Author: gr4c5

I write. I read. I cook. I run. That's me, in a nutshell.

Play Their Hearts Out

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Dohrmann, George. Play Their Hearts Out: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine. New York: Ballentine Books, 2010.

Play Their Hearts Out was a roller coaster of a read. Not because it had nonstop heart pounding excitement but more because some chapters moved faster than others. Like being pulled up to the crest of the ride, some moments in the book were bogged down with unnecessary detail making it long winded and rambling. Other moments, once released from over-worded detail, moved at a much faster pace and were quite enjoyable. Play Their Hearts Out is  everything you need to know (the good, the bad, and the ugliest of ugly) about AAU basketball. It is gritty and uncensored. Dohrmann had an all-access pass to the sidelines of Coach Joe Keller’s world for eight years. In that time he follows Coach Keller and his star recruit, Demetrius Walker, from middle school to major success. Orbiting the story are other key players who influence Keller like competing coaches, opposing teams, and ever present parents.

On a personal note, I found myself asking if the attitudes and actions of Coach Joe Keller seemed exaggerated because if they weren’t Dohrmann’s depiction of Mr. Keller irritated me. From Dohrmann’s writing Keller’s philosophy on recruitment and coaching seemed cutthroat and conniving – more appropriate for professional basketball than for anything considered “grassroots.” The portrayal of Joe Keller is the quintessential shark, hungry for the kill, unconventional and caustic to everyone around him. I guess greed can do that to a person, especially when there’s a big Nike or Adidas contract involved.

Nutrition for Life

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Hark, Lisa. Nutrition for Life: the no-fad, no-nonsense approach to eating well and reaching your healthy weight. London: DK Publishing, 2005.

I would have preferred this book title have one small change – instead of “reaching your healthy weight” why not “maintaining your healthy weight.” Why does it have to be all about being fat? Why can’t it be about being healthy? But, aside from that small gripe this is a great book.

Nutrition for Life is overflowing with information. Even though the emphasis is on nutrition there is a whole chapter dedicated to weight management. It is more than an “eat this and not that” book.  The attempt is to make the reader more aware of the benefits of eating better by supplying information about the medicinal value of food, the difference between store-bought and farm-fresh, and the right foods for different age groups. Nutrition for Life also includes a diet directory. Every well-known diet (including famed Scarsdale, South Beach, and grapefruit diets) is explained with a section on how it works, how you do it, whether it is healthy or not and example of a day on the diet.

I appreciated the case studies of people with examples of special dietary needs. Putting a face to different health issues helped put the importance of food into perspective. The other thing that was great about Nutrition for Life was the photography. The pictures are extremely glossy and gorgeous.

fit + female

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coopersmith, geralyn, b. fit +female: the perfect fitness and nutrition game plan for your unique body type. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2006.

Here’s what I liked best about the book:

Sense of humor: joking about having to get rid of her hydrostatic tank because it clashed with the couch.

Names for exercises are goofy: the Looky Looky for turning your head and looking to the right and left.

Informative: exercises are well illustrated; nutrition is carefully spelled out.

Unfortunately, the key to this whole book is figuring out your body type. Through a series of 32 questions you are supposed to figure out if you are:

  1. endo, eco or meso
  2. an apple or a pear
  3. advanced or beginner

In the end the key was, “if you answered mostly 4s you are endo,” “if you answered mostly Bs you are a pear” (as examples). After taking the test I knew only two out of the three categories. I am meso and advanced but I answered right down the middle for apple and pear qualifications so I’m either both or neither. I didn’t answer more one way than another. Frustrating. In all honesty I look like the chick on the cover, just 20 years older and with slightly smaller boobs. All in all, because I couldn’t definitively figure out my body type I couldn’t use the rest of the book.

September ’10 is…

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September is the storm before the calm – literally since Earl is raging up the coast! School is back in session. A new hire is on the premises. Things are a little crazy right now. Here are how things look for books at the moment:

  • Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre ~ in honor of the Cold War starting in September
  • Between Parent and Child by Haim G. Ginott ~ in honor of National Family Month
  • Where Big Foot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide by Robert Pyle ~ in honor of Bigfoot being spotted on September 16, 2007 in Pennsylvania (yay for the Northeast Sasquatch!)
  • Wild Life by Molly Gloss ~ a companion read to Where Big Foot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide.
  • Moo by Jane Smiley ~ in honor of school being back in session

I’m also in the process of reading a few food books and an Early Review book. More on all of that later.

August ’10 was…

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August. The last gasp of summer before everyone starts thinking about back-to-school clothes, back-to-school school supplies and back-to-school attitudes. I know my college has already adopted the attitude now that the athletes and international students have started arriving on campus. August was quiet compared to July’s crazy traveling. But, for books it was:

  • The All-Girl Football Team by Lewis Nordan ~ Nordan is my emotional train wreck.
  • Zarafa: a Giraffes’s True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris by Michael Allin ~ in honor of Napoleon’s birth month even though Napoleon is a teeny part of the story
  • Zel by Donna Jo Napoli ~ the clever, psychological retelling of Rapunzel.
  • The Meaning of Everything: the Story of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester ~ in honor of National Language Month, but I didn’t finish it. Not even close.
  • Undaunted Courage by Simon Winchester ~ a really interesting account of the Lewis & Clark Expedition.
  • A Separate Peace by John Knowles ~ probably one of my all-time favorite books.

For LibraryThing and the Early Review Program: I started reading Play Their Hearts Out by George Dohrmann. Review coming in September.

For fun I read:

  • fit = female: the perfect fitness and nutrition game plan for your unique body type by geralyn b. coopersmith ~ the cover of the book didn’t use capital letters so neither did i.
  • Nutrition for Life: The no-fad, no-nonsense approach to eating well and researching your healthy weight by Lisa Hark, Phd, RD & Darwin Deen, MD ~ this is a really, really informative book.

A Separate Peace

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Knowles, John. A Separate Peace. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1959.

I freaking love this book! I have always compared Gene’s preparatory boarding school to the one I attended when I was of the same age. It wasn’t just that both schools are New England based and have similar landscapes. Knowles describes the culture of a private school set in the middle of a northeastern community really, really well.  The imposing brick and ivy buildings. The sprawling athletic fields. The massive trees that line the campus, the air of academia…I could go on.

I first read this book when I was 14. Fresh meat in a Freshman English class. We read A Separate Peace as an introduction to literature. Funny how it’s the only book I remember in detail from the course. It’s the only book I don’t mind rereading on a regular basis. Mr. Hill guided us through what we were supposed to get out of it. I know because all the important parts are underlined. Four years later and Mr. Hill was still having his students read the same book. I know because my sister used my copy (why buy a new one?) and had highlighted the all same sections. I’ve never forgotten those sections, especially the words, “I jounced the limb.” I. Jounced. The. Limb. To this day it is the most profound confession of wrongdoing I have ever read. Nothing else compares.

Okay. So. To review the book- A Separate Peace is about a friendship between two opposites. Gene is smart, Phineas is athletic. Gene is sensitive, Phineas is carefree. Gene is reserved and cautious, Phineas is bold and daring. The one thing they have in common is being roommates at Devon, a prep school for boys. Throughout the entire story Gene is constantly in a mental tug-of-war with his feelings towards Finny. He is resentful of the way everything comes so easily to his athletic roommate (like when Phineas broke a long standing swimming record without even trying). It’s as if Gene has to forcefully remind himself everyday they are best of friends. He tags along, a willing participant in Finny’s daily adventures but he has to convince himself he is having fun. When Finny starts a secret society where members must jump from a tree into a river on school property Gene goes along with that as well, hating each and every jump. But, when Phineas falls out of the tree, missing the river completely things get complicated. Did Gene make his best friend and roommate fall? The psychological struggle of doubt that ensues is the central theme of the entire story.

Favorite lines (bear with me for there are a few), “Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even death by violence” (p 6), “Everyone has a moment in history which belongs to him” (p 32) and ” ‘the only real swimming is in the ocean’ ” (p 37).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Boys Coming of Age” (p 45).

Undaunted Courage

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Ambrose, Stephen E. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

This is not your ordinary retelling of the Lewis and Clark expedition. This is not the regular, run of the mill, same old story. Undaunted Courage is a different perspective of the story often told in the history books. While elements of the expedition are rehashed like interactions with the Native Americans, obstacles relating to weather, terrain and health, and supply management (how could they not?) Ambrose focuses mostly on the collaboration between Commander in Chief Jefferson and Captain Lewis. He tries to get inside the head of Meriwether Lewis to portray thoughts and feelings beyond what was written in the surviving journals and notes, thus making the text more conversational in tone. Because President Jefferson considered the expedition to be Lewis’s gig Clark is mentioned where necessary and never becomes a focal point of the story. To make sure the reader is completely aware this is a Lewis story Ambrose continues it beyond the famous expedition and details Lewis’s devastating suicide.

Favorite lines, “Lewis took his advice and became a great hiker, with feet as tough ass his butt” (p 30), “It was always cold, often brutally cold, sometimes so cold a man’s penis would freeze if he wasn’t quick about it” (p 191), and a startling observation about Lewis, “My guess is that he was manic-depressive” (p 312).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Lewis and Clark: Adventurers Extraordinaire” (p 137).

Meaning of Everything

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Winchester, Simon. The Meaning of Everything: the Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

I suppose since Winchester’s The Meaning of Everything serves as a follow-up to The Professor and the Madman: a Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary I should link to the review of The Professor…here.

I hate to admit this, but I didn’t care for The Meaning of Everything. Okay, while I’m being honest I’ll go for broke – I didn’t get beyond page 19. There. I said it. I was bored. As a person deeply connected to reading you would think I would be intimate with words, especially the origin of words. I mean, words form sentences and sentences form paragraphs and paragraphs form pages and pages fill books, right? And books are what it’s all about, right? No. I guess the bottom line is I don’t care about where the word came from. The word, when it stands alone, is boring. How sad is that? I need words strung together into sentences. Those sentences need to be woven together to ultimately make a story interesting. This, however, was not.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Dewey Deconstructed: 400s” (p 68).

Zarafa

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Allin, Michael. Zarafa: A Giraffe’s True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris. New York: Walker and Company, 1998.

I read this in honor of Napoleon being born in the month of August and even though Zarafa wasn’t exactly about Napoleon I was delighted by the tidbits of information that involved him: did you know the camel Napoleon rode while in Cairo was stuffed and put on display in a museum? (p 27) and Napoleon was such a big fan of books that he arranged for every guest at a banquet to receive translated copies of the Koran and Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man (p 31)? Interesting. But probably the best story was about Napoleon’s reading habits while on the march. He would tear out the pages of a book, one by one, after he had read them – tossing them back to the soldiers behind him. The soldiers in turn would read the torn-out pages and the pass them back until the entire company had read the same book (p 32).

Zarafa is the story of a giraffe’s remarkable journey from Egypt to Paris. Charles X of France was presented with a young female giraffe as a gift (and political strategy) from the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali. I can only imagine what the people of 1845 France thought of this unusual gift. Michael Allin not only sets out to describe this giraffe’s amazing two and a half year journey but provide the political, economic and historical backdrop for the trip. What makes Allin’s account so enjoyable is his ability to make the supporting subject matter interesting. He gives Zarafa a personality, allowing for the humanization of her traits with such descriptors as “aloof dignity” and “orphaned.” This humanizing made it difficult to read the details of how Zarafa’s mother was murdered and how her pelt, teeth, tail, meat, etc became commodities.

Favorite lines, “Under Muhammad Ali, Egypt went from the Stone Age to the Enlightenment in a single personality” (p 37), “the traveler from the south is reluctant to proceed, homesick for immortal things” (p 86).

BookLust Twist: In both Book Lust and More Book Lust. From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Wild Life” (p 245). From More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Complex Napoleon” (p 53).

Zel

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Napoli, Donna Jo. Zel. New York: Dutton Children’s Books, 1996.

Zel is the very creative retelling of the fairy tale classic, ‘Rapunzel.” In Napoli’s version Zel and her mother live in isolation in the Swiss countryside, far away from human contact. Mother does her very best to give Zel everything she needs in the hopes of binding Zel to her forever. As her daughter reaches maturity mother realizes Zel will have an important decision to make, marry and raise a traditional family, or follow in her mother’s footsteps and sell her soul to become a witch. Afraid Zel will make the “wrong” decision Zel’s mother locks Zel in the tower everyone knows from the traditional story. Napoli does a clever job at including small details from the original story including the obsession with lamb’s lettuce.
The very first thing I noticed about this book was its voice structure. Zel is told from the point of view of three different characters: Zel (in third person present), Konrad (in third person present), and Zel’s mother (oddly enough, in first person present). In the beginning I wanted to complain about it, but by the end of the third chapter I found it ingenious. Through Zel’s mother’s thoughts you get the incredibly twisted psychology of love and obsession. The story wouldn’t have been as dark and dangerous if all voices were the same. We needed to see mother’s reasoning for locking Zel away in the tower. This psychological insight allowed us see the story from a different angle and not lean on the original story of Rapunzel.

Favorite lines (all from ‘Mother’), “Such crass people, whose warmth can be bought with a coin” (p 16), “Panic teases my skin” (p 59), and “I live the life I would have have lived if I never had Zel in the first place. Only it is far worse – for I know what I have lost” (p 142).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Fractured Fairy Tales” (p 94).

All-Girl Football Team

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Nordan, Lewis. The All-Girl Football Team. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1989.

At first I didn’t know what to make of the collection of short stories within The All-Girl Football Team. Most of the stories take place in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi and Sugar Mecklin is almost always the central character. Sugar is a typical young boy looking for ways to grow up fast in a stranger than strange household. Mama is obsessed with drama and tinged with mental illness and Daddy is an alcoholic with a thing for rock ‘n roll. All of the stories are laced with an off-kilter humor that alternately made me want to laugh and cry. The very first short story called, “Sugar Among the Chickens” tells the tale of eleven year old Sugar literally fishing (with a pole, hook and all) for the chickens in the front yard. Since his parents won’t let him go to the local watering hole chickens are his substitute for fish and fresh kernels of corn serve as bait…However, the third story, “Sugar, the Eunuchs and Big G.B” wasn’t nearly as funny as it was dark. In it Sugar tries to shoot his father. You’ll begin to notice Nordan has a things for guns, especially loaded ones. Probably the hardest story to read was “Wild Dog.” If you have a thing for animals read it with one eye shut tight.

Favorite section, “I threw a cat into the chicken yard…The rooster killed the cat, but it didn’t take a hook. Too bad about the cat. You’re not going to catch a rooster without making a sacrifice or two” (p 9).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, ” Lewis Nordan: Too Good To Miss” (p 173). Here is what I find interesting. “Off-kilter humor that alternately made me want to laugh and cry” was how I described Nordan’s autobiography, Boy With a Loaded Gun. Truth is stranger than fiction.

August ’10 is…

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August is another trip homehome, this time for something happy – a wedding! Actually Kisa and I have two weddings to go to this month. We haven’t planned much of anything else because July was such a crazy busy month. Here’s the lowdown on the books:

  • Zarafa: a giraffe’s true story by Michael Allin ~ in honor of Napoleon being born in August
  • All-Girl Football Team: Stories by Lewis Nordan ~ in honor of Nordan being born in August
  • Zel by Donna Jo Napoli ~ in honor of August being fairy tale month
  • The Meaning of Everything: the story of the Oxford English dictionary by Simon Winchester
  • Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose in honor of the Lewis & Clark expedition

I don’t know if I actually got an Early Review book from LibraryThing this month…

July ’10 was…

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July was the great escape. I was able to go home twice. Each trip was for a very different purpose and as a result each was a very different experience, but I was homehome just the same. Got the tan I didn’t need. July was also a double shot of Natalie music. Again, two very different experience, but amazing nonetheless. Blogs about both shows coming soon. An absolutely fantastic Rebecca Correia show rounded out the month, musically. She performed with Jypsi at the Bennett Farm. A really great night.
All in all, July was so many different things and unfortunately, reading wasn’t a big part of it. I stole time where I could (often in cars driven by other people):

  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald ~ something small and short to read on the cliffs of Monhegan
  • Firewall by Henning Mankell ~ a murder/police procedural mystery set in Sweden; something to read in the tent!
  • The Eyes of the Amaryllis by Natalie Babbitt ~ a great book for kids about living by the ocean. Another great book to read on the cliffs of Monhegan.
  • Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. by Judy Blume ~ a blast from the past! Read this on the couch…
  • The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference ~ read in honor of job fair month & added because I gave up on the Richard Rhodes book (see below)
  • Love of a Good Woman: Stories by Alice Munro ~ read in honor of Munro’s birth month
  • In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country by Kim Barnes ~ in honor of July being the month Idaho became a state

If you notice I focused on stuff for young adults – kind of like easy listening for the brain.

Attempted, but did not finish:

  • The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes ~ see, I told you so! I added it back on the list for another time…

For LibraryThing and the Early Review Program:

  • My Formerly Hot Life by Stephanie Dolgoff ~ a really fun book.
  • What is a Mother (in-law) To Do by Jane Angelich ~ unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this very much.

I guess nine books is a decent “read quota” for the month. At least five of them were extremely easy to read, though…

Love of A Good Woman

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Munro, Alice. The Love of a Good Woman: Stories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.

I have always been attracted to short stories in the summer. For some reason short stories just work better during those months of busy.

The first story, “The Love of a Good Woman, starts off with the exploration of the different adolescent reactions to an apparent accidental drowning of the town’s ophthalmologist. Three boys, with three very different home lives, struggle with the knowledge of this death. Each of them takes a different view on how to tell an adult about the accident. From there the story takes on an unusual twist.
All of the stories explore different human connections. Unfaithful marriages, nursing the dying, landlord and tenant, mother and child…each relationship is riddled with conflict and emotion. Munro captures these relationships so well they seem to be her specialty.

Most unusual line (from ‘Cortes Island’), “My instinct was to lie to her about anything” (p 128).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the very first chapter called, “A…is for Alice” (p 1).

My Formerly Hot Life

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Dolgoff, Stephanie. My Formerly Hot Life: Dispatches From Just the Other Side of Young. New York: Ballantine Books, 2010.

Funny, funny, funny. I loved My Formerly Hot Life and not because I am over 40 and formerly had a hot life. I am over 40 but I would call my past “fireside cozy” and leave it at that. Dolgoff, however, claims to have had a hot life. Her book is all about how “formerly” her life has become now that she is over 40 and married with children. She dishes out how reality bites when gravity takes over. Sexy clothes don’t fit anymore, bars are too loud and it takes forever to plan a girls night out. Yet, all that doesn’t matter because you’re too tired to go out anyway.
My Formerly Hot Life is not just all fun and games. There is a serious side to Dolgoff as well, especially when she delves into subjects such as aging parents, the question of having kids at a Formerly age, health issues, and ultimately recognizing your own mortality. These are sections of the book I hope she keeps because as fun as it is to poke fun at sagging breasts and lumpy butts, there is this not-so-fun side to aging that shouldn’t be ignored.