) said about Vladimir Putin. She didn't think he was necessarily wrong. However, she felt that he shouldn't have said such bad things about Putin, because Putin might come after him. I tried to explain to my mother that Putin probably has many other enemies on his list ahead of Noel Hynd. Personally, I think Noel's quite safe, but she's still worried.

For her sake, I won't say anything bad about Putin here. Such a nice man, that Putin. 

Of course, J.D. Salinger died a few weeks back, and like so many others I decided to reread one of his books. I remember liking "Franny and Zooey" a lot back in my impressionable college years. This time, though, I wasn't so thrilled by it. In fact, I almost didn't finish it.

The book is wildly uneven, which is really the worst thing a book can be. If it had been awful throughout, I would have never bothered finishing it. In this case, it had the occasional moment of greatness amidst all the tedium, just enough that I kept reading.

The first story "Franny" is really quite good, but "Zooey," the much longer story, could be infuriating at times. For example, it took about 80 pages, just for Zooey to make his way out of the bathroom. First, there was a letter from his brother to read in the tub, then a long conversation with his mother, and eventually some shaving.

And if you're ever wondering what was in a typical 1955 medicine cabinet, just turn to pages 75 and 76, where there is a 190-word sentence describing the contents of the Glass family medicine cabinet. (Note to self for Nanowrimo: Describing the contents of a medicine cabinet is a great way to pad your word total.)

At times, Salinger just seemed a little too clever and wordy for his own good. "The Catcher in the Rye" had many of the same problems, but there was also something magnificent about it. This book, though, just wasn't interesting enough for me to overlook the flaws. </speaking ill of the recently dead>

"Frankenstein" turned out to be a great novel, even though I almost bailed on it after the first hour. It doesn't really get going until page 28. Before that, we have a tedious author's introduction on how the story came about. Then, there's a preface. Then, there are a bunch of letters from some character who is definitely not Victor Frankenstein or the monster. And then finally, Frankenstein shows up and tells his tale.

I will say this about the monster: Man, does he have a good vocabulary. He's only been alive a few years when he starts talking to his creator, and he puts me to shame. Some words he used in his tale include: viands, recompense, imprecate, and scourge. He devours copies of Milton and Plutarch that he finds lying around. He may be a monster, but he is a monster of letters!

He's also grotesque, so grotesque that no one can look at him. The monster that we see in movies is ugly, but almost in a comical way. I found myself wishing I didn't have an image of Frankenstein's Monster in my head already when I read this. It felt like when you read a book that has been made into movie, and you can't help picturing the actor whenever reading about the character. (This can happen to me, even if I haven't seen the movie. For example, Freakin' Sean Penn almost ruined the book "All the King's Men," never mind the movie,  just because my copy had him on the cover.)

And so I wish I hadn't seen the monster before reading about him, and I found I envied his intellect more than his brute strength.

This is a very strange book to be reading while you have a head cold. It's about a lawyer who has episodes where he loses control of his legs. His legs will just carry him off on mammoth walks, and he's powerless to stop himself. This can happen at any time -- in the middle of the night, at the office, during a trial. He will walk for miles and miles, and then at the end of the walk he'll collapse wherever he is and sleep outside for hours.

Needless to say, this isn't conducive to a healthy life, a good marriage, a successful career, or pretty much anything else. As the book proceeds, the main character (as well as his wife) becomes a wreck. His body is ravished by the long walks. He suffers frost bite, loses fingers, and almost gets killed. He's also pretty much crazy by the last half.

In general, it was very odd to read this book about a man who can't control his legs from walking, when I really couldn't control my nose from running. The book had a very intense, feverish pace, and, well, I had a fever.

I loved Ferris' first book -- "Then We Came to the End" -- because it was funny. This one, not so funny. It's not exactly an uplifting comedy, but it's very well-written, and I couldn't put it down. I even liked it once I had recovered from the fever.

This is really a very enjoyable book, but I just have little to say about it. It's really just a series of short stories featuring the same character. Great book, relaxing to read, but I don't have much to say about it.

I Saw It on the Radio with the Boston Red Sox

Red Sox radio announcer Joe Castiglione seems like a really nice guy, so I feel bad saying this, but here goes: This is not a good book. In fact, as they say about movies, it's often so bad that it's good. It's just a weird little book that seems to be in desperate need of an editor.

Sure, he occasionally has some interesting things to say, but there are also long sections where he talks about his favorite restaurants in the cities he visits. (In Baltimore, he actually recommends a food court.) Granted, the book is chock-full of behind-the-scenes details, but those details are often about the hotels he stayed in while on the road and the food in the press boxes of stadium which sometimes don't exist anymore.

Here, for example, are the last two paragraphs of the book, in which he discusses his participation in the Hall of Fame exhibit for the 2004 Red Sox, surely an exciting day:
 

I was honored to cut the ribbon for the exhibit, which included Curt Schilling's bloody sock. That night, I stayed at the beautiful Otesaga Hotel on Lake Otesage, within walking distance of the Hall of Fame. I was one of eight guests. I had the Otesaga's great brunch the next morning, then drove onto Franklin Pierece for a class.

November. We are still basking in the glow of the series victory and the trophy's tour. I hope we can repeat it next year.

Okay, maybe he did have editors, because you just know that the first draft listed all eight of the other guests and what he had for brunch.

By the way, it may seem like I'm on a baseball kick lately, having finished this and the Simmons book this week, but I really started the Castiglione book way back in the summer. It just took me six months to get through it.
 

Yeah, pretty much.

How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation, With a Little Help from Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank and the 2004 Red Sox

In the approximately 421 Red Sox books that came out after they won the World Series in 2004, I somehow forgot about this one. That's too bad, because it's one of the best. For some reason, I instead read the horrible diary by Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan, a book that managed to be about the Red Sox winning the World Series for the first time in 86 years and yet was somehow boring. Before reading it, I didn't think that would have have even been possible.* 

Simmons, meanwhile, is not at all boring and also very funny. He's great at capturing the spirit of a fan. His columns are strangely much better to read in book form, if only because they don't seem quite so long. Online Simmons' columns seem so long that I get discouraged from reading them. I just don't have any patience reading online. But they were really just a few pages in a book. I think it will be much easier to read his columns in the future, if I think of them as chapters instead of columns.

And it's amazing to relive those games. The four-day stretch at the end of the Yankees series is something I will never experience again. There were so many ways that the whole thing could have ended in shambles, and yet they somehow still won.

Like many New Englanders, I made a lot of ridiculous purchases after the Red Sox won, including the 12-disc collector's edition of the 2004 World Series with all 7 ALCS games and all 4 World Series games. Of course, I've never had enough time to watch any of it, but I'm thinking now that I might pop a few of the games in.

* I also read Johnny Damon's "memoir," which was not my finest moment in reading.