Posted by dino27 on 7/25/2020 7:02:00 PM (view original):
I wanted to bring attention to the absence of bronxcheer , a frequent contributor to this thread. He has been missing more then 2 weeks and was a daily participant in his amazing Mets thread. So his absence is conspicuous.
i have had serious reservations about some statements of his and certain attitudes that impinge on my world and human views but I still wish him well.
there could be a serious health issue. Hopefully it is a temporary setback and nothing more.
lets all hope for the best.

Gladly, bronxcheer is back and we wish him the very best as he deals with a health issue we are sure he will surmount.

Posted by dino27 on 7/30/2020 2:23:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dino27 on 7/25/2020 7:02:00 PM (view original):
I wanted to bring attention to the absence of bronxcheer , a frequent contributor to this thread. He has been missing more then 2 weeks and was a daily participant in his amazing Mets thread. So his absence is conspicuous.
i have had serious reservations about some statements of his and certain attitudes that impinge on my world and human views but I still wish him well.
there could be a serious health issue. Hopefully it is a temporary setback and nothing more.
lets all hope for the best.

Gladly, bronxcheer is back and we wish him the very best as he deals with a health issue we are sure he will surmount.

That’s good news! He’s back. I did see his post about his health issues. I wish him well...

Great journalist and writer Pete Hamill has passed on. I had the good fortune of reading 2 of his novels....snow in August and forever....both extremely fun and literate fantasy yarns.

he was walking with RFK when he was shot by a maniac and killed. He was one of those that was comforting RFK before he died. I think he may have helped subdue sirhan sirhan.

My current summer reading is The Idiot by Dostoyevsky. Fascinating with so many characters, their traits, personalities. It shows human nature in every form.

I have a lot of Davy Crockett books and Alamo books. Ever since I got the landmark books when I was a kid about him and the one about the Alamo I’ve been hooked. Got the yellow 45 and I got a coonskin cap at the Alamo.
I’ve had a Bowie knife since I was a kid too.
king of the wild frontier. Was 49 when he died. Still had s big future in politics maybe national.

Posted by coreander on 6/16/2020 10:41:00 AM (view original):
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

I've been reading John McWorter's linguistics books (he's both brilliant and entertaining on that subject; discovered him awhile ago via my wife's Great Courses DVDs) so I searched if he had published anything online recently. I came across this review of White Fragility at The Atlantic. This bit about Jackie Robinson made me laugh out loud:

For one, DiAngelo’s book is replete with claims that are either plain wrong or bizarrely disconnected from reality. Exactly who comes away from the saga of Jackie Robinson thinking he was the first Black baseball player good enough to compete with whites? “Imagine if instead the story,” DiAngelo writes, “went something like this: ‘Jackie Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.’” But no one need imagine this scenario, as others have pointed out, because it is something every baseball fan already knows.

Even non-baseball fans know this, don't they?

Anyway, if scathing reviews are your thing, this is a pretty good one. Click on the link above to read the rest.

Reads like a Robert Earl Keen song.

I am absolutely plowing through The MVP Machine: How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players , which I almost literally can't put down. I have to think everybody who reads this specific forum is the EXACT audience for this book. I thought I had a fair understanding of advanced stats and their usage, but I was barely scraping the tip of the iceberg. Plus, it makes Trevor Bauer somewhat likable, which in itself is a Pulitzer-worthy accomplishment.

I loved the new release The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice which just came out last month and I won via a raffle on Goodreads. I had no clue about the history of Hot Springs (it covers 1930-1960 so it's going to be a great nostalgia-generator for a lot of you), and anything with gambling/the mob/horse racing is right in my wheelhouse.

I finally got around to The Underground Railroad by Whitehead, which is literally a Pulitzer winner. I'm not a big fiction fan, but this was beautifully written and a joy to read, even with some depressing subject matter. Well-deserving of all of its praise. I'll check out The Nickel Boys by Whitehead next.

And I blazed through The Catcher in the Rye again (I read it every few years). Holden still cracks me up, even if that's not really the intent.

And I've hit a major wall post Civil War in Grant. I loved the first half about his campaigns in the War, but I put it down right after Appomattox and Lincoln's assassination, and haven't picked it back up in months. 1,000 pages is just too high of a hurdle for me to get through in a straight shot, as much as I've enjoyed it.

I would love to hear any recommendations on horse racing history (in lieu of fantasy and sports betting, I really got into the ponies over these past few months). A focus on the 20th century would be ideal - be it certain regions or an all-capture of the sport in America.

In that vein, this article from SI a few years ago by Bill Nack is quite possibly my single favorite article I've ever read, regardless of topic. I'd say I re-read this at least 3x per year:
https://www.si.com/longform/belmont/index.html

Posted by tpistolas on 8/11/2020 10:01:00 AM (view original):
I am absolutely plowing through The MVP Machine: How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players , which I almost literally can't put down. I have to think everybody who reads this specific forum is the EXACT audience for this book. I thought I had a fair understanding of advanced stats and their usage, but I was barely scraping the tip of the iceberg. Plus, it makes Trevor Bauer somewhat likable, which in itself is a Pulitzer-worthy accomplishment.

I loved the new release The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice which just came out last month and I won via a raffle on Goodreads. I had no clue about the history of Hot Springs (it covers 1930-1960 so it's going to be a great nostalgia-generator for a lot of you), and anything with gambling/the mob/horse racing is right in my wheelhouse.

I finally got around to The Underground Railroad by Whitehead, which is literally a Pulitzer winner. I'm not a big fiction fan, but this was beautifully written and a joy to read, even with some depressing subject matter. Well-deserving of all of its praise. I'll check out The Nickel Boys by Whitehead next.

And I blazed through The Catcher in the Rye again (I read it every few years). Holden still cracks me up, even if that's not really the intent.

And I've hit a major wall post Civil War in Grant. I loved the first half about his campaigns in the War, but I put it down right after Appomattox and Lincoln's assassination, and haven't picked it back up in months. 1,000 pages is just too high of a hurdle for me to get through in a straight shot, as much as I've enjoyed it.

thanks! Added the first two to my "TBR" lists.

Currently reading Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America by Cameron McWhirter. It's a narrative history of America's deadliest episode of race riots and lynchings and how they stirred the later 20th century civil rights movement. Very eye-opening, and so very pertinent to understanding our current times.

After going back to read the original Ian Fleming James Bond books, in sequence, this is a bit more food for my brain. We'd stayed at the ultra-luxurious Goldeneye Resort in Jamaica last year (remember when we could still travel to exotic locations, let alone anywhere?!), which was the base from which Fleming wrote all of the Bond books. After picking up and reading Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica in the resort gift shop, I got interested in the original Bond novels, which although mysogynistic and full of cringe-worthy 1950s-era racial under- and overtones, are fun reads. If you've never read them, the James Bond in print is totally different from the one-dimensional playboy-spy persona projected on the big screen. He has layers and emotions, and is touchingly fallible. Quick 250-page reads. So, far, I've made it through the first 6-7 of them.

And, if you're looking for something entertaining and quirky... try Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park. From the book's blurb: "The outlandish, hilarious, terrifying, and almost impossible-to-believe story of the legendary, dangerous amusement park where millions were entertained and almost as many bruises were sustained, told through the eyes of the founder's son. Often called "Accident Park," "Class Action Park," or "Traction Park," Action Park was an American icon. Entertaining more than a million people a year in the 1980s, the New Jersey-based amusement playland placed no limits on danger or fun, a monument to the anything-goes spirit of the era that left guests in control of their own adventures--sometimes with tragic results. Though it closed its doors in 1996 after nearly twenty years, it has remained a subject of constant fascination ever since, an establishment completely anathema to our modern culture of rules and safety. Action Park is the first-ever unvarnished look at the history of this DIY Disneyland, as seen through the eyes of Andy Mulvihill, the son of the park's idiosyncratic founder."

Up next, Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend by Larry Tye.