Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Let's Book Club!: Education of a Coach by David Halberstam


I promise I'm not making this up... I've actually read all these books... I haven't had my computer, and I've been sitting on the couch reading for the last 4 days or so.

David Halberstam's take on Belichick is basically this: he is successful because he works/worked really, really, really, hard. The book was actually a lot more of a narrative of Belichick's life than I thought it would be (despite the fact that the title is Education of a Coach - go figure), covering a great deal of the Belichick family history, their move to America from Croatia, and Bill's upbringing on the east coast as the son of a football coach.

Aside from that, it should be noted that, and this should be news to no one, that Halberstam is an awesome writer (also, he invented the comma). And, I think I actually might have enjoyed this a little more than his masterpiece Breaks of the Game (about the 19--? Portland Trailblazers) if only because the only people I knew on that team were Kermit Washington (famous for the Rudy Tomjonavich punch) and Bill Walton (not actually on the team, left the year before).

All told, the book would've been somewhere near 100 times more interesting if it had been written after the Patriots cheating scandal, but, with Halberstam being dead (R.I.P.) and all that may not have worked out so well.

Grade: B+

Up next:
Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman... to the best of my knowledge he hasn't written fiction before (at least that I've read) so, it'll be interesting to see how this goes...

Apologies for any spelling mistakes, but I've had a couple of glasses of wine and I'm no mood for editing.

3 comments:

Jesse said...

Actually, I didn't notice any typos. Which makes the post about 100x cleaner than any of Kyle's.

ack said...

I really liked Downtown Owl... It's an easy read, but you really get into the characters.

The R.O.B. said...

Rosie... cold as ice...

Ack: Cool, I'm starting to get into it now, and, I've gotta say, I really don't mind Klosterman doing fiction as much as I thought I would... After hearing him on a few BS (Bill Simmons) Podcasts I think he's a pretty neat dude.