We have threads for movies and TV in the Video forum, so I thought I'd start one of these in here. We'll see how it goes...but I'll kick it off with the book I just finished. NO SPOILERS!!!

Stephen King - 11/22/63

A diner owner discovers a time portal in his storeroom that opens in September, 1958. He attempts to stop the Kennedy assassination, but comes down with cancer (all backstory), so he tells an English teacher about it and hands over all his notes. The teacher goes back in time in order to stop the assassination and make the world a better place.

In reading the afterword, King started to write this story in 1972, but dropped it because the research was too daunting and the event was too recent. Pretty good - I flew through the last 600 pages or so in about 4 days. There were a couple bits that tied to other King novels, a King trademark that works sometimes and is really tedious at others. This time was a mix - some of the references seemed really forced. But I liked the story and how King played the logic out - without giving anything away, one of the themes is that the past doesn't want to be changed.

I read a review that ripped this book (a critic that doesn't like Stephen King? The hell, you say!) because King didn't explain how the time portal worked. And he didn't - but the how is really unimportant to the story. He also ripped the ending, and I have to say, I don't see it. I can't say what his gripe was without spoiling it, but I didn't agree.

As is usual with King, there are some things that could have been trimmed, but not as much as some other books. Worth a look if you're a King fan or like alternate histories.

Alan

Good idea for a thread, Alan.

I'm currently reading Fire and Rain by David Browne. I won't say too much about it here as I think we may already have a thread about this book, but for those who don't know it's a history of the year 1970, centered around The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, CSNY and James Taylor. I'm enjoying it so far.

I've been wondering if the new King was worth reading. I used to devour everything he put out but he let me down a few too many times and now I probably skip as many of them as I read. Sounds like 11/22/63 might be worth checking out, though.

Thanks!

I hadn't read a King book in a while, although I have been buying them and adding them to the pile. But I used to have a huge interest in the JFK assassination until I read one too many books in a short time and burned out on it. In the afterword, King talks about some of the research he did, and he lists some of the books he read - some of which I have, although at the moment, I don't know if I've read any. The one that pops to mind is Gerald Posner's "Case Closed" - owned, but not read. A local talk show host that I loved, Doug Hoerth, used to do a lot of shows with Cyril Wecht, who's something of a skeptic (but not an out-on-a-limb whacko), and Hoerth highly recommended the Posner book. He had been a Warren Commission Report skeptic at one point, but he said the Posner book convinced him that Oswald did it.

Back to the King book - there are parts that drag, parts that are a bit extraneous, but damn, when he gets to 11/22, I couldn't turn the pages fast enough to find out what happened.

I've gone through several spurts in my life where I've read a batch of King's books. I'm really not a fan of the horror genre, but King is a great writer--he comes up with these great characters and I wish he'd allow more of them to interact with one another without invariably finding their destinies altered by some supernatural whatchamacallit. (Like "Apt Pupil" or "Rita Hayworth and tbe Shawshank Redemption".) I'm glad he seems to have stopped writing novels in which the main character is a bestselling writer, but I'm also bored by the whole aging-baby-boomer-looks-back-at-the-sixties thing. I have a sneaking suspicion that "11/22/63" is exactly that.

The best book on the Kennedy assassination IMO is "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" by Vincent Bugliosi, but I have yet to convince any conspiracy aficionados to so much as crack the cover of it.

I have the Bugliosi book, but haven't cracked it. 1,500 pages is daunting!

I don't want to get into any spoilers, but it's definitely not a reach back to the flower power 60s. It's more an exploration of small-town America in the early 60s. There are a couple references to things like racism and how women are treated, and in a couple places it might seem heavy-handed to some, but it never came across to me as the protagonist feeling superior because of it. Disgusted by some of it (the racial stuff, mostly), but it seemed to me to be more of a "Wow, this was real" type thing.

Overall, it struck me as less of a reminiscing-because-things-were-better-then look back than an attempt to show it more matter-of-factly, or unromatically.

I checked the Bugliosi book out of the library a couple of years ago, and no, I didn't read all 1,500 pages. There was so much about that assassination that I just flat-out didn't understand before I read that book--stuff the conspiracy books never really explained for me. Bugliosi also asks questions the conspiracy books never asked, such as: if Oswald was a patsy in a massive conspiracy to kill JFK--or even a part of that conspiracy--why did that conspiracy, after framing him, allow him to leave the book depository and Dealey Plaza...on a city bus?

School starts tomorrow for me, so a Steven King novel is out of the question for a few months. I don't know, now I'm curious...Way back when I used to deliver pizza, an unabridged King novel on cassette could take me through an entire work week.

Okay, finished the next one, but it's more regional in appeal.

Former Pittsburgh sportscaster John Steigerwald's second book, "Just Watch The Game (Again)". The title comes from what his dad used to say to him when they went to Pirates games at Forbes Field.

Steigerwald (his brother Paul is the Penguins TV play by play guy - and if it were up to me, he'd be off TV and John would still be on) has a bit of a contrarian attitude and is more old-school. The final chapter is about the football team at his Catholic grade school, and the long unbeaten streak the team had in the 50s, and about how the principal of the school used football to toughen kids up. He also pretty much laments how much worse local news coverage is these days versus 30-40 years ago.

A collection of stories mostly centered around Pittsburgh sports, and at times Pittsburgh in general. Again, mostly regional appeal, but I mention it for a couple bits that were covered in the book.

One is about a story he proposed to cover in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. He said he'd long wanted to do a story on the Army-Navy football game, and with the renewed interest and respect for the armed forces, he thought it was a no-brainer. He contacted the Naval Academy, said he wanted to do a story on the game and a local kid, did they have any candidates. They came back a few days later with the name of a kid from a local suburb and said they would grant access to film him in class, drills and practices. The news director declined the story. The kid was Ed Malinowski - who was named starting quarterback for the game because the coaching staff thought he was a model midshipman and decided to honor him. He called the coin flip by President Bush, was profiled in a Sporting News column a couple days later, and eventually did two tours in Iraq.

Another is a pretty well-thought out piece comparing Barry Bonds and Roberto Clemente, and making an excellent case that Clemente was a much better player. The main focus is on how much of his career Clemente played in Forbes Field, which was a brutal park for a right-handed hitter with power - 365 down the line in left to a 25-foot scoreboard, 405 in left-center at a 12-foot wall, and 457 to dead center. He estimates how many home runs that might have cost Clemente and makes the argument that if Bonds had faced similar dimensions he'd have lost a similar number of homers.

But possibly the biggest chuckle came in the chapter about Dave Parker. Parker was the first player to average $1M/year on a contract and faced a lot of resentment in Pittsburgh because of it. He was essentially run out of town because of that and the drug scandal here in the 80s. Pirate announcer Bob Prince had given Parker the nickname "The Cobra" when he first came up, and most people assumed it was because of his batting stance. Steigerwald says Prince started calling Parker that the first time he saw him come out of the shower.

When I was in Pittsburgh last March, I found in a local bookstore a book about Curtis Strong and the 1985 Pittsburgh drug trials. I'd like to read it someday, as back in '85, national news coverage was mostly sensationalistic--centering mostly on statements made by witnesses in the case, not the accused--and I'm curious learn what that whole scandal was actually all about.

I very rarely read "real" books. Nearly every book I own is about music, TV, movies, science, or sports. I especially like reference books--the kind you can just open to any page and start reading.

Even as a kid, I would grab a volume of the encyclopedia for recreational reading.

I'm reading one of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee novels. I'll say more about it when I'm done.

I finally finished this book (A Deadly Shade of Gold) last night. I read a couple of the Travis McGee books years ago and recently decided to read them in sequence. This is the fifth in the series and I'm still not sure what I think of them. Mixed feelings, I guess. There's no denying that John D. MacDonald was one hell of a writer. He had a way with words and was prolific to boot. He was also very much of his time, and these books have flashes of sexism and political incorrectness that you just have to write off as of their time. On the other hand, there was an extremist political character in the last third of the book who could be right out of the current scene. McGee pontificates on the dangers of guys like this, and in fact often stops the narrative to lecture on one social ill or another. These asides are usually entertaining and part of what makes these novels special, but this book really seemed to be heavy with them, especially in the first half. This one seemed a bit excessive in other ways too. By the end I had lost count of how many people had been killed and how many women McGee had slept with. A few scenes were downright eye-rolling, as when McGee is sneaking around a house undetected, and just happens to hear important, plot-forwarding conversations in every room. McGee can seem almost like a superman at times, but MacDonald always reminds us before it's all over that the guy is human after all.

Finished "The War For Late Night" by Bill Carter - the story behind the battle for the Tonight Show between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. Really interesting to me, even as fresh as it is (I still remembered a lot of this stuff). Leno comes off more sympathetically than he did at the time it all happened. Conan comes across as someone who got royally screwed, but also as somewhat victimized by his team. As it turns out, Conan's contract for the Tonight Show did not specify that he'd be on at 11:35. Leno and Letterman both had such a clause in their deals.

Some really interesting background on how Conan made the move from writer to performer. Some neat stuff on Jimmy Kimmel as well. I'd forgotten how close Conan came to losing the Late Show when he was first starting out.

The guy who came off looking like a jackass, though, was Dick Ebersol. He really came across as a know-it-all prick.

Very interesting, especially if you have an interest in late night TV.

Alan

I read Carter's book on the whole Carson/Leno/Letterman thing way back when, and it was a classic. I'd like to find the time to read this book, but the problem is I stopped watching late night talk shows at about the time Letterman went over to CBS.

Finished the Tony Iommi book last weekend. It's kind of like the Ace Frehley book only a bit more coherent, which really feels odd to say about a book where Ozzy is a major character. Like the Ace book, it's a lot of short, quickly-told tales. Not a ton of depth. Unlike the Ace book, it's mostly chronological, so there's more of a flow to the story. And Tony is very...reluctant to say anything really negative. You can when he's got a less than positive attitude about someone, because he uses phrases like "as they do" or "like they can be". He's even somewhat gracious about Sharon Osbourne, although he makes it pretty clear that it's not all clear skies and sunshine between them. Likewise with some other people like original manager Patrick Meehan. To a point, it's understandable, but at times it makes for a bit of a frustrating read, as when he talks about working with Glenn Hughes. He talks about their first collaboration, just prior to Tony Martin joining the band, and basically says that they got along but it was too hard to work with Glenn because of his drug use and lack of drive. Then later, when Hughes re-enters the picture, Tony says something like "Glenn is always fun to work with."

Still very interesting to read. Especially if you don't know all of the inside Sab stuff, which I didn't.

Alan

Do audio books count? I'm currently listening to Sex On The Moon by Ben Mezrich. It's a non-fiction book about a young intern who stole moon rocks from NASA, a news story I must have missed the first time around. A lot of reviewers on Amazon seem to really dislike this book and it's author (whom I've not read anything else by) but I've found it quite involving so far. Some are critical that a lot of the book is from the viewpoint of the criminal (whom Mezrich interviewed extensively) but as one who always wonders what makes people tick, even those who do foolish things, I like this aspect of the book.

There's also a documentary on this case currently running on the National Geographic channel, and I recommend it too.

Cool - I remember looking at that book a while ago, but I'd forgotten about it. I'll have to check it out sometime. This is an example of why I miss Borders - my local B&N doesn't have as good a selection. And if you don't get a book when it's fairly new, you may not see it again. Not to mention the science section is pitifully small (as is the music/entertainment section).

Edited to add: And audio books count, despite what my friend the schoolteacher says. She sort of yelled at her son when he said he'd read the Harry Potter books because they listened to the audio versions on long drives.

Alan

Curious if anyone here has read Record Collecting for Girls by Courtney E. Smith... the title is a little misleading, as it really extends to a broader view of music consumption beyond just collecting. I found the book interesting as not only a feminine but also a more modern take on being a music nut, although I was a little surprised about how much she related music to the various men in her life.


http://www.amazon.com/dp/0547502230/?tag=imwan-20

Picked up several recent bios on Eisenhower, Boris Karloff, Spencer Tracy, and Hans von Bulow. Currently wrapping up a two-volume bio of Stalin.

Has anyone ever read books by Martin Popoff? I'm reading his book on Judas Priest and it's a great read. I've read his books on RUSH and Black Sabbath. The books are great and full of information.

I have many of his books. Like them a lot. Seems like a nice guy as well.

I've connected with him via E-mail a few times and he seems very nice. Dan, do you have the Rainbow and Dio books? If so, is there any chance I can borrow them to read?

I have the Blue Oyster Cult book and wasn't impressed.