The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life by Steven Pressfield

'It's not about golf,' said the student to this teacher.

Originally published in 1995.

The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life was on the shelf in my classroom. I hadn't read it yet and was discussing it with one of my students who was looking for something to read. I had suggested it to him since he is a fan of many sports. He said he'd already read it. I told him I had not, since I am not a fan of golf. He looked at me like I was a small, silly child and said, 'It's not about golf.'

At that moment, I determined to read this book. So, this was my first free choice of a book this summer and I enjoyed it.

First things first. You do not have to understand golf to understand the book. The golf match is merely the vehicle to move the story forward. When Bagger Vance encourages his pupil to find his 'authentic swing' I simply inserted my own experiences with baseball to understand the feeling.

Steven Pressfield

Secondly, the book is full of eastern philosophy. It's an interesting dichotomy - the American South during the Great Depression and Hinduism. Search 'Bhagavid-Gita, Bagger Vance' on the search engine of your choice and you'll find it laid out quite nicely on many, many sites.

So, my final grade: 4 stars. Not Pressfield's best work but still quite interesting and well done.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life by Steven Pressfield.

Reviewed on June 4, 2006.

The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (abridged audiobook) by Jane Smiley

An interesting look at the 1850s in the Kansas Territory through the eyes of a young woman.

Published by Random House Audio in 1998.
Read by Mare Winningham.
Lasts about 5 hours.
Abridged.

I purchased the abridged version of The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton on tape (5 hours) and found it to be quite enjoyable. The listener is treated to a ground level view of the politics of slavery in the 1850s and how violence based on the 'goose question' (code for the slavery issue) swept through households, towns and eventually the entire Kansas Territory.

Smiley's characters are not simple cardboard cutouts - some of the pro-slavery people are quite nice, some of the anti-slavery people are quite insane (she mentions 'Old Brown' and his atrocities and his actions cause some dissent in Liddie Newton's household).

Many readers have complained of the plodding pace. Although my version was abridged from 18 hours to 5 hours, there were still some plodding moments. However, the superb reading by Mare Winningham spared the listener from most of those moments. She is able to express so much emotion and humor with her voice that I found myself forgetting that Mare Winningham is a modern actress. She sounds like she is an older woman telling of her sad, profound trip through a bit of American history.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley.

Reviewed on May 30, 2006.

The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon

Revealing. Fascinating. Educational. A valuable experience. A+++

Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2003.

Have you ever wondered what it might be like to see the world through the perspective of someone whose mind works much different than your own? How different? Do you want to visit a mind that has different opinions and points of view? What about someone whose mind works in a fundamentally different way than yours? How about someone whose mind perceives the world differently than almost everyone you have met in your entire life?

The wonderful thing about a work of fiction is that the reader can be transported into the mind of anyone and see the world as it might be seen from another's point of view. There are no constraints. Elizabeth Moon has done just that in her novel The Speed of Dark.

Elizabeth Moon

As it proceeds, The Speed of Dark does bring up many important themes and holds its own on matters such as the rights of the individual to be the person he or she wants to be, tolerance and the inherent value to society of people who think differently. Perhaps most importantly, she does give the reader just a taste of what it might be like to experience the world as a person with autism sees it.

Moon's motivations for attempting this novel are readily apparent. Moon has a son who is a young adult with autism. Already an established, award-winning author of science-fiction, Moon decided to put her investigative energies into learning as much as she could about autism and learning about the world as seen by people with autism. The result is The Speed of Dark, a fascinating novel featuring a man named Lou Arrendale living approximately 35 years in the future.

The strength of the book is that most of it is told from the first-person perspective of Lou, a man who has autism. Lou is very high functioning: he has an apartment, a job and good friends both in and out of the autistic community. He is entirely independent and is incredibly intelligent. Lou lives in a future in which autism has been cured. Children born with autism receive treatment when they are two years old and their brains develop and they are nearly indistinguishable from those that Lou calls `normals.'

However, Lou was too old to receive the treatment when it was developed. Instead, his parents made sure he was enrolled in the best training programs possible so that he could learn what was expected out of a member or society as a whole. Lou was a very good student and he learned to read the social cues that the `normals' pick up and send throughout the day. Rather than instantly recognizing them, Lou must recall them as isolated facts and respond to them with much thought since these gestures, facial expressions and idioms have no innate meaning to Lou. His experiences and confusion bring to mind the experiences of many foreign travelers who must re-learn all of the gestures and social cues of a new culture as they travel. On top of this, Lou struggles with the reality that normals expect him and his friends with autism to respond and behave `normally', even though normals themselves often do not behave normally.

We learn about Lou and his life and the difficult choice he must make when he is offered the chance to change his life forever and take a part in an experimental surgery to make his brain 'normal.' Guaranteed to make you think.

One of the best books I have read  - period.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. Highly recommended.

This book can be found in multiple formats on Amazon.com here: The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon.

Reviewed on May 29, 2006.

The King of Torts (audiobook) by John Grisham

Grisham continues with a trend previously established

Published by Random House Audio in 2003.
Read by Michael Beck
Duration: 11 hours, 43 minutes.
Unabridged.

Grisham's The King of Torts continues the trend that he started in other books such as The Chamber and The Runaway Jury. The book isn't really about the characters or the plot. Instead, it's a easy to swallow education into how the legal system actually works.

In The Chamber the reader sees how death penalty cases work in detail. In The Runaway Jury the readers sees how a civil jury trial works in detail - from selection of the court venue to clothing worn by the attorneys to jury selection specialists.

In The King of Torts we learn all about how the class action lawsuit works. Ever wonder how former presidential candidate John Edwards made his money? This book well give you a good idea. Grisham argues all sides of the class action lawsuit as he tells the story. It can help and hurt the little guy. It can enrich an attorney, but that's not entirely a bad thing since he's put money into telling people about bad products that injured them with no promise of an actual payoff. It can wipe out businesses, but if you've put a bad product out there why shouldn't you be hurt? Then again, wiping out a bad business still puts a lot of people out of work through no fault of their own.

Grisham argues all sides and leaves the reader to make up his or her own mind. It was a wonderful education, well-read by Michael Beck who created dozens of voices for his narration. However, the actual story was less than satisfying. The plot seemed to meander around with pointless interludes that did little to advance the plot but did take up lots of time. I gave it 3 stars - 5 for the education averaged with just 1 star for the plot. It's worth a listen, but only for the education.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: The King of Torts. 

Reviewed on November 29, 2008.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

An enjoyable read but does it do what it claims to do?

Published in 2005.

Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking is an enjoyable read - I breezed right through it and found it to be a book that I would look forward to opening up. Gladwell does a masterful job of weaving together 3 or more points at the same time without losing the reader and frequently leaving me amazed at his organizational skills.

That being said, does Blink get the job done? Does he prove his thesis about "The power of thinking without thinking"? Yes and no. He starts out with a great example of a supposed piece of Greek art that may or may not be a real piece of ancient art. His thesis plays out well there, with his comments on why certain musicians make it and others don't and his comments on police and the need to think quickly are all strong.

His arguments about Paul Van Riper and the war game he won, however, were more about the power of de-centralized decision-making versus centralized planning, in my opinion. Nonetheless, it's a good read and well worth your time.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.

Reviewed on December 6, 2008.

"J" is for Judgment (Kinsey Millhone #10) by Sue Grafton

Hits the spot

Originally published in 1993.

So, here I am reviewing an old Sue Grafton novel. What does this tell me? It could be telling me that I need to find more current things to read, but I remember 1993 just fine so this book did not feel old to me. What it really tells me is that I have not come anywhere near reading this series in alphabetical order and have never went out of my way to find them. Not that I don't like them - I have liked all but a couple. It is more like they have been my backup books when I'm needing something that I know is going to be solidly written and interesting.

In this case, I am knee deep in my summer reading marathon in which I feel I need to catch up on a bit of some of my more difficult reads in my to-be-read pile. Now, wait. I know that the Kinsey Millhone series hardly qualifies as difficult reading. This book was an easy one in the middle - dessert, so to speak.

Sue Grafton

"J" is for Judgment features Kinsey Millhone's search for a man who was presumed to have committed suicide because of a horrible financial situation by throwing himself off of a boat at sea. But, years later, he is spotted at a resort city in Mexico. Kinsey Millhone is hired by the insurance company to go and find him, if she can so that they can get their money back - you don't pay out a life insurance policy for a guy who is not dead.

Kinsey heads off to Mexico and, of course, opens up a whole can of worms. She also, incidentally, gets herself involved in one of the funnier scenes that I have read for a while in a neighbor's hotel room. In a separate storyline, this is the book in which Kinsey discovers her long lost relatives.

Rather than insert a lot of spoilers, let me say that "J" is for Judgment hit the spot - a good mystery, a chance to re-connect with Kinsey Millhone and a couple of good laughs along the way.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: "J" is for Judgment (Kinsey Millhone #10) by Sue Grafton.

Reviewed on June 27, 2011.

Where Lincoln Walked by Raymond Bial

Great introduction to Lincoln for children

Published by Walker Childrens in 2008.

Where Lincoln Walked is a wonderful little history mostly about Lincoln's pre-Presidential life. Lots of beautifully shot full color pictures of such places as Lincoln's mother's home in Kentucky, Lincoln's boyhood home in southern Indiana and his law offices in Springfield. The author, Raymond Bial, took most of these pictures himself. He has a good eye for photography and does a great job with the text and the captions.

Recommended for budding young history buffs, classrooms and the hardcore Lincoln collectors.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Where Lincoln Walked.

Reviewed on December 6, 2008.