Ray Kinsella's "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy".

The book is nice.

But it would have been much more fun to read pre-Trump, pre-Qanon, pre-9/11 even.
A man obsessed with a truth only he knows, who harasses mainstream organizations for supposedly hiding the truth, doesn't play as well now as a story.

Also, I can't recall if this, or Philip Roth's "The Great American Novel " - also about a baseball league whose existence is now covered up - it was a Watergate era novel, was written first, or if one might have gotten ideas from the other.

Okay, I looked it up: Roth's book was published in 1973, and I think I read it the first time around then, at age 13 or 14 or so, within a year or two of its being published. Kinsella's was published in 1986, so that part of the bok, that there was once a baseball league that no one wants to admit ever existed, and all records of which have been done away with, is derivative of Roth's book. But Roth's is a third major league, and the intrigue is both mythological and political, whereas Kinsella's is a local minor league and the book is so far mythological without having brought politics into it, though Field of Dreams did, so this one might as well. Not very far into it yet.

The Luminaries.

No cheating. Watch the mini-series after you read the book.

Very convoluted and dense, but worth the effort.

Posted by marcstuart on 11/16/2022 9:54:00 AM (view original):
The Luminaries.

No cheating. Watch the mini-series after you read the book.

Very convoluted and dense, but worth the effort.

I'll get to it. Thanks marc!

My 2022 reading list:

Apocalypse Z: The beginning of the end – M Loureiro
Blood in the water: the Attica prison uprising of 1971 and its legacy – H Thompson
Mistborn: the Final Empire – B Sanderson
Legacy of Spies – J LeCarre
Shantaram – G D Roberts
China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty – M Lewis
Bloodless – D Preston and L Child
The Path Between the Seas – D McCullough
Squeeze me – C Hiassen
K – A history of baseball in ten pitches – T Kepner
Mistborn: the Well of Ascension – B Sanderson
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas – T Robbins
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey – C Millard
The Winter of Frankie Machine – D Winslow
The Sympathizer – Viet Thanh Nguyen
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed – J Diamond
The Blessing Way – T Hillerman
Mistborn: the Hero of Ages – B Sanderson
Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age – S Platt
Silverview – J LeCarre
The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness and Obsession – D Grann
Slow Horses – M Herron
The Dawn Patrol – D Winslow
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates – T Robbins

Just finished a book I got for Christmas, John Kenney's novel Talk to Me (2019) about a bigshot news anchor whose career goes to hell after he's recorded shouting at a makeup woman. Decent premise, I guess, and I'd looked forward to reading something by this writer because I like some of his comic short pieces (here's a good one), but this book was flat, mawkish and clichéd, and didn't have much interesting or original to say about social media (and it said a lot). Not recommended.

Three Weeks to Say Goodbye - C. J. Box - highly recommend it and Box.

"
the barmaid dialed the police again; the bartender, sighing, reached under the bar for his thirty-eight ounce solid ash Louisville Slugger autographed personally by Harmon Killebrew.

"

Posted by italyprof on 2/24/2023 6:20:00 AM (view original):
I'm reading Susan Shirk's book "Overreach" about how China's "peaceful rise" has gone wrong and it is now viewed with suspicion in the West and by many of its nieghbors, how Xi Jinping consolidated his one-man rule, replacing the previous collective leadership model and how that model failed as different interest groups, bureaucratic corruption and inter-Party competition and conflict led to acceptance of a more centralized model.

She is more enamorred of market forces than I am as an alternative to the way China is governed, but the book is a good , very insightful look at how things really work in China, who has which kind of power and what the sides are in the country's debates over what direction to take.

By coincidence, I think, I am reading it right after one of the best books on politics I have ever read: "The Logic of World Power" by Franz Schurmann, about the Cold War rivalries of the US, USSR and China and how the US ended up in the Vietnam War. His work explained things that otherwise have never really made sense, and in particular he shows how foreign policy, and even war and peace, are often the results of inter-bureacracy debates and interests, combined with the particular conditions that at times enable a leader, president etc. to act on their own ideological views when the different agencies and interest groups cancel each other out so to speak. That is what happened in a way in our involvement in Vietnam. A very great book, out of print now and hard to find, but very much worth the read.

Applying Schurmann's approach to Shirk's analysis of China adds to her own analysis: that in-fighting among the different institutional agencies of government and industry and military, and the interest-group constitutuencies in the society and economy that they are connected to, explains a whole lot of what actually happens in politics and global affairs.

Two very different books by authors with very different ideological views, but both very much worth the read.

you are a gift

thank you

While I'm an avid reader and have been my whole life I've never posted here. I like to keep my time on WIS about the relief of imaginary/real baseball.

With that said I had to share a book I recently read with this group.
The Baseball Chronicles edited by David Gallen 1991 Carroll and Graff Publishers.

Its a collection of short stories/articles about the baseball greats that were written during their time by their contemporaries.
Great insights on so many of the icons of baseball. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Grover Cleveland Alexander, John McGraw, Joe Jackson, Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, Dizzy Dean up through Mickey Mantle Sandy Koufax and Roberto Clemente.

Especially enjoyed Babe, Joe Jackson, Jackie Robinson, Joe D and Dizzy Dean. Fascinating insights into the person as well as the ballplayer.

Not sure if its still available. I found it at a small used book store in a small town suggested by a friend that I stopped at on one of my trips back from baby sitting my grandkids who are several hours away. Plan on stopping there more often.
Apologies if this has already been shared in this forum.

Recently finished "October 1964" by David Halberstam. Really liked it. Started but haven't yet gotten far into "Summer of '49" by the same author.

Posted by dbrom on 5/17/2023 6:21:00 PM (view original):
While I'm an avid reader and have been my whole life I've never posted here. I like to keep my time on WIS about the relief of imaginary/real baseball.

With that said I had to share a book I recently read with this group.
The Baseball Chronicles edited by David Gallen 1991 Carroll and Graff Publishers.

Its a collection of short stories/articles about the baseball greats that were written during their time by their contemporaries.
Great insights on so many of the icons of baseball. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Grover Cleveland Alexander, John McGraw, Joe Jackson, Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, Dizzy Dean up through Mickey Mantle Sandy Koufax and Roberto Clemente.

Especially enjoyed Babe, Joe Jackson, Jackie Robinson, Joe D and Dizzy Dean. Fascinating insights into the person as well as the ballplayer.

Not sure if its still available. I found it at a small used book store in a small town suggested by a friend that I stopped at on one of my trips back from baby sitting my grandkids who are several hours away. Plan on stopping there more often.
Apologies if this has already been shared in this forum.

Cool. I never heard of it. Maybe someone has posted here about it, but if so I missed it. Thanks. Definitely worth looking into it sounds like. I will look on the good used and out-of-print sites to see if someone has it.

Posted by SeanDitmore on 5/15/2023 12:44:00 AM (view original):
Recently finished "October 1964" by David Halberstam. Really liked it. Started but haven't yet gotten far into "Summer of '49" by the same author.

Both really good and both good reads the second and third time around. I wish there were more season studies like Halberstams. I have read a few, but he was a great writer.