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writesdave's reviews
360 reviews
challenging
emotional
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Funny, heartfelt story about a subsistence farmer creating an excrement-storm by irrigating his bean field from a rich man's creek. Beautiful descriptions of a stark and stunning landscape, plus raging against the machine—what's not to love?
emotional
informative
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
My annual baseball read took me to Durham, N.C., where Ron Morris, longtime sports journalist, chronicled the rise of the Durham Bulls from their revival in the 1980 season through the movie to the present day (at least to the book's publication in 2017). It's a solid look at what it takes to run a minor-league baseball team, as well as a hefty dose of nostalgia from an old sportswriter, linking the early 1990s boom in minor-league baseball to the success of the Bulls after their founding.
He captured the characters on the team well, devoting a final chapter to where each player landed after his time in Durham. You'll see a few familiar names, too, though again the personalities stand out. A good beat writer like Ron certainly knows a team well enough to bring out those characters.
Ron just needed a more strident editor to close a couple of narrative loops and check some facts. The style is a little dry, too, but I understand the desire to inform and chronicle. No, I couldn't have done any better.
Thanks to my buddy Alex, who knows Ron well, for loaning me the book.
challenging
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
I rarely read other reviews of any book, but I don't know how many describe a couple hundred pages about a punctuation mark as "fun." And this was fun. Really.
Watson takes an exhaustive (but not exhausting) view of a reviled punctuation mark and offers prime examples of proper use, misuse and overuse, while leaving the reader to decide the semicolon's efficacy. A great book for writers in particular, it is one of those books you didn't know you needed.
Watson takes an exhaustive (but not exhausting) view of a reviled punctuation mark and offers prime examples of proper use, misuse and overuse, while leaving the reader to decide the semicolon's efficacy. A great book for writers in particular, it is one of those books you didn't know you needed.
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Thoroughly depressing and beautifully written chronicle of a 1950s marriage, like if "The Dick Van Dyke Show" got rebooted on HBO, and Van Dyke's alcoholism was central to the plot. You have everything the boomers tried to cover up—domestic violence, alcoholism, philandering, lousy jobs they hate, abandoned dreams and stay-at-home moms who self-medicate. The kids get no attention, probably for a reason. Again, it's the train wreck of domestic life that never made it to prime time.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
tense
medium-paced
I'll give it 4.5 stars, as Susan Casey quite proficiently toed the line between grasping and expressing the science while embracing the mysticism of the ocean, specifically the increasingly malevolent waves that scare shore dwellers and thrill surfers. she went literally to the ends of the earth to chase the story, from the staid offices of Lloyd's of London, to an oceanography lab in a rough part of Cape Town, to the idyllic breaks on the north shore of Maui. And she captured the spirit in speaking with the denizens of all three locales (and beyond).
I'll call it a "fun" read with the qualification that you do need to prepare yourself for doses of science and meathead bravado, but Susan did well.
I'll call it a "fun" read with the qualification that you do need to prepare yourself for doses of science and meathead bravado, but Susan did well.
adventurous
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Bruce Chatwin's travel classic has not aged well, as it reads the way you would expect a travelogue from a rich Brit traveling in a poor, downtrodden land lifted out of its savagery by the benevolent Europeans (please note sarcasm). His reverence for the land is admirable and his descriptions beautiful, but note some seriously colonial attitudes on full display. That said, Chatwin is as intrepid a traveler as he is proficient a writer; full marks for his immersive experience.
This book also goes to show that the people one encounters on one's travels are just as important as sights seen. Much of the narrative pertains to the people who first turned the spotlight to this rough, far-flung corner of the world, including two well-known American outlaws who beat the fuzz to South America before their notorious end. The book tracks with Muir's "Travels in Alaska" in its patronizing treatment of the culture and its lionization of the people and land.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
If Job were a woman and stopped believing in god, she'd be Dolores Price. Everything you could imagine that can happen to someone probably happened to Dolores. And for better or worse, Wally Lamb takes us along for the ride.
(I picked up this book because it shares a title with a song, a theme in my reading life.)
emotional
informative
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Fun ride through the predominantly rural parts of our fair country, hearing the origins of rock and roll in the rhythm and blues that shook the walls of a network of Black nightclubs and roadhouses. From the turn of the 20th century, when savvy businessmen realized people would pay money to hear live music, to the Civil Rights and Urban Renewal era, where unscrupulous politicians plowed under nearly seven decades of music history in the name of "progress," Lauterbach covers all the bases in a deeply researched and lovingly told story he spent nearly seven years writing.
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A rollicking mover of a mystery/romance/comedy involving a child actress grown up, her various lovers and a cast of misfits (including her stage mother). Thrill of the chase, to say the least. I loved Coupland's disruption of the time element, as each chapter marks a different stage of the characters' lives, but I found it easy to follow.
A quibble: A car accident in Colorado Springs would not have disrupted traffic between Denver and Cheyenne. Grr. Sincerely, a former Wyomingite.