Kanu's Book Club

Been meaning to review the books I read after I finish them since I added the "What I'm reading right now" link in the sidebar a while back, but World Cup and life in general got a little busy there for a while, so this first installment is going to be a 4 for 1 special.

Horse Racing's Top 100 Moments, by Staff of Blood Horse publications



Excellent book where the staff of The Bloodhorse chose and ranked the top 100 moments in horse racing history and provided a 2 to 5 page writeup on each. The interesting part is that they took a big picture approach and went beyong just races but also included breeding, technological innovations, etc. To wit - you will be suprised to find out that Secretariat's 31 length win in the 1973 Belmont came in at #4. An absolutely outstanding book that I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in horse racing. With so many short chapters this is a great book to pick up and read here and there, read a few chapters, put it down, rinse and repeat.

One word of warning is that some of the terminology might be confusing for extreme beginners to the horse game, but anyone with an advanced beginner to lower intermediate knowledge on up of racing will find it really informative. If you are brand new to racing but interested in how it works, then I might first recommend Betting On Horse Racing For Dummies which does an excellent job of explaining the sport of kings (as well as wagering) on an introductory basis.


The Thinking Fan's Guide To The World Cup, by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey



Most books about the World Cup go into mad detail and analysis of the players and matches themselves, so they tend to be interesting to hardcore soccer fans only. This book takes a different tack and attempts to convey a sense of how participating is such a big deal in so many cultures around the world. There are 32 chapters, one on each of the nations that participated. In each one you will learn 1) someting interesting about the country in general and 2) how the importance and popularity of soccer and/or the World Cup affect society in that country. Additionally for each country they list lots of interesting facts and figures from the CIA factbook, so you can get your geography and basic understanding about a country on. A great read not only for people who are hardcore into footy but also for people like Orson Swindle who only get interested in soccer once every 4 years, people like Doug Gizzle who don't really care about the game of soccer but still find the world cup compelling because of how it brings so many cultures to a stand still, and finally for people who are interested to learn a few new things about other countries and cultures.


The Motorcycle Diaries, by Ernesto "Che" Guevara



I had been wanting to read this book ever since I saw the movie when it came out. As someone whose favorite hobby is travelling and exploring new places, I found the book interesting just on that level - 2 dudes set out from Argentina to explore South America and take it as it comes. It is also interesting to sort of see the lightbulb light up over his head so to speak, knowing now what we know of who he came to be. The experiences he describes in this book basically laid the foundation for his life to come as a revolutionary. It's a pretty interesting read if you are interested in Che or if you just want to read about an international road trip by two young dudes. Forget South America on $40 a day; these guys are pretty much straight-up mooching vagabonds, relying almost exclusively on the kindness and charity of others.

The movie adaptation of this book pretty much totally romanticizes this "early Che" and presents him as a sympathetic protagonist, as Che in general seems to be romanticized by people all over as kind of a cultural icon. So it was really interesting for me to see the movie The Lost City this spring which shows a different side of Che once he had become a revolutionary who had taken over Cuba. By then he had become a "means to an end" ideologue who ruthlessly killed people that were not part of his group and did not support his cause, and seemed to have no problem with it because the concept of the revolution was more important than the lives of people who opposed it. In this movie (which is the best movie I have seen this year by the way - check it out of you can) Che is shown as the bad guy, the antagonist killer.

Which brings me to Steven Soderbergh. It will be interesting to see how he chooses to present Che in his upcoming movie about Guevara that is coming out next year. Will he give us the romanticezed cultural icon Che, the dark side of Che, or both?

Anyhow, The Motorcycle Diaries is a good book, and the movie is excellent (cinematography especially) as well. Either one is worth your while.


Faithful, by Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan



Before the 2004 baseball season longtime Red Sox fanatic Stephen King and his fellow novelist Stewart O'Nan decided to write a book chronicling the 2004 season as a year in the life of a die hard fan kind of thing. Fortunately for them it turned out to be the most special year in the last 85 (and perhaps ever) for the Red Sox, as they became the first team in baseball to overcome a 0-3 defecit and win a payoff series (against their nemesis Yankees no less) and went on to win the World Series in a made for Hollywood playoff run.

The book written basically in a diary format, with each man writing every single day from March to October. Additionally there are email communications between the two every few days. This alone makes the book kind of tedious. For me Stephen King's writing was more interesting, as he tended to write more observationally and look at bigger picture themes more than his counterpart, who tended to get bogged down in recounting play by play stuff, which after about 25 games gets a little dry. Perhaps King's writing is more interesting just because he is kind of a counterculture weirdo, whereas O'Nan comes across as the overgrown fan who at his age is way too into it - going to every game hours early and hanging out in the players parking lot trying to talk to the players and get autographs, then going to BP not with a glove but with a fishing net, game after game after game. I mean really - once you have say 25 BP balls wouldn't this get old? Seemed a bit overdone for a middle aged married-with-children guy who was acting like most 13 year old boys do about their favorite team. But hey, whatever floats your boat: I fly halfway around the world to watch soccer matches, which itself is both impressive and lame I suppose.

I am a born and bred Bostonian and Red Sox fan, so I enjoyed this book, but even for me it became a bit tedious after about 100 pages; more of a chore to get through it and finish than a book that you really enjoyed every time you picked it up. Although obviously the recounting of the playoffs was excellent. I guess, like baseball itself, it was interesting in the spring and the fall but was long, drawn out and boring in the summer. I would only recommend this book to hardcore members of Red Sox Nation.

So there it is. I am trying to breeze through Fast Food Nation since it has been sitting on my shelf for about a year, but I am excited to read this book Behind The Curtain about soccer in Eastern Europe when I finish what I'm on now.