Book Recommendations: Baseball Edition

I don't know about you, but I am thrilled that baseball season is finally here (even if my team is 0-2). With that in mind, I thought I would briefly discuss the baseball book I just read and the baseball book I am currently reading. (I have to be brief because I can't stop yawning. I think the Phillies' sleepy offense made me sleepy.)

• Just a Minor Perspective: Through the Eyes of a Minor League Rookie by Eric Pettis - I bought this book a year ago and it sat in my Kindle app while I read Jane Austen and lots of excellent YA fiction. I never forgot about it, though, and decided to finally start reading it during Spring Training. Pettis, a former Phillies pitching prospect, tells the story of his first year in professional baseball. I was attracted to the book by Pettis' Phillies connection but also by its subject matter. I am fascinated by the lives of professional baseball players at any level, but particularly the minors. The Mike Trouts and Bryce Harpers of the world give fans a skewed idea of prospects; most guys toil for years before they get a chance in the big leagues and, unfortunately, even more guys never get that chance because they're cut from the organization for one reason or another. This book provides a look at the minor leagues that most fans would never get otherwise; I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the minor leagues and minor league players' lives.
• Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong by the Baseball Prospectus Team of Experts - Since becoming interested in baseball I've wanted to learn more about advanced statistics. I'd seen many different people online cite this book as a great beginning resource for advanced stats. I'm not quite halfway through the book yet, but I concur with that assessment. While the book is about statistics it is not about math; the statistics are explained at a high level and the point is not what the statistics say but what they mean. I'm looking forward to finishing the book and will probably read the follow-up, Extra Innings, someday.

Book Recommendations: Not YA Edition

What do you call books that aren't YA books? I don't like calling them "adult" books because that seems to imply that the books in question are x-rated. Trust me, I'm not recommending Fifty Shades of Grey. I actually read Fifty Shades of Grey last year, too, but I would never recommend it to anyone because it's terrible; it's poorly written and has a boring narrator. In other words, it reads like the erotic Twilight fan fiction it started out as. But I digress wildly; the point of this post is to recommend books not tear them down.

• Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield Park by Jane Austen - I decided to lump these together so I wouldn't end up writing six bullet points about my love for Jane Austen. I normally re-read an Austen novel or two every year, but last year I decided to read all six completed novels over the summer. It was a good decision. I've listed them here in the order in which I rank them, but I suggest you read or re-read them all and come up with your own ranking. Austen's novels are also incredibly popular fodder for adaptations; I've seen great (and at least one terrible) movies of each of these books.
• All Roads Lead to Austen: A Yearlong Journey with Jane by Amy Elizabeth Smith - I used this book to put a bow on my Austen re-reading. Smith decided to take a sabbatical from her position as a university professor to travel through South America, holding impromptu Jane Austen reading groups in each country she visited. Part travelogue, part literary discussion - this book is a great read. I ended up reading it in two days. I think it helps to be familiar with the Austen novels Smith discussed with her groups (Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice), but it's not necessary; my mom also enjoyed this book and she isn't a Janeite.
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - I read this book for my YA class, but I'm including it here because it was never marketed as a YA book. When I finished this book (at 2 in the morning, mind you) I wrote a Facebook message to my old roommate who'd lent it to me that simply said, "The Book Thief. Holy crap." Frankly, I'm disappointed that it took me so long to read it (it was released in 2007). It took a little while for me to get used to the narrator's voice (in my defense, Death is kind of a strange narrator), but once I got the hang of it I was mesmerized by the story. So thanks, old roommate, for lending me this book :)

I also enjoyed Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner. Somehow I'm always a year or two behind when reading Weiner's novels even though she's one of my favorite authors.

Book Recommendations: YA Edition

I'm finally getting around to some of my promised book recommendations. I read so many good books in 2012 that I have to split my recommendations up between YA and not YA. I read each of the below books for my YA literature course. I think only one of them was actually published in 2012, but they were all new to me. They're listed in the order in which I read them.

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green - This was the first book I read for the course and it set a really high bar for the 23 books that came after it. This book found its way to a lot of "best of the year" lists and deservedly so. Teenagers Hazel and Augustus meet at a support group for young cancer patients and fall in love. You'll laugh (yes, really), you'll cry, you'll be glad you read it. I also fully intend to read everything else John Green has ever written.
• Princess Academy by Shannon Hale - I've read Hale's first not YA book, Austenland, several times, so I decided to check out one of her YA books for the course. I'm glad I chose this one. Miri is a fourteen-year-old girl who doesn't know where she fits in her village until she and the rest of the village girls are forced to attend a so-called princess academy. It's a sweet story with a happy ending and sometimes that's all you want from a good book.
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick - I'd seen the movie Hugo in the theater, so I had a pretty good idea of the story. But I was completely unprepared for the way Selznick tells the story in the book. There's a visual aspect to the storytelling that is unlike anything I'd ever seen before and is incredibly compelling. I'd probably recommend this book on that alone, but the story is also very good.
• The Giver by Lois Lowry - I was so entranced by this story that I read the book in one day (practically one sitting). Apparently this book is often assigned in high school, but it wasn't in mine. And more's the pity. This is a deceptively simple story about a deceptively perfect world and it stayed with me long after I finished it.
• Amy & Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson - Of the 52 books I read last year, this is the one most likely to be slapped with the dreaded "chick lit" label. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I don't mind reading chick lit any more than I mind watching chick flicks or listening to emo. I do wish we could strip the pejorative connotation from "chick lit," though (and "chick flicks" and "emo," for that matter). The odds that I will re-read this book someday are high, which is one of the highest forms of praise I can give a book.
• Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson - This historical novel is set during the yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia in 1793. This is a really good, fast-paced story, but I'm also recommending it because I feel like this is an episode in early American history that isn't well-known. I'd never heard of it until I read this book and I'm a native of the Delaware Valley; heck, I was in middle school during the 200th anniversary, it should at least have been mentioned in passing. The author blurb on the book states that Anderson first became aware of the outbreak when she saw something about the anniversary on the Philly local news, but she must have been watching PBS or something (we got all of our news from 6ABC).

I also really enjoyed Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire and Mockingjay.

Drift Continued

Having finished Rachel Maddow's Drift, I can say with all confidence that I was right to recommend it yesterday.

The first eight chapters of the book, which discuss the decisions and actions that led to us becoming "a nation 'at peace with being at war'" (Maddow, 2012, p. 246), are disturbing. But the final chapter, which discusses our nuclear weapons program - past and present, is downright horrifying. Funny too, but in that if-I-don't-laugh-I'll-cry way.

One would think that, having spent eight trillion dollars (that's a lot of zeroes) on our nuclear arsenal, the air force would take better care of it. Or at least be more careful with it. (Side note: The air force base in Minot, ND comes up quite a bit in the chapter. I've known such a base existed for almost a decade, but I had no idea that it housed a lot of our nukes. You see, Minot is also home to a call center for the insurance company I used to work for; every once in a while one of my contacts would leave because his or her spouse was transferred.) At least the 21st-century stories are funny in their ineptitude. (Although the fact that I'm using the word "inept" to describe the airmen who work with our nukes is chilling.) The stories from the Cold War are just scary. It is something of a miracle that we haven't unleashed nuclear annihilation unintentionally.

Maddow's not all doom and gloom, though. In the epilogue she proposes a to-do list of items that could walk the country back to a place that is more in line with the founders' intentions. Although she suggests that the items on her list are actionable, I am less sanguine. The thing I know for sure, though, is that nothing will get done if the public doesn't start paying attention and asking questions.

Maddow, R. (2012). Drift: The unmooring of American military power. Crown Publishers: New York.

Book Recommendation: Drift

I'm currently reading Rachel Maddow's Drift, which I've wanted to read since it was published earlier this year. I even bought a copy with an Amazon gift card I received for my birthday, but it languished on my bedside table while I re-read Jane Austen this summer and then read 24 YA books for my YA literature class. It's not a particularly sad book (unless you consider the systematic dissolution of every structural, legal, and legislative impediment to war in the United States to be sad), yet at one point I found myself with tears in my eyes.

I realized the culprit was the following sentence fragment: "...and thanks to public relations triumphs like the Bush administration sparing us the sight of the flag-draped caskets of dead American soldiers deplaning week after week at Dover Air Force Base...the American public has been delicately insulated from the actuality of our ongoing wars" (Maddow, 2012, pp. 206-207). More specifically, it was the vision Maddow conjured of dead American soldiers being flown into Dover AFB. It's a sad image, but that's not what struck such a chord with me. No, what moved me to tears was the connection I drew between Maddow's words and a fact I just learned about my late grandfather.

My paternal grandfather was career Navy; he's even buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was a pilot. Later in his career he was a flight instructor, but he flew bombers in World War II and Korea. He mostly flew cargo planes during Vietnam. I've known all of this for years; what I just learned was that his cargo planes were flying in and out of Dover. According to my dad and aunt, he never told anyone that he was flying dead kids into Dover, but my grandmother could tell. How could she not? How could such an assignment not take a toll on anyone?

I'd never paid much thought to how those flag-draped caskets get to Dover AFB, but now I don't think I'm going to be able to see a picture of them without thinking about the flight crew that got them there.

I have not finished the book yet, but I feel very comfortable recommending it. Maddow makes her argument in a very compelling way. Some readers won't appreciate her argument, but I believe one of her goals in publishing the book is to inspire national debate about America's war-making capabilities.

Maddow, R. (2012). Drift: The unmooring of American military power. Crown Publishers: New York.

Book Recommendations: The Uglies Series

As I indicated in my last post, I was completely entranced by the world Scott Westerfeld imagined in his Uglies series. I was so into it, in fact, that I read the entire four book series in 15 days. That's even more impressive when you consider that I was in grad school for more than half of that time, which meant that I couldn't just curl up with these books regardless of how much I wanted to.

The Uglies series takes place several hundred years from now. After humanity nearly destroyed the planet and itself by wantonly using up resources and being dependent on oil, it finally got its act together. Everyone lives in population-controlled cities (capped at one million people each) that are spread across the planet. Most consumer goods are made of plastic and recycled after use. A metallic grid under each city provides the magnetic power needed to allow the citizens' hoverboards and hovercars to fly.

These future people didn't just fix humanity's need to destroy the earth, though. They also ended prejudice. Every citizen undergoes a major operation at the age of 16 that allows him or her to fit the biological standard of beauty (symmetrical face, large eyes, full lips, clear skin, etc.). Since everyone eventually looks the same, there's no reason to hate other people for being different. In fact, the only real differentiation that happens in this society is along age lines: children are called littlies, 12-15 year olds are called uglies, once you turn 16 and have the surgery you join the new pretties, middle-aged people are called middle pretties, and the elderly are called crumblies.

The series was originally intended to be a trilogy: Uglies, Pretties, and Specials. The heroine of those three books is Tally Youngblood and the trilogy does a really good job of wrapping up Tally's story. At the start of Uglies, Tally is counting down the days to her 16th birthday so she can have the surgery and join her best friend Peris and all the other new pretties. She meets a girl named Shay, who just so happens to share her birthday. After they become friends, Shay tells Tally about a mysterious place called the Smoke; it's outside the city and the people who live there don't get the pretty surgery. It sounds horrible to Tally, but Shay is determined to run away to the Smoke. Tally refuses to leave with Shay but what happens next changes Tally's life and, eventually, Tally's world.

Like so many other dystopian sci-fi stories, the trilogy doesn't end with "and they all lived happily ever after," but it does have a hopeful ending. After having read Extras, I wish I'd ended with the original trilogy. Honestly, I wish Westerfeld had ended with the original trilogy. However, several years after writing Specials, he had an idea for a story in a world with a reputation economy. He realized he could set it in the world of Uglies several years after the end of Specials. It made a lot of sense.

I'm not saying that Extras is bad; it isn't. I just wish I'd bothered to look into it a bit before I started reading it. Had I realized that it really isn't a story about Tally, I probably wouldn't have read it. I think that was really my problem: I care deeply for Tally and several of the other characters of the original trilogy and Extras is about none of them. Sure, a bunch of them show up (eventually), but they are peripheral characters. Plus, I didn't really like Aya Fuse, the heroine of Extras. She was annoying and not Tally (and she didn't have enough redeeming features to cover up those two sins). There was also the weird sense of disorientation that came from reading a book set in a world that was not what I'd expected. (If that makes sense.)

In conclusion, I highly recommend the original trilogy of Uglies, Pretties, and Specials. However, I would probably wait a while to read Extras after finishing those three. For what it's worth, I want to buy paperback copies of the trilogy but have no intention of buying Extras.

More Book Recommendations

I had a lot of fun writing yesterday's post about The Rotation, but it's not the only good book I've read so far this year.  One of my New Years Resolutions was to read every day and I've managed to do so thus far.  I'm pretty proud of that and of the 10 books I've finished.  Below is a selection of those books, listed in the order I read them.

• Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James - Pride & Prejudice is my favorite novel and I love the veritable cottage industry of sequels that has popped up recently.  I don't care what genre a novel is, if it's a Pride & Prejudice sequel I will read it (and probably like it if it's any good).  I'd heard good things about this sequel by acclaimed mystery author James and it didn't disappoint.  If anything, it made me want to re-read Pride & Prejudice for the sixth time.
• The Magician King by Lev Grossman - Thankfully I really enjoyed this even after the clusterfudge that was my attempt at borrowing it from my local library.  Of course, it would've been helpful if I had still remembered most of The Magicians when I read this.  Do you need to have read The Magicians to follow this story?  Not at all, but I kept getting annoyed at myself for not remembering things that I knew I should've.  These two books are often called "Harry Potter for grownups" and that's a valid description, but these books aren't as derivative as that makes them seem.
• The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin - This is another book I'd heard a lot of good things about.  The novel takes place during the latter part of the Victorian era, at a time when it was incredibly common for rich American heiresses to marry into old English aristocratic families.  The English family got an influx of money and the American wife's often nouveau riche family got respectability.  The heroine is the richest heiress of her generation (and a Jane Austen fan, so I can't help but like her) and she is determined to make a love match, regardless of her mother's wishes.
• We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals by Gillian Gill - I've been fascinated by Queen Victoria's relationship with Prince Albert since Victoria showed up as a character in an episode of Doctor Who.  Shortly after that episode aired I read a very positive review of this book, which I later asked for and received for my birthday.  Unfortunately, I didn't get around to reading this book for several years.  But the Crown Prince Bertie (eventually King Edward VII) was a character in The American Heiress, which somehow reminded me of this book that was still in a moving box.  I don't remember learning much about English history after the American colonies won their independence when I was in school, so I learned a lot from this book.  And the material is not presented in a dry, textbook sort of way, so that's another plus.

Other books I've really enjoyed this year include Stephenie Meyer's The Host, Shannon Hale's Austenland, and Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games.  (I read The Hunger Games in about seven hours at the beginning of Spring Break.  I can't wait for the semester to be over so I can read Catching Fire and Mockingjay.)

Book Recommendation: The Rotation

With all of my recent talk about reading, I figured it was high time I talked about the book I'm currently reading.  The Rotation, by Jim Salisbury and Todd Zolecki, is a behind-the-scenes look at the 2011 Phillies with a focus on the much vaunted pitching staff (the Legion of Arms, the Four Aces, R2C2, whatever you wanted to call them) and I highly recommend it.

The book came out on March 6, just as spring training games were starting, and I wasn't sure if I really wanted to read it.  As a Phillies fan, the end of the 2011 season was (and still is) a bad taste in my mouth.  Why would I want to torture myself by reading about all of the potential and the excitement and the ultimate disappointment?  Didn't I just live it?  But then I kept hearing (reading) good things about the book.  And I knew that I was a fan of both Zolecki and Salisbury, two longtime Phillies beat writers.

In the end, a combination of things convinced me to buy the book.  I suppose you'd call the first thing morbid curiosity.  The second was an overwhelming desire to read a baseball book because Opening Day was fast approaching (and I mean actual Opening Day, not that series in Japan that barely counts because most people don't know it happened).  Unfortunately, I didn't have any unread baseball books.  But then my college roommate randomly gave me an Amazon gift card, solving that problem.

Regardless of why I decided to buy the book, I'm glad I did.  It is fascinating.  The peeks into the clubhouse that fans can never hope to get without somehow becoming baseball writers.  The full story of the Cliff Lee deal that brought him back to the City of Brotherlee (yes, that's intentional) Love and set up the whole crazy 2011 season.  Honestly, the Cliff Lee story alone was worth the price of the book for me.  Like most Phillies fans, I can still vividly recall Cliff Lee Day, December 14, 2010; it was a very good day.  But even knowing that the story had a happy ending, I found myself getting stressed out when reading the full tale.  I'd had no idea just how many stops and starts there were in the negotiations.

It's also fun to be reminded of things I'd read last year.  Roy Oswalt accidentally electrocuting himself and, he believes, magically healing his shoulder.  How Vance Worley began to transform himself into the Vanimal by writing "f*** you" inside his cap.  Carlos Ruiz's excellent talent for mimicry.

The book is even proving a balm for my frazzling nerves.  It's funny now to read about the Phillies' anemic offense last April.  "Their 3.25 runs per game in that 16-game stretch [from April 10-27] ranked second-to-last in the National League" (Salisbury & Zolecki, 2012, p. 138).  Of course, last year's team still managed to win ballgames and stay over .500.  They were even in first place on April 27th.  This year's team is currently 3-5 (and being under .500 is a very strange thing in this Golden Age of Phillies Baseball).  The lesson, of course, is that it could be worse (I remember being so frustrated with last year's team).  And when we get Ryan Howard and (hopefully) Chase Utley back, things will only get better.

Like I said, I highly recommend The Rotation to all baseball fans in general and Phillies fans in particular. I think there's even something in it for people who couldn't care less about baseball.


Salisbury, J., & Zolecki, T. (2012). The rotation: A season with the Phillies and one of the greatest pitching staffs ever assembled. Philadelphia: Running Press.