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countkarnstein 's review for:
Quiet Hero: The Ken Ploen Story
by Roy Rosmus, Scott Taylor
I wasn't around during these amazing Blue Bomber teams in the 50's and 60's but love me my Blue Bombers and consider myself a student of the game and its history.
The book starts out great. Clearly focused on Kenny Ploen's playing career at Iowa and his path to the Rose Bowl. It heads over to his Blue Bomber career and provides a reasonably detailed account of his playing life.
If you want to read about his personal life and upbringing, be forewarned there is nothing here. You will be introduced to his wife and kids and grandchildren. His parents and siblings for a second. This is the biggest shame of this book. I was really looking forward to a more descriptive, fleshed out childhood story. His collegiate life along with at least some interesting personal stories that happened outside of football while he was a pro. Instead, at the end they summarize his personal life a bit. Mention a few jobs he's had over the years outside of playing ball. After that, this book seriously looses focus.
Quiet Hero all of a sudden becomes a public relations project for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. There is an inserted article thanking their old stadium and promoting their new one they planned on moving into in 2012. There are Blue Bomber and CFL 'timelines' that has nothing to do with Kenny Ploen. This book, in the closing sections of the book tries to become some kind of reference book for the history of the CFL which it should not be! This is supposed to be the biography of Kenny Ploen!
Anyhow, beggars can't be choosers. Its not like there are a plethora of books written about Mr. Ploen so I was more than happy to over look these issues I suppose. May I mention another pretty darned serious issue with this book? Editing. This small press publisher has such a nice looking coffee table book with cool photos and layout, but there are probably hundreds of typos, misspelled words, and/or other errors. One poor example of editing/writing is one sentence in the book: "He retired in ???" Can you believe this? It's obvious the writer put the question marks in the book intending to go back to insert the exact date perhaps after verifying some facts. However he never does! It's published and printed with a sentence like this! And that's just one error, like I said there are some on virtually every page.
Still, at least I got a good snapshot of Mr. Ploen. Hopefully he gets a better biographical treatment that isn't such PR fluff in the future. Until that time, fans like myself will just have to make do with this.
The book starts out great. Clearly focused on Kenny Ploen's playing career at Iowa and his path to the Rose Bowl. It heads over to his Blue Bomber career and provides a reasonably detailed account of his playing life.
If you want to read about his personal life and upbringing, be forewarned there is nothing here. You will be introduced to his wife and kids and grandchildren. His parents and siblings for a second. This is the biggest shame of this book. I was really looking forward to a more descriptive, fleshed out childhood story. His collegiate life along with at least some interesting personal stories that happened outside of football while he was a pro. Instead, at the end they summarize his personal life a bit. Mention a few jobs he's had over the years outside of playing ball. After that, this book seriously looses focus.
Quiet Hero all of a sudden becomes a public relations project for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. There is an inserted article thanking their old stadium and promoting their new one they planned on moving into in 2012. There are Blue Bomber and CFL 'timelines' that has nothing to do with Kenny Ploen. This book, in the closing sections of the book tries to become some kind of reference book for the history of the CFL which it should not be! This is supposed to be the biography of Kenny Ploen!
Anyhow, beggars can't be choosers. Its not like there are a plethora of books written about Mr. Ploen so I was more than happy to over look these issues I suppose. May I mention another pretty darned serious issue with this book? Editing. This small press publisher has such a nice looking coffee table book with cool photos and layout, but there are probably hundreds of typos, misspelled words, and/or other errors. One poor example of editing/writing is one sentence in the book: "He retired in ???" Can you believe this? It's obvious the writer put the question marks in the book intending to go back to insert the exact date perhaps after verifying some facts. However he never does! It's published and printed with a sentence like this! And that's just one error, like I said there are some on virtually every page.
Still, at least I got a good snapshot of Mr. Ploen. Hopefully he gets a better biographical treatment that isn't such PR fluff in the future. Until that time, fans like myself will just have to make do with this.