I am a lifelong football fan and a Baltimore Ravens supporter. When the Ray Rice scandal hit, I swore off the sport for a year because of how poorly the NFL and the Ravens organizations respectively handled the situation. The Rice situation provided me with an excuse to do something I had wanted to do for awhile: watch less football. It’s tough to overstate what a hold the NFL had on my life in my 20s. I’d plan work, break dates, check my phone in […]
An American Legend, Indeed
CBR 10 Bingo Entry: The Book Was Better? I spent some time pondering what I’d like to read for the “Book Was Better” category for CBR 10 Bingo. With so many options, I was falling victim to decision paralysis, when a trip to my local library helped me solve the problem. While dropping off some books, I stopped into the Friends of the Library bookstore, not expecting to find anything. But then my eye was caught by a hardbound copy of Seabiscuit in excellent condition, […]
My question is, why is this a kid’s book?
The Berenstain Bears: We Love Soccer! is a takeoff of the original Berenstain Bears series. Some of us grew up on the 8×8 paperbacks, some of us had early readers, some of us watched the television series and some a combination. Mike Berenstain has created another set of books that take off from the originals with new and old favorite characters. He now covers themes that are a bit more modern then just “new baby” or “jealous” or “eating too much junk food” or “the […]
Italian Football (Soccer/Calcio): Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction
Read for Cannonball Read Bingo: place I want to visit. It’s tough to know where to begin describing this book because it is a wild 528-page ride. John Foot is a competent writer and a quality historian but he’s been tasked with a subject that’s overwhelming: the story of soccer in Italy. Foot does a great job at covering the history of Italy as a backdrop to its nation’s favorite sport and I learned a lot. I had no idea how young of a nation […]
The Ghosts of Anti-Semitism Haunt Holland Through Soccer
Read for Cannonball Run Bingo. Category: White Whale. The World Cup was on this past summer and anytime I see it, I’m inclined to read more books about soccer. I’m a big sports fan but my interest in soccer really only begun about 12 years ago when, bored out of my mind for the summer of 2006, I watched the World Cup fastidiously. Soccer is now perhaps my fourth favorite sport after baseball, football, and basketball and I’m wearing a New York City FC shirt […]
“In most cases learning something essential in life requires physical pain.”
Since it’s my Year of Murakami, I’m reading both the man’s fiction and his non-fiction. A decade or so ago, Murakami wrote a book about running. Unbeknownst to me, when not listening to jazz records or drinking whisky or thinking about women just out of reach, the author runs marathons. In fact, he runs one a year or so, and also likes triathlons. This book isn’t really a how-to or a straight memoir so much as a man recording his wandering thoughts. For a fan […]
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