books Page 4 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Jonathan Franzen Wants To Bone Pip, I Think?
So Jonathan Franzen is doing kind of a weird thing in the early going of Purity, his latest novel. He’s not the first author to do a version of this weird thing, but the particular way he’s doing it, at least so far, made me want to write about it now, before I’ve finished the entire book....
Married To Surfing: Talking to William Finnegan About His <i>Barbarian Days</i>
I picked up William Finnegan’s surf memoir Barbarian Days on a beach this summer, and felt—I was stoned, the sky was astounding, the waves were delirious—that I’d fallen into an almost violent communion. As with the excerpts previously published in The New Yorker, where Finnegan’s been a staff write...
The Best And Worst Of Dr. Seuss
I read a lot of children’s books. Some are terrible, many are decent, and a few are truly wonderful. Most authors don’t have the staying power to slot multiple entries in all three categories while achieving worldwide fame and fortune; in fact, Dr. Seuss is the only one that comes to mind....
How The Dodgers Got Baseball's Last Buried Treasure
The following is excerpted from The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse. ...
Daniel Bryan's <i>Yes! </i>Is The Worked Shoot Of Wrestling Books
Late in Yes!, the new memoir from the great pro wrestler Daniel Bryan, there’s a moment where Bryan comes to an epiphany about what he’s doing in the WWE—the place where he’s been employed since 2009: “I came to the realization that what we were doing in WWE was no longer pro wrestling,” he writes. ...
<i>Go Set A Watchman </i>Isn't A Good Book, But It Is An Important One
If it weren’t for the circumstances surrounding Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, the novel’s deep flaws might pass by unnoticed. It began life as a private manuscript that, after much editing, became 1960’s critically acclaimed and universally beloved To Kill a Mockingbird, and the two share the same...
Hey, You Don't Have To Read Harper Lee's New Book
So Go Set a Watchman, the second book about the main characters from the 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, comes out today. That’s the safest way to write that sentence: It permits, I think, all the abundant uncertainty and controversy. This is a book, written by someone, about those characters, and...
Who Has The Best Super-Dick At Comic Con?
The 2015 Comic Con floor is open, which means hundreds of thousands of fans will soon be filing in to talk with comic creators, buy sweet commissioned drawings at Artist’s Alley, and, of course, check out some statues of superheroes wearing skintight costumes that show off their dick bulges. Deadspi...
This Blackhawks Flipbook Is Neat
Via Puck Daddy, a flipbook of the Blackhawks’ Cup-clinching Game 6....
Only the Lonely
Over at The New York Review of Books, check out this essay by the late Mark Strand on Edward Hopper:...
Ty Cobb Was No One's Antihero
For no obvious reason, 2015 has become the summer of Ty Cobb. Two new books about the famously belligerent outfielder are in print this year, one from SI editor Charles Leerhsen and another, more ambitiously-subtitled one—War on the Basepaths: The Definitive Biography of Ty Cobb—by independent histo...
How Augusta National Became Golf's North Korea
The following is excerpted from Slaying the Tiger: A Year Inside the Ropes on the New PGA Tour....
Allen Iverson Has Destroyed The Legacy Of Allen Iverson
As it turns out, the way you stop Allen Iverson is with cheap domestic beer and a good divorce lawyer. Journalist Kent Babb published a biography of the former superstar this week (I recommend it), and there are stories in it about Iverson being, at times, a complete shitbag. To wit:...
What Happens To Enforcers When Hockey Uses Them Up?
More winter Friday nights than not through my first few years of high school, I was in my usual seat at the local arena, three or four rows up behind the home team's bench. On the ice, the Ontario Hockey League's Ottawa 67's, a group of—boys, really, aged 16 to 20. A handful of them would go on to...
How One Of America's Greatest Sportswriters Disappeared
It was almost endearing how an ink-smudged, deadline-addicted newspaper editor of yore would squint through the smoke from his cigarette and ask a bright young man why the hell he wanted to write sports. An editor like that was usually about as sensitive as a bolt cutter, but he couldn't resist th...
Vladimir Guerrero Had Hubris, And He Had Balls
The following is excerpted from Jonah Keri's Up, Up, & Away: The Kid, The Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, Le Grand Orange, Youppi!, The Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos, a wonderful and definitive account of Montreal's much-lamented baseball team. The book w...
How Monopoly Helped Win World War II
In her book The Monopolists, Mary Pilon explores the secret origins of the game Monopoly, which begin with Lizzie Magie, a forgotten feminist who patented her Landlord's Game in 1904—not, as many think, a man during the Great Depression....
Don't Read These Beloved Children's Books To Your Kids
I’m a stay-at-home dad with two kids. My daughter is seven, but before she was old enough to go to preschool, I watched her when she was awake and worked odd hours from home while she slept. My son is two, and we’re on the same schedule, except that I’ve recently joined the jobless recovery, so now...
Holiday Gift Guide: Art Books For All Sorts Of People
I come from a bookish family. We didn't just read books, we owned them. It was no small thing, having your own collection. This was my father's side of the family, Manhattanites with overflowing bookcases and the seeming inability to throw anything away. When it came time for a birthday or the holi...
