Of all things Geek. I am…
“Vancouver is falling down–crumbling into sand. To save it, Astrid O’Brien boards a bus to a parallel dimension, there to confront the demons of the city, and to answer the question: Are we who we’re told we are, or who we decide to be?” This is the back cover synopsis for Andrew Cownden’s debut novel Astrid Falls: A Legend of Vancouver. And it is not a book to skip, but one to read and discuss with friends. Who are you?…
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Comedy is tragedy plus time, but with The Human Comedy, it’s reversed because this 1943 novel by William Saroyan is relevant again. While that might be the nature of the book, it’s amazing how far we haven’t come, or how timeless Saroyan’s novel truly is. I would classify this as a great American novel. It’s timeless, it’s about community and family, loneliness and belonging, being a child and growing up, war and faith, reality and perception, and to be fair,…
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Soccer Against the Enemy by Simon Kuper was first published in 1994 with the subtitle “How the world’s most popular sport starts and fuels revolutions and keeps dictators in power.” I recently read the updated 2006 version, but since a lot has happened in those intervening years, like for example a World Cup in Qatar, this book is just exhibit A. This book is about Simon’s research by being boots on the ground in places like Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Germany,…
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This book may have been written about one campaign, but it is timeless in the way that “the more things change the more they stay the same.” Too many parts of this book are relevant to all of the subsequent elections since. Even worse, most of this book is remarkably relevant to all of the elections from 2000 onward. The book chronicles author Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s on-the-ground coverage of the 1972 campaign. It begins with the Democratic primary race,…
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I previously went the full nine innings reviewing Bull Durham. It should be not surprise that I’d go another nine innings with The Church of Baseball written by Bull Durham writer and director Ron Shelton about the origin of, writing of, production, release, and reaction to Bull Durham.
So let’s do it, on to the first pitch… Play Ball!
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