Decembers tend to be big book months for me. December 2014 was no exception. I finished seven books and got most of the way through an eighth.[1] Thus my final total for the year was 57 books. I’m pleased with that effort. The Rise & Fall Of Great Powers – Tom Rachman I loved Rachman’s The Imperfectionists, which was a…

Another busy month. Four books, three of them good, two very good. I’ve been saying this for years, but I really should write down my thoughts on each one when I finish them, rather than waiting until the end of the month. My apologies for the disjointed thoughts and fuzzy memories on a couple of these. The Facades – Eric…

A rash of baseball books read between games and even during commercial breaks. Wild Pitches – Jayson Stark Stark has been one of ESPN’s baseball ‘insiders’ and columnists for nearly two decades, and had been covering baseball nationally long before that. This is a collection of his favorite columns from his ESPN years. I should have read the back cover…

Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon – Matt Fraction, David Aja, Javier Pulido As you know, if you follow along with these posts faithfully, I like to give graphic novels a try a couple times each year. In this case, I went with the trade paperback of a comic series I’ve heard praised in many places. Hawkeye was supposed to…

Indian Summer – Aaron Mahnke This was an impulse purchase for the Kindle before my Kansas City trip in late July. I’ve read another of Mahnke’s books, but it was a guide to being a freelancer rather than a novel. Between that and the cheap price, my expectations were low. It ended up being pretty solid. It begins with a…

Summerland – Michael Chabon As with The Fault In Our Stars, while Summerland is officially classified as a “young adult” book, it is really a book for all ages. Especially if you love baseball and have time to read in the summer. Summerland is a bit confusing at first. But that’s not unusual for a Chabon book. In this case,…

Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion – Roger Angell Perhaps the greatest ever writer on matters related to baseball in the decade I grew up with the sport? Damn right I’m reading this! It only seems like Angell has been writing about baseball forever1. A significant chunk of his writings have come for The New Yorker, where he’s been an editor…

34-Ton Bat – Steve Rushin Here we have a book that is perfect for summer and browsing through while a baseball game buzzes in the background. Rushin tells a story of the history of baseball not through on the field actions, but rather through all the ephemera that is attached to the game. The development of uniforms, where nachos came…

I was crazy productive on the book-reading tip in April! High Fidelity – Nick Hornby Another in my series of re-reads. Apparently I bought this while in Portland, Oregon for work, Halloween week 2002. How do I know this? Well, A) I remember, silly. But also, B) one of my Delta boarding passes from that trip, that I apparently used…