OS Book Club Pt II

[Beantown]

Just finished book one(of five) of Dean Koontz's Frankenstein series.

Was an awesome book. Going to start book two momentarily.

[royals19]

Just finished reading a couple nice books on my Kindle Fire.

The first was The Red Sox Years, Terry Francona's synopsis of his time in Boston. It was really, really insightful as far as how the behind the scenes stuff unfolded. Basically, the book was told from Francona's perspective with insight from then GM Theo Epstein and the ownership group as well as a few of the players. The whole book was essentially detailing how Boston got themselves into the mess of 2011-2012 and created "The Monster." Without spoiling too much, they basically outsmarted themselves and the Baseball Operations department didn't have enough of a spine to say no to ownership. Essentially, the collapse was brought on by TV ratings which had declined 33% since 2007 and the ownership group's unwaivering stance that Theo and Terry do whatever it took to raise the ratings. In turn, that prompted the Carl Crawford signing and the Adrian Gonzalez trade. The book was extremely insightful as to how baseball in Boston works and how all that behind the scenes stuff impacted baseball in Boston. Great book.

The second book was The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway has always been my favorite author and I'd seen the movie of this book and was therefore prompted to read the book. Some might think it's boring because it's basically all about this guy from Cuba who goes fishing and his incredible journey in the Caribbean chasing a Marlin of unbelievable proportions. Overall, I was enticed by the relaxing nature of the book and just the overall story. It sounds like it would be boring but this book had me hooked the whole way through.

[JeremyB]

Just finished a few recently

Moneyball by Michael Lewis ( Read it every ball season )
Life in the fast lane by Steve Matchett
Strat O Fanatics by Glenn Guzzo

Thinking about tackling the Bill James baseball historical abstract ( the revised version ) now,lol

[AC]

Just finished To Kill a Mockingbird for school. Didn't like the beginning too much but as the book progressed it got really good and the trial was just masterfully written.

Next up is probably Paper Towns by John Green, and after that is likely something by Eric Walters or Robert J. Sawyer. Need to find time to fit in Bigger Than the Game and Wild Pitches by Dirk Hayhurst, too.

[Perfect Zero]

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books of all time, and the movie with Gregory Peck is very well done too.

I just got done reading "The First Clash," which is an analysis of the lead-up to and including the Battle of Marathon. It is an interesting book for people who are interested in history, and it's very well written. Right now I have "Pages from Baseball's Past" which is a collection of short stories from Craig Wright.

Spoiler

I want to say the whole title because Eric deserves it... one of the greatest broadcasters in the history of the game.

National Baseball Hall of Fame Broadcaster Eric Nadel used to do a radio version of Wright's stories, and the book is really easy to read. I highly recommend it.

On deck is "Crazy '08," which is about the 1908 Major League Baseball season. Should be fun...

[AC]

Tell me about Crazy '08! Sounds interesting.

[Mo]

Just finished Dirk Hayhurst new book, Bigger than the Game. Very good read. The part on Triple H was fun.


Next I'm gonna start a JD Salinger binge. Franny and Zooey is first.



Now for the ugly part, a friend of mine wrote this,

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...s-of-september

Murder/mystery.
Give it a read if you're into that.

[redsrule]

Finished the third book of the Jack Reacher series recently. I guess after reading a few of these it makes sense that people were saying the casting of Tom Cruise was off for the movie. I need to pick up the next couple because I read that one in a couple days.