My Turn At Bat by Ted Williams with John Underwood

My Turn At Bat: The Story of My Life by Ted Williams with John Underwood

I'm not an avid reader of non fiction but I absolutely loved this book. While a lot of non fiction tends to lose my interest as they tend to sound like textbooks going from one point or isolated story to another without any sense of narrative transition, this book has the tone of a conversation over drinks. Ted Williams was a far more interesting man than I would have thought before reading this book. Having grown up in Massachusetts and being born in 1977 I would always hear about how Ted Williams was the greatest batter to ever play for the Sox but had no idea of all the animosity between him the sports writers and the jerk big mouth fans. He clearly took all the crappy things people said about him to heart. Too bad too, as great as he was on the field and what he did in the service should have been more than enough for him to be beloved no matter how prickly his personality. Again having grown up in Mass I more than understand how big of an ignorant bunch of Aholes there are floating around so I'm unfortunately not surprised with how he was treated. I also love that he got mad about the personal attacks in the press, good for him for defending himself & holding a grudge when someone attacks him from the protection of the newsroom. I also love how he is both humble, cocky and self aware all at the same time it's refreshing to read about his brutally honest descriptions of fair & unfair situations. I also think that his descriptions of his love for milk shakes & fishing are down right endearing.

While it's hard to narrow them down, some of my favorite quotes coming out of the book are;

(Talking about how it's not as hard to hit 0.400 as people think) "Now it seems that Don Mattingly & Wade Boggs have a shot and I wish one of them would do it so people would quit bugging me about it and I can fish in peace."

"I know I am just one of a multitude of athletes who have gone to see kids in hospitals, to see sick kids. Peole in the public eye are always asked to do these things and they do them gladly. I don't think you should get a Silver Star for it. It's something you should do without having people rave over you."

2 great ones from his hall of fame induction speech;

"Ballplayers are not born great. They're not born great hitters or pitchers or managers, and luck isn't the big factor. No one has come up with a substitute for hard work. I've never met a great player who didn't have to work harder at learning to play ball than anything else he ever did."

and

"I hope that someday Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro players who are not here only because they weren't given the chance"

How great is that? Here is arguably one of the guys with the reputation for being one of the biggest aholes of the game and he's advocating how bullshit discrimination is at the HOF speech in July of 1966 because it's the right thing to do. I'm a fan of this guy.

Movie Review- The Avengers

I didn't make it to opening weekend for The Avengers but I was close as I just saw it on Monday night. I got a bit of a late start and while I wasn't planning on watching it in 3D I was too late for the standard showing. The movie itself was great and just what I was hoping for. It started off setting up a crisis that caused Nick Fury to get the team together then lots of inter squad drama and a good old fashion good v evil with the earth's survival hanging in the balance to finish it off. All the actors were great, the established actors from the recent movies set the bar high with Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Chris Hemsworth as Thor & Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury but I also really liked the job the new guys did with Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill & especially Mark Ruffalo as Dr. Bruce Banner. The writing was also good with a fun plot that seemed to focus on entertainment rather than character development. Which is good because these characters are all well developed for the nerds and not really needed for non nerds. I don't need to watch Hulk coming to terms with why he's full of rage, I want him to smash things really hard! My only complaint is that I hate dark scenes in 3D as I have a hard time seeing it clearly and it tends to hurt my eyes. I don't have the same issue with brighter scenes with strong color contrast but there were a lot of scenes where I got a little pissed as I couldn't see exactly what was going on. Luckily the huge action sequence at the end was during the day so I could see it fine. My only non legitimate complaint is that the guy sitting behind me was a loud tool bag.

All in all my recommendation is to go see it and kick off summer with a fun movie!


PS. Scarlett Johansson & Cobie Smulders have pretty eyes

Suddenly, A Knock On The Door by Etgar Keret

Suddenly, A Knock On The Door by Etgar Keret was crazy, crazy good, complete game changer! I've read a few of these stories before in different publications or anthologies and have always been blown away by his work. His stories are typically short, funny & whimsical. The first story I ever read of Etgar's that's included in this book is What, Of This Goldfish, Would You Wish and it was so good & different that I stopped reading, put the book down just to let it linger with me a while longer. Now that I think about it, the authors I've found in the last few years who I absolutely love, quite a few of them have a certain amount of fantasy in their work. The likes of Karen Russell, Steven Millhauser, Tea Obreht, Rebecca Makkai & Etgar Keret strike me as being linked by their originality, humor and refusal to stay within logical bounds. I'm a fairly positive person and when I read I'm drawn to stories like the ones in this book as they contrast sharply with all the sad, depressing fiction out there. Not to say I don't like sad stories, that walking alcoholic wet blanket Raymond Carver is ridiculously amazing for example, some of Lorrie Moore's best stories are crushingly sad and this book has some sad stories mixed in as well but overall the whimsicality set the tone of the book for me. One of the most endearing stories in the book was how the main character always keeps his pockets bulging with anything he thinks he might need not to blow his chance at love with any ordinary looking stranger who has such an enchanting smile that she takes your breath away.

For people who love audio books MacMillian has an audio version of the book available and the list of who reads is a true testament to Keret's genius. Stories are read by Ira Glass, Dave Eggers, Nicole Krauss, George Saunders, Miranda July, Stanley Tucci, Michael Chabon, Rick Moody, Nathan Englander and more. I'm just an opinionated readers but good lord that's a list of who's effin awesome at reading if I've ever seen one! It's available directly from MacMillian for a good price here (intelligently, no one's offered me any money to post the link);

http://us.macmillan.com/book.aspx?isbn=9781427226945

Etgar's magic holds no bounds and in my opinion should be considered one of the masters of his craft.

A Feast For Crows by George R.R. Martin

After what feels like forever I finally finished A Feast For Crows by George R.R. Martin. Not because it's insanely long but I've been picking away at it since March reading other books and doing other things mixed in. Without trying to ruin anything this book deals with half of the characters/situations and I guess the 5th book deals with the other half running parallel from a timeline perspective. Overall I liked this one a little less than the previous books as it seemed like there was a little less action. It centered more on characters and less on these huge action/battle sequences. It also added a lot of characters from another area that they hadn't deal with a lot and it took a while to really get a grip on who's who. Plus for some random reason he introduces 3 insanely bad ass female characters right at the beginning and then never goes back to them. I'm guessing they'll come back up in later books but who knows.

All in all well worth reading as the series is unbelievably good.

Best American Short Stories 1991

This is the first book I've finished in a while. I've had a lot going on and haven't been reading much lately. I've been reading a fair amount of short stories in The New Yorker but I've watched a lot of hockey and baseball lately. This book had some amazing stories but I've been reading the book for so long it's hard to do a good review. I can honestly say that each story was really well written & interesting. Some of my favorites were by Lorrie Moore, Leonard Michaels, Alice Monroe & Rick Bass but honestly they were all great.

Loved the book and so glad I bought all the B.A.S.S. from 1990 to current.

Zoetrope : All-Story Spring 2012

I just subscribed to Zoetrope and this is the first issue. Last issue I was disappointed with the stories bu this one was amazing again. It included 3 new stories by Bennett Sims, Jim Shepard & Rajesh Parameswaran, a story by Ingmar Bergman about a film & included art from Wayne White.

The Bookcase by Bennett Sims
This is a story about a man who tells his favorite party story on This American Life and he ends up looking like a huge d bag. Great story and I'm a fan of Ira Glass in any form fictional, non fictional or cartoon.


Cretan Love Song, 1600 B.C. by Jim Shepard
Short little story about a family when the volcanic island of Thera blows up. There is a brief period between the blowing up and the destruction hitting the main character and this is when the entire story takes place.


On the Banks of Table River (Planet Lucina, Andromeda Galaxy, A.D. 2319) by Rajesh Parameswaran
Nice little piece of science fiction. A little bit of alien coming of age and a little bit of horror.


Cries and Whispers by Ingmar Bergman
I liked this story a lot. Ingmar Bergman wrote and directed this 1972 movie and this is basically a concept piece and not part of the screen play or fully finished short story. I enjoyed the parts he wrote about how certain things should feel or give the impression of as much as the story itself.


Wayne White's art
I wasn't aware that I was familiar with Mr. White's work but the blurb about him said that he was the set designer for Pee Wee's Big House. After looking at his art I'm not surprised, he's zany and I have no idea what to think of any of his paintings. They all have huge words in the paintings usually out of some bright, varying colors.