He’s been in the bigs for less than four weeks, but it’s already pretty clear that Bryce Harper, the Washington Nationals’ uber-hyped new outfielder, is on a trajectory to superstardom. Still, that doesn’t mean he deserves a biography quite yet. Yardley agrees. He’s pretty harsh: “‘The Last Natural’ is an absolutely preposterous title and Miech, a longtime sports writer, is at best a pedestrian stylist.” He does give Miech credit for doing his homework, but the writing appears to be unforgivable. Maybe when Harper’s been around long enough to mature as a player, he’ll get a biography to match.
Man, this review is pretty awesome. Maslin lays into this guy–who actually has a fair amount of cred–pretty heavily. Even without Maslin’s commentary the book sounds like a hack-job tea party cash-in. Maslin lays on the sarcasm right from the get-go:
“The Amateur” by Edward Klein is a book about an inept, arrogant ideologue who maintains an absurdly high opinion of his own talents even as he blatantly fails to achieve his goals. Oh, and President Obama is in this book too.
The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom, by Christopher Healy. Reviewed by Susan Carpenter (Los Angeles Times).
This book, which “challenges every presumption readers have ever had not only about Cinderella’s savior but about the nameless princes who brought enduring bliss to other fairy tales’ forever-young heroines,” sounds pretty cheeky, but could also be pretty charming (pardon the pun) if pulled off right. A send-up to classic fairy tales? I’m at least intrigued. And it sounds like he sneaks a little scholarship in the back door. Worth a deeper look.
Jenny Lawson is an insane person. It’s a wonder her husband hasn’t drowned himself. Of course, when you’re talking about a memoir by someone who has zero historical impact on the world, insane is good, because insane is entertaining.
Here’s the plot of Lawson’s book: she grew up, went to college, got married, had a kid. She and her husband both work from home in Texas. And occasionally she’ll do weird things like buy a giant metal rooster welded together from oil drums. She’s got a thing for taxidermy (note the dead rat Hamlet on the cover). There aren’t any lessons to be learned from her, or deep insight to be gleaned. Luckily, she is very funny. Lines that seem to come out of left field are plentiful, like this:
I just bought a fifty-year-old Cuban alligator dressed as a pirate.
If you’d listened to our most recent podcast (you didn’t, because the recording got messed up, so you might never hear it at all), you would have heard me say this was a Sherlock Holmes-y book that was sort-of-but-not-really steampunk. I was half correct; full of airships and clockwork automatons and laudanum benders and Queen Victoria on an artificial lung crafted from bellows, it’s squarely steampunk. But to define it as that would be to sell it really short. Rather than relying on the setting, Mann writes a good story, leaving the setting to seep in around the edges.
Before we go any further, I have a confession to make. There’s a blight on my reader’s record, a mark of shame I really need to correct. I’ve never read any of the Sherlock Holmes books. From what I’ve picked up (thanks mostly to Gregory House), this book shares a lot in common with Doyle’s beloved mysteries.
I actually picked this book up last week, based on this funny blog entry by Lawson (a pro blogger who calls herself The Bloggess). I’ve only read the first twenty or so pages, but I already know I’m probably going to like it. She’s got a sort of bitter playfulness to her sense of humor. Kelly certainly seems impressed, comparing her to David Sedaris. I’ll have my own review in a few weeks and I’ll tell you where I come down.
People sang the praises of Mantel’s last work, Wolf Hall, from the rooftops. It won the Man Booker Prize, amongst others. I started this novel about the court of Henry VIII, but it never grabbed me so I abandoned the pursuit. But in her review, Powers makes a compelling case to why you should read both Wolf Hall, and this, its sequel.
If that’s not enough monarchic politics for you, here’s a book on Henry VII. Owchar makes repeated reference to the Game of Thrones show on HBO (as well as Martin’s books), with regards to political maneuvering. But the line between GoT and the War of the Roses was one originally drawn by Martin, so I suppose it’s apt. (This is a double review, also touching on a graphic novelization of GoT, so that’s the incentive for Owchar’s connection.) The Penn portion of the review is heavy on the history, as the book surely is, but it’s certainly interesting if you’re into this kind of thing.
This is my third pick in a row with somewhat musty subject matter, but it’s also rather fascinating. It documents an art collector’s quest to prove a painting he purchased was actually painted by perhaps the most famous artist in history. There appears, however, to be a bit more depth than you might expect from such a book, with Silverman relating his own compulsion to exert “much effort, and lots and lots of money, into what is in the end a very expensive hobby.”
Max Allan Collins, it seems, is making a habit of rewriting “lost” manuscripts left to him by deceased crime writers and releasing them with his name ahead of the original author. A little weird, but to his credit, this is the second such work of his I have read, and the second that I enjoyed.
Lady, Go Die! (it’s a cludgy reference to Lady Godiva, let’s get that out of the way) is a sequel to the very first of Mickey Spillane’s famous Mike Hammer books–I suppose the former sequel is now the third in the series. As you might expect, it’s a hard-boiled gumshoe mystery, full of gansters and goons, underground casinos, pretty women with chips on their shoulders, and murder. This book walks the genre line faithfully, so don’t expect anything groundbreaking or revelatory, but if you want a quick-to-read mystery full of fistfights and cheesy wisecracks, this certainly delivers. … Continue reading »
A direct follow-up to Connolly’s wonderful 2009 book, The Gates, Infernals delivers everything you could want from a sequel. It’s another great adventure, and delivers all the wacky characters and narratorial humor that made the first book so exceptional.
After helping to save the world from an invasion from Hell, Samuel Johnson, with his trusty dog Boswell by his side, is trying to get back to a normal life. It doesn’t last long. The leader of the failed invasion, Mrs. Abernathy (formerly the demon Ba’al before he was trapped in the possessed body of Samuel’s elderly neighbor), seethes in Hell. The Great Malevolence–Satan–has fallen into a weepy melancholy following the defeat, leaving the underworld open to a tumultuous civil war.
Abernathy, in an attempt to restore her standing as Hell’s #2 demon, as well as save her own hide by preventing the traitorous demon Abignor from usurping rule, manages to open a small portal to Earth long enough to capture poor Samuel and Boswell. They will be an offering to restore the spirits of The Great Malevolence.
Robinson is a fantastic author. Her essays are no doubt as great as her novels. I really like her notion here that, at least to her, “lonesomeness means the opposite of isolation,” instead allowing for a means of appreciating the world that surrounds her. It sounds, however, that this book of essays might be a little too Christian-focused for my taste, but her skill with words will likely make up for that. To be honest, I really mostly want to read this one because of the title.
This review is pretty funny, mostly from all the quotes it pulls from this book. Langella shares the dirt on a slew of Hollywood icons, most dead and/or from a bygone era. Still, this book looks worth a look. I mean, who wouldn’t want to hear about how he and Raul Julia teamed up on Jill Clayburghfor “a pulsating Oreo cookie with nothing remotely chaste about where our hands and mouths wandered”?
It’s a little tough to believe there wasn’t a whole lot of drugs involved in this one. Nica, a young British aristocrat in the late 40s, hears a Thelonious Monk album, and promptly decides to walk out on her husband and 5 kids, and spend the next 36 years more or less as a jazz groupie. The book’s nonfiction, written by Nica’s great niece. Sounds pretty crazy, but could be a fun read.
Dirk Hayhurst’s previous outing, The Bullpen Gospels, was a success largely due to its ability to relate a deeper life story through the framework of a minor league baseball season. The book was not without its flaws; namely, it didn’t have much of a narrative arc. Still its effortless humor and sentimentality made for a charming memoir that was one of my favorites of last year.
Out of My League, a direct followup, addresses the shortcomings of its predecessor, but falls a little short of recapturing what worked so well before. It’s a very good book, just one that suffers from trying a little too hard.
Where to even begin with this book? This novel, if you want to call it that, is brilliant, perplexing, uproarious, and a little bit sad. One thing is certain: this is a superb bit of writing, and example of a writer at the top of his game, whose abilities with the written word put many of his contemporaries to shame. The rest is pretty much up for interpretation. If you want to glean more than just pretty bits of style from this book, come in prepared to to use parts of your brain you probably haven’t exercised in a while.
The Last Natural, by Roy Miech. Reviewed by Jonathan Yardley (Washington Post).
