I'm not sure I want to spend any sort of time writing a "review" of The Book of Basketball mostly because this Deadspin review says just about everything that needs to be said about Simmons and TBOB (thanks, Wasko).
But, a few random sort of thoughts on the book:
- A better title for the book probably would've been Everything I've Ever Thought About Basketball.
- There has been a lot of manufactured discussion by Simmons/ESPN/whoever about the length of the book and my thoughts are this: length isn't an issue if you have 700 pages worth of stuff to say. Simmons, in my opinion, did not have 700 pages worth of stuff to say. This becomes VERY apparent if you read the book all at once. It is highly, highly, repetitive.
- An extension of the second note: don't read the book all at once, keep it in the bathroom.
Grade: D (probably a B- if I hadn't read it all at once)
Next Up: Probably going to get back and try and finish The Dumbest Generation and/or the last three essays in DFW's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.
1. The Inner Game of Tennis | Timothy Gallwey (134 pages) | A
2. The Last Shot | Darcy Frey (240 pages) | A+
3. The Road | Cormac McCarthy (287 pages) | A+
4. Outliers | Malcolm Gladwell (299 pages) | C+
5. The Last Season | Phil Jackson (304 pages) | B-
6. The Sunset Limited | Cormac McCarthy (160 pages)| B-
7. The Education of a Coach | David Halberstam (288 pages)| B+
8. Downtown Owl | Chuck Klosterman | (288 pages)| B
9. Can I Keep My Jersey?| Paul Shirley| (336 pages)|C-
10. Then We Came to The End| Joshua Ferris| (416 pages)|B+
11. Friday Night Lights| H.G. Bissinger|(400 pages)|A++
12. Strokes of Genius| L. Jon Wertheim|(208 pages)|B
13. Who's Your City| Richard Florida|( 345 pages)|C
14. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men| (336 pages)|A
15. The Book of Basketball| Bill Simmons|(736 pages)|C-
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment