Tag: reading

The Book Shelf: Part 3

This is the third of a three-part look at some of the books I read over the past year. Nothing brought back more memories than That Old Gang of Mine, featuring Bill Spunska and some of the gang from Scrubs on Skates. Oh, those were the days! . . . I hope you were able to find a title that intrigued you over the past three days, and here’s to a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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Nocturne — Ed McBain is the author of a series of books on the 87th Precinct. This is No. 48 in the series, and it begins with the murder of an elderly woman who once was a renowned concert pianist. It isn’t long before there are more bodies and some missing money. Oh, and there’s a dead cat; it was shot alongside the old woman. Lots of good gritty stuff here.

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Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made — As much as this book, which was published in 2000, is about Michael Jordan’s climb to the top of the NBA’s world and his life in the business world, primarily with Nike, it’s about basketball’s changing times as money took over. Author David Halberstam wrote this terrific book without sitting down with Jordan, who agreed to be interviewed but later changed his mind. There is lots here about basketball under coach Dean Smith at North Carolina, what the arrival of ESPN meant to the NBA, the bad boy Detroit Pistons, the importance of Phil Jackson to Jordan’s career, the enigmatic Jerry Krause, who was the Chicago Bulls’ general manager, and a whole lot more. I highly recommend this book.

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Playing for Pizza — One day, while in Italy, John Grisham, the author of so many legal thrillers, happened upon a football game — as in American football. This book came out of that experience. It’s fluff, but there is some good fun between the covers as QB Rick Dockery tries to rediscover some positives with the Parma Panthers. No, there really aren’t any surprises. The good news is that the book isn’t especially long.

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Raylan — Published in 2012, this was author Elmore Leonard’s last book before his death in 2013. The book, which chronicles the adventures of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, is highlighted by Leonard’s usual gift for dialogue and whacky characters. Leonard had featured Givens in earlier works (Pronto, Riding the Rap, Fire in the Hole), which led to the TV series Justified. Raylan, Leonard’s 45th novel, was written after Justified already was on the small screen.

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Resurrection Walk — You can’t go wrong with a book by Michael Connelly, can you? In this one, Harry Bosch, retired from the LAPD, is working for his half-brother, Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer. And this one is all about whether a young woman killed her husband, who was a cop, and was wrongfully convicted in a conspiracy involving more cops.

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The Rise and Fall of the Press Box — Leonard Koppett had a lengthy career as a sports writer with stints at The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York Post, Palo Alto Times and Oakland Tribune. Yes, he knew the way to a whole lot of press boxes. In this book, finished two weeks before he died on June 22, 2003, at 79, he walks the reader through the rise and fall of the newspaper industry, while detailing the differences faced by today’s sports writers as compared to those who were on the beats 70 and 80 years ago. Insightful and entertaining.

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The Street Lawyer — Published on Jan. 1, 1998, this was author John Grisham’s ninth novel. Michael Brock, one of 800 lawyers with a high-powered firm in Washington, D.C., is at the plot’s centre as Grisham takes aim at such firms and the homeless issue. It’s good Grisham, and will keep you out of trouble for a day or two.

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Taking Down Trump: 12 Rules for Prosecuting Donald Trump by Someone Who Did it Successfully — Tristan Snell, the author of this book, was an assistant attorney general for the state of New York who led the team that beat Donald Trump in court in a case involving the defrauding of hundreds of students to the tune of US$42 million by Trump University. In his book, Snell details how things went down — from start to finish — and really explains all that went into it. Yes, it’s a blueprint for the legal community. It’s also a good look into what is a seriously flawed justice system.

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Texas — Another magnificent work of historical fiction from the prolific James Michener, this one, published in 1985, covers the Lone Star State’s history, starting with the Spanish explorers. It goes on to explore the impact of, among other things, religion, slavery, missions, immigration, ranching, education and, yes, football on the state. Keep in mind that it’s 1,076 pages long so isn’t exactly a two-day read. But it’s well worth whatever time you might want to invest in it. (P.S.: It took me almost three weeks as I finished it 21 hours before it was due back at the library.)

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That Old Gang of Mine — If you are of a certain vintage, you will have fond remembrances of reading Scrubs on Skates, Boy on Defense, and Boy at the Leafs’ Camp, author Scott Young’s trilogy about Bill Spunska and a handful of other Winnipeg high school hockey players. The first of those, Scrubs on Skates, was published in 1952. A couple of months ago, I rediscovered That Old Gang of Mine, which was published in 1982. Canada’s national men’s hockey team has perished in a plane crash and the Winter Olympics, set for Moscow, are fast approaching. What to do? Why not get the gang from Daniel Mac in Winnipeg back together, fill in a few holes and have them represent Canada? That’s exactly what happens in a book that brought back a lot of childhood memories. Unlike the first three books, this one is an adult read that even includes a federal minister having an affair with the national team’s coach.

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Traitors Gate — This is the sixth book in author Jeffrey Archer’s series that chronicles the life of William Warwick, who by now is Chief Superintendent with London’s Metropolitan Police. This time, Miles Faulkner, Warwick’s long-time protagonist, is working on a heist that involves lifting the Crown Jewels as they are being transported from the Tower of London to Buckingham Palace. The characters are familiar and there are a couple of subplots, involving Warwick’s wife and a fellow officer, but there isn’t much in the way of surprises. Still, like the first five books in the series, it’s a nice, comfortable read.

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12 Months to Live — Jane Smith is a defence lawyer with a client she despises who has been charged with the deaths of three people from one family. She also has been diagnosed with cancer and given 12 months. Oh, and people connected to the trial keep disappearing or being killed. Authors Mike Lupica and the ultra-prolific Richard Patterson spin a gritty tale that is quite readable. . . . I also read the sequel, Hard to Kill, which is similar to the opener. And with the way Hard to Kill ended, it would seem there will be a third entry in the series.

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A Year in the Sun: The Games, The Players, the Pleasure of Sports — George Vecsey, a sports columnist with The New York Times, chronicles his travels through 1986, including soccer’s World Cup in Mexico City, the Mets’ World Series victory (hello, Bill Buckner), some tennis, some basketball and hockey and a whole lot more. Vecsey wasn’t a hack-and-slash columnist; rather he had a soul, and he shows it here. This is a favourite and I can’t believe that I only discovered it in May. Having spent more than 40 years in newspapers, always in sports, there are parts of this book to which I could relate, especially when it came to lugging equipment on road trips.

Part 3 of 3

The Book Shelf: Part 1

While I stopped writing here on a regular basis quite a while ago, I have continued to compile thumbnails of some of the books I have read over the past year.

So . . . with Christmas on the horizon, the annual three-part Book Shelf feature is appearing here this week.

I hope you enjoy it, even though it’s far from featuring all sports-related books — and perhaps it will help with your Christmas shopping.

Enjoy!

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If you haven’t already read it and are only going to read one book in the next while, you should make it author John Vaillant’s Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast.

I re-read it as June was turning into July, finishing it while we were under a heat warning and waiting for the thermometer to hit 40C. This was the best book I read in 2023 and it’s at the top of the list again this year.

This is an accounting of the 2016 fire that swept through Fort McMurray, Alta., but it really is a whole lot more than that, including more than ample evidence that big oil is complicit in the climate change that we now are experiencing.

Fire Weather is right out of Stephen King country, only it isn’t fiction. It’s frightening; it’s glorious; it’s devastating. It’s all of that and so much more. It also was a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.

From the nomination: Fire Weather is “an unsparing account of the rapacious Alberta (oil sands) fire, fuelled by an overheated atmosphere, dry forest and omnipresent petroleum products, that consumed the town of Fort McMurray at the heart of Canada’s oil industry, which brings the global crisis of carbon emissions and climate change into urgent relief.”

Vaillant supplies all the scientific evidence needed in explaining to where we earthlings are headed. He also explains that what we don’t know is this — is it too late?

At one point he writes:

“There have been five major extinctions in Earth’s history, but only the end-Permian has been called ‘the Great Dying.’

“It is to this terminal catastrophe — caused, not by meteorites, or by shifts in Earth’s orbit, but by unrelenting combustion — that geoscientists are comparing our own Petrocene Age. Our fire-powered civilization is now in the early stages of replicating that ‘one-in-a-lifetime’ extinction event. It is widely understood in the scientific community that a sixth major extinction is under way, and that it is wholly due to human activity. As confronting as this idea may be, it shouldn’t come as a surprise: never in Earth’s history has there been a disruption like us: billions of large, industrious primates whose evolving behaviour is almost entirely dependent on the universal burning of hydrocarbons. Nor has Earth ever had to carry (at the same time, no less), billions of methane-emitting livestock the size of pigs and cattle.

“There is a terribly symmetry in this. What we are allowing to happen now with carbon dioxide and methane is what cyanobacteria did with photosynthesized oxygen billions of years ago: gassing the planet to death.”

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OK. Enough of that kind of talk. On to Part 1 (of 3) of The Bookshelf, a look at most of the books that I read in 2024. . . .

Bad City: Peril and Power in the City of Angels — Paul Pringle, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Times, has stumbled on a drug-riddled scandal involving the head of USC’s prestigious medical school. Write the story. Print the story. Right? Not so fast. It seems there were people at the Times with ties to USC and they threw up one roadblock after another. After more than a year, the story got printed, and this book, which brings to mind Spotlight and All the President’s Men, tells the story of all that went into the investigative reporting, which uncovered two other USC scandals before it was done, and all that went into getting it into print.

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Billy the Kid: The War for Lincoln County — As someone whose early reading habit was fuelled by Louis L’Amour, I have long had a weak spot for good westerns. And make no mistake — this is a really good one. In this novel, author Ryan C. Coleman explores how a young man came to be William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, one of the wild west’s most-notorious gunfighters.

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Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee — In this best-seller that was published in 1970, author Dee Brown tells the story of the settling of the American West, and he does it from the side of the numerous Indian tribes, many of which ended up being wiped from the planet. From Time magazine’s review: “Compiled from old but rarely exploited sources plus a fresh look at dusty Government documents, (it) tallies the broken promises and treaties, the provocations, massacres, discriminatory policies and condescending diplomacy.” This is a thoroughly engrossing read, but, oh my, is it painful!

One quotation from Sitting Bull really stayed with me:

“And so, in the summer of 1885, Sitting Bull joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, travelling throughout the United States and into Canada. He drew tremendous crowds. Boos and catcalls sometimes sounded for the ‘Killer of Custer,’ but after each show these same people pressed coins upon him for copies of his signed photograph. Sitting Bull gave most of the money away to the band of ragged, hungry boys who seemed to surround him wherever he went. He once told Annie Oakley, another one of the Wild West Show’s stars, that he could not understand how white men could be so unmindful of their own poor. ‘The white man knows how to make everything,’ he said, ‘but he does not know how to distribute it.’ ”

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Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and The Washington Post — Author Martin Baron was the executive editor of the Washington Post when Amazon honcho Jeff Bezos purchased the newspaper. Baron was in that office through Donald Trump’s first four-year presidency. Those four years included all kinds of verbal attacks by Trump on Bezos and the Post. All of that, and more, is chronicled in great detail here, as is the impact of social media on young people entering newsrooms, something that ultimately led to Baron’s retirement. 

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A Cool Breeze on the Underground — I’m a big Don Winslow fan; the man can write, for starters. Also, he has great characters and does a wonderful job of developing them. Such is the case here, in one of his earliest works, the first of five books featuring Neal Carey as the main character that was published in 1991. A pick-pocket as a youngster, Carey now is a private detective of sorts; in this one, he is tasked by a U.S. senator and his wife with bringing back a teenage runaway from London. Lots of grit in this one, too. . . . I also read While Drowning in the Desert, the fifth of Winslow’s Neal Carey books. It also was a fun read.

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The Country and the Game: 30,000 Miles of Hockey Stories — Everyone is well aware that hockey plays a rather large role in the lives of many Canadians. But just how large? And what about in some of the places that are somewhat off the beaten path? Author Ronnie Shuker wanted to find out, so he packed up his car — named Gumpy, after, yes, Gump Worsley — and went coast to coast to coast, taking notes the whole time. The result is an entertaining piece of hockey lore.

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The Daybreakers — When I was a whole lot younger than I am today, I was a huge fan of Louis L’Amour’s western novels. I revisited his work in the heat of July 2024 and I wasn’t at all disappointed. This book, from 1960, is the first of 17 he wrote about the Sackett family, and it’s just really good storytelling. There are a whole lot of L’Amour books out there, and they are quick and entertaining reads. . . . I also revisited another Sackett book, The Quick and the Dead, and it didn’t disappoint, either.

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The Deep Blue Good-by — While I had heard of Travis McGee, for some reason I had never read any of writer John D. MacDonald’s 21 books in which he is featured. Well, this one is the first, published in 1964, and it is terrific. McGee is a salvage consultant, whatever that means, who is a PI when he needs the dough. He lives on a houseboat in Florida. While McGee searches for a fraudster who specializes in feasting on vulnerable females, the reader should be prepared for MacDonald’s delicious habit of pontificating on the woes of society, with many of those thoughts still in play all these years later. . . . (BTW, the first four books in the series all were published in 1964.)

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The Diamond Eye — Author Kate Quinn’s book — it’s historical fiction — tells the story of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who went from aspiring Russian historian/librarian to a sniper known as Lady Death in the early days of the Second World War. An engrossing story that involves a friendship between Lady Death and Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the then-U.S. president. This one was rather different from my usual reading tastes, but I quite enjoyed it. I had it finished before I discovered that it was based on a true story, too.

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Even Dogs in the Wild — Author Ian Rankin’s John Rebus is one of the really good characters in crime fiction. And the Rankin-Rebus connection comes through, as usual, in Even Dogs in the Wild. Rankin also manages to surround Rebus with interesting characters and that certainly helps make his books so readable.

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The Exchange — The prolific John Grisham offers this one up as a sequel to The Firm, which introduced us to Abby and Mitch McDeere. However, this one doesn’t nearly approach The Firm as a tense legal thriller. I really was expecting a twist or two, but . . .

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Fer-de-Lance — This book, written by Rex Stout and published in 1934, introduced the world to Nero Wolfe. It also gave us Wolfe’s assistant, Archie Goodwin, who gets more print time than Wolfe and definitely steals the show. Yes, it’s a mystery novel — there has been a murder on a golf course and Wolfe wants the 50-grand reward being offered by the widow to solve it — and a great one. BTW, before Stout was done, according to Wikipedia, he had Wolfe in 33 books, along with 41 novellas and short stories.

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Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion — “Lifelong Phillies fans closely resemble the victims of a chronic sinus condition; they sometimes feel better but never for long.” That is just one sentence from this gem of a book by Roger Angell, perhaps the No. 1 baseball essayist of our time. Here, he writes about the MLB seasons from 1972 through 1976, and he does it with wit, clarity and a real love for the game. He also takes MLB — especially the owners — to task on more than one occasion for what it has done to a game that now decides its champion on frigid fall nights. Great stuff!

Part 1 of 3

The Book Shelf: Part 2

The second part of this year’s Book Shelf is headed up by the best book I read in 2023. It is everything a thriller should be, except that it isn’t fiction.

Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast — This is at the top of the list of best books I read in 2023; it easily was the most-terrifying. Author John Vaillant takes an in-depth look at the fire that took out most of Fort McMurray, Alta., in May 2016. Reading about what the citizens of Fort McMurray went through was eye-opening; reading about what the first-responders dealt with was beyond that. But Vaillant also writes about the past and the future, about the warnings from the scientific community regarding CO2 emissions that began so long ago and how Big Oil’s choosing to ignore it all has helped lead us to where we are today with climate change. As I started this book, we were cloaked in smoke; as I finished it, fires had Hawaii by the throat. Knowing what I had just read, I wasn’t surprised. (Note that you also are able to find this book under the title Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World.)

The Fixer — Rick Hoffman, who once was an investigative reporter, is about to restore the aging home in which he grew up when he discovers a huge pile of cash hidden away. His lawyer father is unable to communicate, a stroke having robbed him of much of his quality of life a few years ago. So what’s with all the money? How did it get there? Author Joseph Finder provides a fast-paced thriller that is perfect for spending a cold winter weekend with while under a warm blanket.

Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath — Bill Browder first chronicled his issues with Vladimir Putin’s Russia in Red Notice, and now he’s back with Freezing Order, which is even more explosive. Browder, a hedge fund CEO, was a big investor in Russia, but not these days. His lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered money laundering and a whole lot more, something that Browder writes resulted in his murder in prison. Browder details all of that and a whole lot more in Freezing Order.

The Guards — This is the first of the books on which the TV series Jack Taylor is based. If you have seen any of the TV shows, you know how Taylor oozes grit. This book is no different as author Ken Bruen introduces us to Taylor, a man with a drinking problem and a few other issues. There were 16 books in the series through 2020, with one more scheduled to be published in 2024.

Hometown Heroes: On the Road with Canada’s National Hockey Team — As Team Canada prepared for the 1988 Olympic Winter Games, which were to be held in Calgary, author Paul Quarrington went along for the ride. He provides a true outsider’s look at the ins and outs of a team that surprised the hockey world by winning the 1987 Izvestia Cup in Moscow and proving that a team of non-NHLers could compete at that level. An entertaining and lively read.

The Jack Widow Boxset — Gone Forever, Winter Territory and A Reason to Kill are the first three books in Scott Blade’s series about Jack Widow. He goes by Widow and he breaks a lot of noses, mostly with headbutts, as he makes his way here and there. These are quick reads, perfect for the cottage and three rainy afternoons.

Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, and Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley — After watching the movie Elvis, I went back and re-read both of these books, by Peter Guralnick. Oh my, does he ever pull back the curtains and let in the light on the life led by Elvis Presley. It’s all here, the ups and downs, the raging and the temper tantrums, the girls and women, and Col. Tom Parker . . . all of it. Superbly researched and reported in painstaking detail. Well done! 

Lucky Man: A Memoir — Author Michael J. Fox — yes, that Michael J. Fox, the pride of Burnaby, B.C. — writes mostly about the relationship he and Parkinson’s disease have with each other. It’s amazing to read about how he continued to work in movies and TV while hiding the symptoms of P.D., as he calls it. Amazingly, he lived that way for about seven years before making the decision to let the world in on his secret. It all started with a trembling left little finger and it led to this fascinating and emotional book.

Moscow Rules — In this book, author Daniel Silva’s eighth in what now is a 23-book series, Gabriel Allon, the Israeli government’s spymaster assassin, is working to bring down Ivan Kharkov, a Russian oligarch and arms dealer. If you are a fan, this one won’t disappoint. If you’re looking for a character on which to get hooked, you can’t go wrong with Allon.

Next in Line — This is No. 5 in author Jeffrey Archer’s series of books chronicling the career of William Warwick, now a Detective Chief Inspector with Scotland Yard. This one, which takes place in 1988, deals with the Royalty Protection Command and features Princess Di. And, yes, career criminal Miles Faulkner is front and centre, as is his ex-wife. If you like Archer’s stuff, this is good escapism.

No Plan B — This is the latest in the Jack Reacher books, and it’s good Reacher. Written by Lee Child and his brother, Andrew, there is an intriguing plot and Reacher beats the crap out of a whole lot of bad guys. What more could you ask for if you’re looking to escape reality for a few hours?

A Passing Game: A History of the CFL — In a book published in 1995, former CFL quarterback Frank Cosentino examines the league and all of its happenings from 1969 to 1995. Cosentino had access to all kinds of official league papers, from minutes of meetings to a whole lot of finance-related numbers. And when you are done reading, you will wonder how the CFL has been able to survive. Sometimes it’s fantastic foibles; other times it’s Keystone Kops. And it always is amazing. Be aware, though, that this book is a dry read, drier than July in Kamloops, and a lot of writing rules regarding punctuation are nowhere to be found. And you would think that a book about the CFL would include the correct spelling of the surname of one of its greatest kickers — it’s Ridgway, not Ridgeway.

October 1964 — The 1964 MLB season was memorable for a couple of reasons. For starters, the Philadelphia Phillies of manager Gene Mauch blew a 6-1/2-game lead atop the National League in late September and finished second behind the St. Louis Cardinals, who went on to play the New York Yankees in the World Series. The prolific David Halberstam tells the story of that season, culminating with the World Series. Also notable? This signalled the end of the Yankees’ dynasty. You are able to read all about it in this book that was published in 1995.

(SECOND OF THREE PARTS)

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