Author Archives: booksandbookmarks8

(Kindle Book) The Poet is narrated by Jack McEvoy, a reporter in Denver who investigates the apparent suicide of his twin brother. Jack and his brother are both called “Mac” by their coworkers of course, so there was an obvious temptation to use a Willie McCovey card. Willie Mac is one of the most belovedContinue reading “The Poet by Michael Connelly”

“I am 439 years old,” says Tom Hazard in How to Stop Time. “I am 49 years old and just won a Major League game,” Jamie Moyer might have said on May 16, 2012, when he extended his record as the oldest pitcher ever to win a game (He also became the oldest player toContinue reading “How To Stop Time by Matt Haig”

(Audibook) The Midnight Library is a bit like It’s a Wonderful Life with a nod to quantum physics. The book opens with Nora unhappy with her life and the choices she’s made, and she decides to end her life. Rather than dying, she finds herself in the midnight library, a place where each book allowsContinue reading “The Midnight Library by Matt Haig”

(Audiobook) It would have been easy to just choose a Willie Mays card as a bookmark. I have several, and since this is all theoretical as I was listening to the audiobook, I wouldn’t even need to worry about damaging any of them. But this book is not like all the other Willie Mays biographies,Continue reading “24: Life Stories And Lessons From The Say Hey Kid by Willie Mays and John Shea”

There are 333 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. That includes players, executives, pioneers, managers, and umpires. Joe Morgan, one of those 333, wrote a letter to Hall of Fame voters in 2017 in which he states that he speaks on behalf of “many Hall of Fame members” when he says “Steroid users don’tContinue reading “Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes by John Rosengren”

(Audiobook) All Adults Here is a story about three generations of the Strick family set in Clapham, New York, a fictional town just south of Rhinebeck, New York. It’s a wonderful book about the relationships between parents and children and the continuous discovering of your own self. There is absolutely no baseball in it, noContinue reading “All Adults Here by Emma Straub”

There’s a beautiful tradition in Iceland of gifting books on Christmas Eve then spending the evening inside reading. It’s the reason for Jolabokaflod, or “Christmas Book Flood,” where the majority of book purchases in Iceland occur between September and December in anticipation of the Christmas Eve exchange. For the past few years my wife andContinue reading “Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu”

This was a fairly easy bookmark choice. Bob Motley called Willard Brown “The absolute best player I have ever seen don a baseball uniform.” Unfortunately, the Ted Williams Co. did not include Home Run Brown in their 1993 Negro Leagues subset, so I went with Hall of Famer Dave Winfield who wrote a brief forewardContinue reading “The Negro Baseball Leagues by Bob Motley with Byron Motley”

(Audiobook) There are a lot of Americans who HATE Barack Obama. My neighbor called him the worst president in his lifetime, making sure to emphasize that that includes Richard Nixon. Maybe he doesn’t believe that Obama’s choices saved the auto industry, saved the banking industry, staved off an even worse economic depression, saw the reductionContinue reading “A Promised Land by Barack Obama”