Books

I suppose that if I'm going to maintain sections for movies, TV and baseball, I should make the pretense of devoting some attention to the written word, huh?

What I'm Reading Now:

This section will be divided into "reading" and "browsing"... the books I'm reading "all the way through" are in one group, and the ones I'm paging through in no particular order are in the other.

Reading:

Browsing: Win Shares, Bill James, and Clearing The Bases, Allen Barra.

The Win Shares book is the latest big sabermetric volume. Barra's book uses a lot of the same methods but is more traditionally written-- even though his views are sometimes anything but traditional, as you might know if you read his columns at salon.com.

What I'm Planning To Read... Someday:

This is the category where I place books I've gotten, but haven't gotten around to reading yet. I have fallen scandalously behind in getting to these titles...

Kitchen Confidential-- Anthony Bourdain: Gonzo Chef!

Big Trouble-- might be relevant for my course next semester...

The Beach-- someone recommended this... at least this one's not translated from French! (kidding)

Master Of The Senate-- Caro's latest hatchet j... I mean, narrative on the life of LBJ

The Last Days Of Disco-- Whit Stillman rules.

The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay-- maybe I'll get this read before the movie comes out (see above, About A Boy)

The Body Artist-- DeLillo. 'Nuff said.

Seabiscuit-- Horseys!

Empire Falls-- never read any of his other books, but I liked the movie of Nobody's Fool

Dewey Defeats Truman-- surprisingly, a novel, not a history.

And this just scratches the surface. Boy, I'm lazy!

My Virtual Bookshelf:

The bookshelf I'm going to build here exists nowhere else. My "real" books are either strewn about my room or packed in boxes somewhere. But, if I could organize myself sufficiently, my "main" bookshelf would consist of these titles.

(Think of this as the literary equivalent of the Desert Island Discs.)

5/30

My first additions would have to be the books I've always claimed to be my favorites:

The Great Gatsby

Underworld, Don DeLillo

The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara

The Celebrant, Eric Rolfe Greenberg

...and my latest addition to this main list has been Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. I'll stick with that for now.

But, the point of this is to keep adding titles that are favorites of mine for one reason or another-- because they're the best biographies or narrative histories or comedies or whatever. And more importantly, to explain why they're favorites. So, this section should keep growing, if I can remember to keep at it...