The Art Thief

Finkel, Michael. The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession. New York: Knopf 2023. Print.

First Sentences:

Approaching the  museum, ready to hunt, Stephane Breitwieser clasps hands with his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, and together they stroll to the front desk and say hello, a cute couple. Then they purchase two tickets with cash and walk in. 

It's lunchtime, stealing time, on a busy Sunday in Antwerp, Belgium, in February 1997.


Description:

The details behind true crime and the people audacious enough to attempt and often pull them off successfully is always a fascinating topic to me. In Michael Finkel's The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, we readers are presented with the almost unbelievable details of Stephane Breitwieser and his girlfriend Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, both in their twenties, who in the late 1990s and early 2000s stole hundreds of art pieces from museums throughout Europe. They took paintings, chalices, firearms, crossbows, teapots, tapestries, figurines, coins, and even a 150 pound wooden statue. In short, they made off with anything that caught their discerning eyes.

The tools they used? A second-hand Hugo Boss overcoat, a large woman's handbag, and a Swiss army knife. That's it. Usually their grabs are right in front of guards, shielded from any security cameras, during regular museum hours full of tourists. They considered themselves artists, scornful of burglars who overpower guards (like the "savages" who committed the Gardner Museum heist) or sneak around in the dark (such as the theft of the Mona Lisa). 

[Side note: We learn from author Finkel that Pablo Picasso was the first person accused of masterminding the Mona Lisa theft since he had previously hired a thief to grab two ancient stone figures from the Louvre. The figures "had distorted faces, and Picasso kept them in his studio as templates...for the groundbreaking Les Demoisells d'Avignon."]

Breitwieser and girlfriend Kleinklaus averaged three heists every four weekends (when Anne-Catherine was off from work) for a decade, amassing a collection valued at over $2 billion (yes, "billion" with a "b"). But they never tried to sell even one piece of their accumulated art. Instead, they placed each piece in their attic apartment (the upstairs unit in Breitwieser's mother's house), and just admired the beauty of the art in a quiet, uncrowded environment all by themselves. No one else, maybe not even his mother, knew about their attic collection. "They lived in a treasure chest."

What were the origins of this crime spree, the motivations or psychological causes? How did they do it? Why did they pursue this behavior? And when, if ever, will they be caught? Author Finkel searches through newspaper articles, interviews, psychological reports, and courtroom transcripts to offer possible factors that brought Breitwieser to this obsession with art theft. And its a wild ride he takes us on to understand these two art thieves and to provide details of their escapades.

You cannot help but be caught up in this couple's boldness, their love of art, and their obsession to possess it and keep it secret from the world. Heist after heist unfolds in casual detail by Finkel, giving us readers an insider's view of the crimes and the minds of these two young people. It's a riveting, audacious book that is difficult to put down for the tension as well as for the descriptions of the beautiful art it presents. 

Stealing art for money, [Breitwieser] says, is disgraceful. Money can be made with far less risk. But liberating for love, he's known a long time, feels ecstatic.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Dolnick, Edward. The Rescue Artist.   

When Edward Munch's The Scream painting is stolen from the National Museum in Oslo in 1994, Scotland Yard's Art Theft Department steps in. Led by Charley Hill, the department slowly tries to track down the thieves and recover the painting. Dolnick covers this chase as well as many other art crimes Hill has investigated. Riveting.(previously reviewed here)

 

The Baseball 100

Posnanski, Joe. The Baseball 100. New York: The Athletic. 2021. Print.

First Sentences:

There are many words we sportswriters use way too often. We might write that something quite believable is 'unbelievable" and that something that falls well into the realm of the possible is actually "impossible." But, if I had to guess, I would say that most of all we use the word "unique" too often.

    [Comments on Ichiro Suzuki, the first player profiled - rank #100.]


Description:

It never gets old to discuss the greatest baseball players of all time. Ranking the Top 100 adds an even greater challenge. But backing up an all-time greatest list with statistics, first-hand observations, comparisons, and commentary from articles, books, interviews, and other relevant resources makes a strong case for which players and rankings shake out in a convincing Top 100 list.

In The Baseball 100, writer Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated, The Athletic, New York Times, etc. fame, presents his own well-researched list of choices for the greatest players of all time. And it is a compelling, convincing, fascinating, detailed, and astonishing lust. While I personally am no longer the biggest baseball fan, I absolutely loved reading about the players I have heard about or even watched play in my younger days.

The book is more than just Ruth, Cobb, DiMaggio, Berra, Mays, and other familiar names. No, Posnanski introduces the cases for less-famous (to me, at least) Bullet Rogan (#92), Charlie Gehringer (#87), Kid Nichols (#82), Monte Irvin (#69), Smokey Joe Williams (#62), Arky Vaughan (#61) and Oscar Charleston (unbelievably #5!). Each player gets 5-8 pages of stories, stats, quotes, media coverage, and interviews to substantiate Posnanski's case for their inclusion on this list.

And what a page-turner this book it, all 869 pages of it. I couldn't stop myself from reading about childhood heroes and learning about unknowns who with their dazzling skills made significant marks. I loved reading about their childhoods, with overbearing (Mantle #11) or gentle fathers (Mathewson #36); rich (Cobb #8) or poor (Aaron #4); naturally gifted (Mays #1) or driven but possessing fewer skills (Rose #60); good-looking (Williams #6) or short and squat (Berra #43); Jewish (Koufax #70) or racist (Collins #29); young (Feller age 16 #55) or Paige (age 58+ #10). Every player is given a detailed analysis and a recap of his moments of glory.

  

[Probably just listing these players' rankings might raise some arguments in any dedicated reader's mind, but that what makes this book wonderful.] Here are some highlights:

• Reggie Jackson #59 - "I didn't come to New York to be a star. ...I brought my star with me."
• Warren Spahn #49 - always wanted to be a hitter, not a pitcher until he saw his high school team's first baseman (Spahn's position) and said, "That guy is a lot better than I am" and decided then and there to become a pitcher.
• Yogi Berra #43 - had only 12 strikeouts in the entire 1950 season.
• Nap Lajoie #39 - under "fixed" conditions, went 8 for 8 on the last day of the season to beat Cobb for the batting title and win a new car.
• Satchel Paige # 10 - threw rocks as a boy to protect himself from gangs. "Rocks made a real impression on a kid's head or backside," he said.
• Jimmie Foxx #33 - after retirement from baseball at age 37, coached a women's baseball team and was the inspiration for the Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) character in the film, A League of Their Own.
• Johnny Bench #30 - caught a fast ball bare-handed just to convince his pitcher he had no speed that day.
• Pop Lloyd #25 - played catcher one game for the Macon Acmes. Since the team couldn't afford catching equipment, he played without a mask, knee or chest protectors, winding up with two swollen eyes and bruises all over his body. That was when he became a shortstop.
• Ricky Henderson # 24 - Jim Murray wrote of Henderson's squatting batting stance, "He has a strike zone the size of Hitler's heart."
• Lefty Grove #22 - in his first game, age 19, he pitched seven inning and struck out 15; in the second game he threw a no-hitter and struck out 18
• Tris Speaker #18 - played so shallow in center field that he made 450 assists (a record never to be broken - second is Mays with less than half that number). He also made six unassisted double plays.
• Stan Musial #9 - would go up to strangers celebrating in a restaurant, borrow a $1 bill, fold it into a ring, and slip it onto the fan's finger just to add to their fun and memories. He also carried a harmonica with him everywhere, but could only play four songs.
• Ty Cobb # 8 - in 1947, age 60, he was asked at an old timers' game what he would hit in modern baseball. "About 300," he said, "but you've got to remember I'm 73 years old."
• Walter Johnson #7 - A batter who faced him "saw (or didn't see) two fastballs go by for strikes and headed back to the dugout. 'You've got another strike coming,' the umpire shouted to the player. 'I don't want it,' the hitter said. 'I've seen enough.'"
• Ted Williams #6 - could "hear a single boo in a Fenway Park filled with cheers."
• Henry Aaron #4 - as a kid practiced hitting with a broomstick and a bottle cap.
• Babe Ruth #2 - in 1920 was sold by Boston to the "lamentable New York Yankees who had never won a single pennant in their entire existence."

I have dozens more of quotes I'd marked while reading, but I'll stop here. Suffice to say, it's a fantastic book for any baseball aficionado or even for a casual fan interested in human stories, history, culture, jargon, and even a bit of baseball. Get it now to read or pass on to someone you love. They will love you back for a long time as they work their way through the players' profiles ...each and every one of them.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Peterson, Robert. Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams.   

Simply wondrous oral history of the Negro Leagues as told through interviews with the men who played the game in those days of segregation. Real baseball lingo, lore, and memories here. Fantastic peek into that era, its players, and their baseball lives.

 

River of the Gods

Millard, Candice. River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile. New York: Doubleday 2022. Print.

First Sentences:

Sitting on a thin carpet in his tiny, rented room in Suez, Egypt, in 1854, Richard Francis Burton calmly watched as five men cast critical eyes over his meager belongings.....He knew that if they discovered the truth, that he was not Shaykh Abdullah, an Afghan-born Indian doctor and devout, lifelong Muslim but a thirty-two-year-old lieutenant in the army of the British East India Company, not only would his elaborately planned expedition be in grave danger, but so would his life. Burton, however, was not worried.


Description:

Any book about Richard Burton (the 19th century soldier/explorer, not the 20th century actor) has got my full attention. Here is a man who was described by Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, as "dark, and forceful, and masterful, and ruthless...He is steel! He would go through you like a sword." Burton was the first white, non-Moslem to successfully journey into Mecca and view the most sacred religious rite of the Hajj. In short, a man to be reckoned with.

Candice Millard and her brilliantly detailed River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the NIle, follows Burton throughout his burning quest to discover the source of the Nile. 

The world of the 1850s was wildly excited about exploration of any type. Those who voyaged to the North and South Poles or searched for the Northwest Passage were world-wide heroes of their day. And the Nile origin was one of the last great mysteries the public clamored to be solved, especially, the English believed, by a Britisher.

  

Surrounded by impenetrable jungles, deserts, hostile tribes, monsoon rains, and dangerous animals every mile, the Nile source had proved unconquerable for centuries. No one in history had ever been able to follow the Nile from its mouth back to its source. 

So, of course, Burton believed he was just to man to do this. But this time he planned to take an untried route across Africa straight to where he felt the Nile's source was rather than trying to float upstream from its mouth. He would follow game trails, ancient routes used by slavers to march their captives from inland to departure ports, or just hack his way through the jungles, relying on tribal guides, his instincts, and pure luck. Nine months was the projected time allotted to the expedition by the sponsoring Royal Geographical Society along with a paltry sum of money for supplies and bearers..

But Burton's East African Expedition was plagued with trouble almost from the start. Debilitating disease, lack of food and funds, desertion of native bearers, and worst of all betrayal by his second in command lead to disaster after disaster. Burton himself became so sick he had to be transported on a stretcher by bearers for much of the journey.

But there is hope for a second expedition and Burton, ever the bold optimist, again must raise funds and expedition members for another full-on assault to the source, which Burton felt was the recently-discovered gigantic Lake Tanganyika. River of the Gods provides a highly-detailed, thoroughly absorbing description of all his expeditions.

Author Millard relies heavily on Burton's prodigious writings for authenticity, including books, articles, essays, lectures, and copious field notes. She also quotes original news articles, diaries, and other primary source documents for more timely details. 

The result is a wonderfully in-depth description of how an expedition is envisioned, funded, staffed, and carried out, with background information on the countries passed through, their histories, African culture, and the outside world of the mid-19th century --- each of which plays a significant role to drive such expeditions.

There is so much to detail about Burton's adventures that, if you are interested in exploration, expeditions, African history, British confidence, and the mysterious Nile, then River of the Gods is definitely for you. Highly engrossing, challenging, triumphant, and heart-breaking.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Rosolie, Paul. Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey into the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon.   

A fascinating, modern-day exploration of the Amazon River with all its impenetrable jungles, ferocious creatures, and hostile people (both tribal and foreign). Riveting.  (previously reviewed here)

 

Tip of the Iceberg

Adams, Mark. Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier. New York: Dutton, 2018. Print.

First Sentences:

On March 25, 1899, a gentleman from New York City arrived unannounced at the Washington D.C. office of C. Hart Merriam. At the age of forty-three, Merriam had already been practicing science seriously for three decades, dating back to some unauthorized taxidermy performed on his sister's dead cat.

 

Description: 

In 1899, railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman commissioned an exploration trip to Alaska's inner seaway passage. He included experts in a variety of fields, from geology to glaciology to botany to cartography to literature. Harriman's purpose was to have these men explore, document, and discovery interesting phenomena from this 3,000-mile voyage up the inner coast of Alaska.

The scientists included John Muir, glaciologist and wilderness expert; George Bird Grinnell, the founder of the Audubon Society; Georg Steller, naturalist; William Dall, the "dean of Alaska explorers"; Edward Curtis, photographer; and John Burroughs, writer and chronicler of the expedition. 

Harriman's mission had two personal goals:

• Enable scientists in various fields to survey the wonders of Alaska, enlarge their collections of specimens, and share their findings...
• Return...with a trophy bear

Now, over 100 years later, travel writer Mark Adams decided to re-trace the route of those scientists to understand what they first saw and how the Alaska of today had changed (or remained the same).

His trip is beautifully, often humorously chronicled in Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier. Jumping between primary resources from Harriman's exploration, Alaskan history, and his own journey, Adams deftly manages to immerse readers into the past and present worlds of Alaska and its people.

For his trip, Adams chose to utilize the Alaska Marine Highway System of transport boats "designed to move people and vehicles long distances to remote places for a reasonable price."

Alaska's ferries have as much in common with Greyhound buses as with anything offered by Norwegian Cruise Line, but..with a little patience, Dramamine, and maybe a few time-saving shortcuts, it appeared possible to ride the three thousand miles from Washington State to Dutch Harbor, in the Aleutians, in about two months, the same time the Harriman Expedition took.

Breathtaking descriptions and adventures follow, and we lucky readers are fortunate to be able to sit close to Adams as he observes, researches, and interacts with this fascinating, challenging environment. Glaciers, indigenous people, totems, kayaks, mountains, and plenty of quiet contemplation are all on Adams' daily agenda.

Along the way, Adams learns valuable wisdom, such as how to deal with bears which are everywhere: play dead with brown bears, but fight back against black bears. Unfortunately, the only way to tell these bears apart is by a hump on the brown bear's back, (just reach around to feel for it while the bear is mauling you to determine your best course of action). The best advice he heard: "Bring a gun and someone slower than you."

Also, he learned through talking with local people and by personal observation that glaciers, which had once advanced 1,000 feet a day, were now located 63 miles back from where they were 250 years ago.

He visits Cordova, the scene of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, and Whittier (population 200, many from American Samoa); "The Weirdest Town in Alaska" and inspiration for the television series, "Northern Exposure"; and an active volcano in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

Too much else to share with you. If you are interested in Alaska, exploration, history, and people, this is the travel book for you.

[While kayaking in Glacier Bay] We were surrounded on all sides by the park's namesake rivers of ice flowing down from the mountains. Their frozen innards glowed a phosphorescent blue that eclipsed the cloudless sky above. A few times every hour, the giants discharged ice from their wrinkled faces -- crack, rumble, splash -- one of nature's most spellbinding performances.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Ehrlich, Gretel. This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland.   

One of my favorite authors, Gretel Ehrlich, describes in her beautiful prose her life visiting and living in Greenland. She is the best at putting a reader into the environment, giving both history and current conditions, descriptions of the personalities she encounters, all the while examining her own feelings for the region and her place in it. Excellent.

 

Welcome to the Circus of Baseball

McGee, Ryan. Welcome to the Circus of Baseball. New York: Doubleday 2023. Print.

First Sentences:

"Oh, man. I think that sumbitch is actually dead!"

 

Description:

 

Hardly the first sentence one might expect from a book about minor league baseball, but there it is. Turns out to be the thoughts of a spectator watching  an in-game entertainment act called, "Captain Dynamite.' In this act, a family assembles a make-shift coffin around the father, loads him up with dynamite, seals the lid, and then ignites the whole thing to a thunderous blast. (He does recover, walks away, albeit a bit unsteadily, piles his kids and wife into their beat-up wagon, and proceeds on to the next gig down the road.)

It's just one of the fascinatingly unusual recollections of author Ryan McGee, currently a senior writer and co-host on ESPN, about his first sports job experience as a minor league baseball team intern in 1994. His memories of the trials, tribulations, and genuine goofiness of people, events, and work demands are set down in his wonderful new book, Welcome to the Circus of Baseball.

Fresh out of college, McGee lands a job as an almost-unpaid ($100-a-week) intern for the Asheville minor league baseball team, the Tourists. This team is in the Division A league, meaning the players are most likely just out of high school, from a Spanish-speaking country, or a veteran re-habbing from an injury. For many, it is their first time away from home, cooking, doing laundry, managing money, etc. All are trying to climb up the ladder to join the major league, "The Show," although only a handful will make it.

The Asheville Tourists play in McGee's favorite stadium from his childhood, McCormick Field. It's the same field where Crash Davis (Kevin Cosner) hit his final dinger before hanging 'em up in the film, Bull Durham. It's America's oldest ball park, and once hosted Cobb, Ruth, Gehrig, Bonds, and many other great players. 1994 also was the year Michael Jordan tried his hand at baseball and played for the Hickory Crawdads, although he never played against Asheville. Needless to say, the Tourists sold out all those home games anyway before the season even started.
 

McGee's various jobs include providing balls to the umpires, pulling the tarp over the infield on rainy days, stocking the Dairy Queen machine with gooey mixture (with disastrous results), running the concession stand, and providing beer to the star player, even though it was forbidden by the dugout rules. He once even donned the Tourist mascot outfit, Ted E. Tourist, the bear, for the team photo. The regular mascot was a college method actor who felt he had to "become one with the bear" and therefore could not be held responsible for his actions while in costume, specifically groping a few women fans..

McGee also wrestled with the 165-lb beer kegs on Thirsty Thursdays when every drink was only $1. He noted that most fans bought two beers, then returned to the back of the line, timing it so they were finished with those original two beers by the time they again reached the counter so they could get the same order again ... repeating this rhythm for the entire three-hour game, never watching a single batter. One Thursday, 66 kegs of beer were sold, about 8,600 servings to the 4,000 fans. Predictably, all Thirsty Thursday games were sold out.) 

McGee loved baseball, but some of his expectations were trimmed when the first busload of the team arrived:

The Tourists stepped out into the shadowy concourse behind the ballpark, not a superhuman gladiators arriving to take stock of the colosseum where they would do battle. No, they unloaded off the bus like someone had spilled a stack of bowling balls ."Where the hell are we?"

Instead of observing the actual Tourist ball playing, McGee focuses on the stadium itself ("The coaches' quarters were both so tiny that it never felt like you walked into them. It was more like you were putting them on.") and the behind-the-scenes workings of what makes a minor league team work; how fans get attracted to game (see Captain Dynamite and Thirsty Thursdays references above); and who exactly were the people who contributed to or watched the final product.

A few of the quirky individuals included:

• Ron McKee, Tourists GM, who bleached the baseballs to make old ones look new enough to use in games rather than buy new balls;
• James the Mountain Man who, dressed only in overalls, would dive into the bushes behind the fences to retrieve lost baseballs for reuse, not minding the snakes and other critters who frequently bit him;
• Big Mike who repeatedly throughout the game walked away from the concession stands carrying nachos, four hot dogs, and a large drink, and usually additional items for his consumption;
• The Circuit Rider who galloped in from right field on his horse, preaching and singing Bible-related sermons;
• Macaullay Culkin who was filming Richie Rich and needed someone to throw him some pitches. Another Tourist intern made $100 for this pitching gig, but GM McKee made $300 just from renting the pitcher's screen, a widely-repeated joke.

Memorable events included when author McGee and the interns mistakenly poured bags of kitty litter onto the infield dirt to dry it out for the next day's game, inadvertently inviting hundreds of feral cats to come to the park that night to use their new facilities. And don't forget the Great Mascot Brawl at the 1994 All-star game. Truly a sight to behold.

McGee has so many more stories that I could go on and on. Suffice to say, if you love baseball, especially the workings of minor league teams, and quality humorous writing, then Welcome to the Circus of Baseball is a great choice for you.

Don't tell me about the labor pains, just show me the baby. 

     - General Manager Ron McGee to the complaining intern/author Ryan McGee 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Shelton, Ron. The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit.   

Humorous and detailed account of the filming of Bull Durham. (previously reviewed here)

Jim Murray: An Autobiography

Murray, Jim. Jim Murray, An Autobiography. New York: MacMillan 1993. Print.

First Sentences:

I was a Depression child. With all that connotes. That means you never trust the system again. You know what can happen to it. That means you  go through life never able to fully enjoy it. That means you have a ever-present sense of foreboding....I never quit a job in a huff. I swallowed guff. I don't recommend it. It's just the way I was.

 

Description:

Growing up in Southern California in the 1950s through the '70s, every day for me started with reading Jim Murray's sports column in the Los Angeles Times. He introduced me to the back stories of athletes, games, and sports history, all with wry wit and biting comments that made sports so much richer. What a wonderful introduction for a kid into the world of great writing, humor, and sports (or even today as an adult).

I recently discovered Murray had written his autobiography, cleverly titled: Jim Murray: An Autobiography. In this fast-paced book, Murray only sparingly writes about himself beyond his early life, preferring to focus on stories about the sports figures he had encountered and the condition of various sports themselves. 

Notable among the few stories about his youth are recollections about when he saw Babe Ruth hit a homer, or arranged neighborhood boxing matches among kids, or learned about the reality of sports from his Uncle Ed:

Never take money from an amateur -- unless he insists ...

Never play cards with a man with dark glasses or his own deck ...

Never make change for a guy on a train ... 

Murray prefers to throw the spotlight on the athletes he encountered and commentary on various sports throughout his career on the LA Times, Time, Life, and Sports Illustrated.

Time didn't linger at what happened. They wanted to know why it happened....They wanted the globally significant. And the writing had to be of a high literary order.

It's quite a world of people he covers in depth, including Walter O'Malley. Muhammed Ali, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead, Pete Rose, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Henry Aaron, Al Davis, Jack Kent Cooke ("a man in a hurray...as unstoppable as a glacier"), and so many more.

He offers several brief anecdotes about Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, Ty Cobb, Magic Johnson, Sonny Liston, A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Ted Williams, and on and on. Each tidbit is a gem of insider info into what makes that person unique, funny, talented, or ultra-driven.

The longest portions and best observations are reserved for the sports themselves that he loves: 

• Golf -
• Golf is the most maddening of games....The bleeding is internal in this sport.

• Auto racing - 
• [column headline] Gentlemen, Start Your Coffins 

• Baseball - 
• Baseball was always loath to enter the twentieth century. Baseball will always be three of more decades behind the rest of society. That's part of its charm.

• Boxing - 
• Jake LaMotta used to say he fought Sugar Ray Robinson six times and won all but five of them.

• Basketball -
• At the college and high school level, it used to be just something to go through to get to the dance afterward. The pros used to play wherever they could pass the hat and make bus money.....

There are pieced aplenty about my favorite Southern California teams (the Rams, Dodgers, Angels, Lakers, and Kings) and my boyhood baseball idols: Maury Wills (companion to Doris Day, who knew?), Jim Gilliam, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Steve Garvey, and Tommy Lasorda. 

I liked baseball. It was the right mix of competition, contemplation and calibration for me. A ball park is still one of the great relaxing venues. It is a great place for the leather-lunged fan to work out his aggressions but there is an undertone of "I'm just kidding' in the baseball fan's torrent of abuse. 

There is a really funny chapter detailing his columns which contained disparaging reflections about the cities hosting sporting events that he was covering.

• Long Beach, CA - The seaport of Iowa

• Los Angeles - Underpoliced and oversexed. Its architecture has been (accurately) described as "Early Awful"

• Philadelphia - A town that would boo a cancer cure...a place that even the British gave up without a fight.

• Oakland, CA - You had to pay fifty cents to go from Oakland to San Francisco. Coming to Oakland from San Francisco was free... that's all you have to know about Oakland.

• Cincinnati - If the Russians ever attacked, they would bypass Cincinnati, as it looked as if it had already been taken and destroyed.

There are some serious portions as well. He devotes a chapter each to his onset of blindness, his son's battle with drugs, and the death of his beloved wife. All are presented with genuine emotion and thoughtfulness as he contemplates the reasons behind these situations and his own role in each.

If you are a sports fan or just an admirer of clever, witty, insightful, and always humorous writing, I highly recommend getting to know Jim Murray and his brilliant observations of the games of the world.

There is no cult in the world like a busload of fans on their way to a home game....The home team wins, the world's gonna be all right. Food tastes better. Wives look prettier. Work gets easier. 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Murray, Jim.. The Jim Murray Collection.   

The best collection of his columns covering baseball, boxing, tennis, hockey, strikes, and sport figures.

 

The Diary of a Bookseller

Bythell, Shaun. The Diary of a Bookseller. New York: Knopf 2021. Print

First Sentences:

[George] Orwell's reluctance to commit to bookselling is understandable. There is the stereotype of the impatient, intolerant, antisocial proprietor...and it seems (on the whole) to be true.


Description:

What lover of books, bookstores, and quirky bookdealers can resist reading about the ins and outs involved with the actually running of a bookstore? Certainly not I. Therefore, it is with great joy that I stumbled on and now recommend to you, Shaun Bythell's The Diary of a Bookseller.

 

Bythell, is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. He is either 1) the typical quirky book dealer; or 2) simply an ordinary man facing a world of odd-ball customers who wander into his world with their own idiosyncrasies and who daily drive him almost to despair. After several years of observing his customers and reflecting on his other book operations (buying collection, pursuring book fairs, inspecting a family's inherited collections, etc.), Bythell decides to record his book life in a daily account over the period of one year to share his odd world. 

 

In this notebook, Bytgell jots descriptions of the daily actions in his store, the town and his book-buying expeditions. He records his cranky thoughts on these activities and people, plus notes each day on the number of customers, money in the till, online orders (with the number of books that were actually found on their shelves to fulfill these online orders). 

 

While this bean-counting info may seem boring, it is quite interesting over the days, especially the shop's number of unfulfilled online orders. These failures most often occur due to Bythell's worker Nicky's unique convoluted system to shelve titles. She had once filed British Trees: A Guide for Everyman, in the section "Scottish poetry." Of course, many of these books now cannot be located. This is the same bookshop worker who, every Friday ("Free Food Friday" to her), brings in food to share which she had salvaged from dumpsters.

Here are a few of Bythell's other observations:

• Any bookseller will tell you that, even with 100,000 books neatly sorted and shelved in a well-lit, warm shop, if you put an unopened box of books in a dark, cold, dimly lit corner, customers will be rifling through it in a matter of moments. The appeal of a box of unsorted, unpriced stock is extraordinary.

•  [A customer asked] "Do you remember me? I bought a book about bowling from you five years ago."

• Flo [an employee] was in today. She seems to have mastered her pout, and spent most of the day demonstrating it.
  

•  I noticed that the staple gun didn't appear to be working, so I tested it on my hand, at which point it decided to work.

•  At 10:00 a.m. the first customer came through the door. "I'm not really interested in books," followed by "Let me tell you what I think about nuclear power." By 10:30 a.m. my will to live was but a distant memory.

•  [Observing a customer reading in the poetry section] I noticed that he had removed his false teeth and put them on top of a copy of Tony Blair's autobiography which had been left on the table.
  

To me, it is a dryly humorous book through Bythell's use of deadpan observation of odd characters and situations. You feel you are perched on his shoulder as he slowly works through each day's obstacles, many caused by his own indifference to planning, avoidance of confrontation with annoying people, and general lack of seriousness about the organization and decisions faced regularly in his book business.

A thoroughly absorbing immersion into the world and people in a bookseller's world. I loved it as I knew I would. Hope you will, too.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Morley, Christopher. Parnassus on Wheels.   

Fictional account of a woman's perspective on operating traveling library housed in a small horse-drawn cart. Delightful, with several sequels leading her to finally open a bricks and mortar bookstore described in The Haunted Bookshop.

 

Lands of Lost Borders

Harris, Kate. Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road. New York: Knopf 2018. Print

First Sentences:

The end of the road was always just out of sight. 

 

Cracked asphalt deepened to night beyond the reach of our headlamps, the thin beams swallowed by a blackness that receded before us no matter how fast we biked. Light was a kind of pavement thrown down in front of our wheels, and the road went on and on. If I even reach the end, I remember thinking, I'll fly off the rim of the world.


Description:

Thus begins Kate Harris's Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road. It depicts one of the author's many dangerous efforts to elude unfriendly border guards in China, Tibet, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, India, and other countries in retracing the ancient route of Marco Polo on a bicycle.

Author Harris is a confirmed explorer. From her earliest age, she had a restlessness to her dreams. Although a gifted student in biological sciences at Oxford and MIT, her ongoing goal was to take a one-way trip to help establish a colony on Mars. She even participated in a Mars simulation experience complete with desert living in regulation space suits.

Harris, a voracious reader and researcher throughout her life, always was fascinated to read about into the personalities and adventures of early explorers like Marco Polo, Magellan, Mrs. Fanny Bullock Workman, and Alexandra David-Neel. She eventually quit her research job in a windowless lab (staring at "planktonic fecal pellets" through a microscope and recording minute changes). Then, she charted a cross-continent route using ancient maps and out-of-date atlases, grabbed her childhood girlfriend Mel, loaded up their bicycles, and set off to pedal on a year-long trip from Turkey to India, following the route of Marco Polo. 

Along the way, they live on dried noodles, stale water, and the often unusual food and shelter offered from the locals who could neither speak English (and Harris does not speak their language) nor understand what the women are doing on bicycles on these high ranges. The cyclists are continually stopped by police (who mostly want to pose with the women and try out their bicycles), pushed off pot-holed highways by monstrous trucks, and even chased by wild yaks.

As we sped down the pass, every little bump and divot and pebble on the road blurred together into a pavement of pure concussion. Such is the price you pay to reach forbidden Tibet; pain in the legs, in the butt, and in the brain, which can't conceive a coherent thought because all it knows is the jackhammer jolting of the body and bike to which it is connected.  

But through all the adventures and challenges thrown at them, the women kept up their spirits, recording their daily feelings and trials with a camera and a notebook that eventually was turned into this book. They had plenty of time to consider the world around them as well as their place and purpose in the world. And oh, the descriptions of their observations and musings are wonderous, philosophical, emotional, colorful, and truly insightful.

The night air was cool for July and laced with the sweet breath of poplars and willows that grew in slender wands beside the river. No clean divisions between earth and sky, light and dark, just a lush and total blackness. I couldn't see the mountains but I could sense them around me, sharp curses of rock. The kind of country that consists entirely of edges.

And the places they bicycled. They pedaled and groaned and camped on such locales as:

[the] Tibetan Plateau, that upheaval of rock and ice and sky, but also the Pamir Mountains, where herds of sheep with improbably huge horns dodged avalanches and snow leopards with elegance close to flight. And the Taklamakan, a shifting sands desert dwarfed only by the Gobi and Sahara whose name, according to legend in not literal translation, means 'he who goes in never comes out'....Even more compelling than far-flung mountains and deserts were the stars above and beyond them, distant suns lighting who knows what other worlds.'

I always wonder when reading books such as this which depict exploration, survival, perseverance, and challenges, just how well I might do if faced with the same situations. In the case of Lands of Lost Borders, it is clear I would have given up on the first 15,000-foot climb up a mountain of potholed switchbacks. All the more reason to admire Harris and Mel's fortitude, but only from my cozy chair.

What is the point of exploring if not to reveal our place in the wild scheme of things, or to send a vision of who we are into the universe? A self-portrait and a message in a bottle; maybe no other maps matter....After all, the Latin root of the word explorer is "ex-plorare," with "ex" meaning "go out" and "plorare" meaning "to utter a cry."

Happy reading.

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Beagle, Peter. I See By My Outfit.   

In 1965, two men decide to ride small motor scooters from New York to California (don't ask why). En route, author Beagle describes the people, environment, and culture in a witty, detailed, friendly manner that makes you want to hear every observation he is willing to share.

 

 

Last Train to Memphis

Guralnick, Peter. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. New York: Little Brown, 1994. Print

First Sentences:

Vernon Presley was never particularly well regarded in Tupelo. 

He was a man of few words and little ambition, and even in the separate municipality of East Tupelo, where he lived with his family "above the highway," a tiny warren of houses clustered together on five unpaved streets running off the Old Saltillo Road, he was seen as something of a vacant, if good-looking, even handsome, ne'er-do-well.

Description:

Maybe everyone knows the general background of Elvis Presley: poverty-stricken childhood, early influence of gospel music, gift of a used guitar, meteoric rise to fame as a rock singer, army service, Las Vegas fixture, and eventual fall into drugs and early death. 

But the details behind those events and influences are fascinating to learn about. The era he lived in, the people surrounding him, the mechanizations of getting a record on the radio, the frenzy of a live concert, and the loneliness of the life of a superstar are all painstakingly researched and clearly presented in the breath-taking biography by Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. 

Incredible as it is to write, this 560-page book is a page-turner, sinking readers deeper and deeper into the details of Presley's life from birth up to his entry into the army and the death of his mother (1935-1958). (Note: This is just the first of a two-book biographical Presley series by Guralnick. The second, Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, is a whopping 796 pages covering the last two decades of Elvis' life.)

Elvis was Elvis from an early age. After receiving a guitar for a birthday gift (he's wanted a bike), he picked out a few chords and, by the seventh grade, starting bringing his guitar to school every day and singing at recess. According to a childhood friend, Elvis' clothing choices set him apart as well:

He would wear dress pants to school every day -- everybody else wore jeans, but he wore dress pants. And he would wear a coat and fashion a scarf like an ascot tie, as if he were a movie star...he stood out like a sore thumb.

Of course, his hair was much longer than any other child's and required three different types of hair products to style it just so.

He hung out on Beale Street in Mempis, a predominately Black area full of bars, live music, and clothing shops. He was a student of all kinds of music, especially listening to the gospel songs from nearby tent shows and the melodies from blues singers. Eventually, he combined these two styles, added his famous body twitching, and became a local star in a completely new kind of performance, jumping into the quiet music world of Pat Boone and twangy country western music. 

He started performing any place that would give him a chance. As he described his onstage feeling to one of his steady girlfriends, June Juanico:

It's like your whole body gets goose bumps, but it's not goose bumps. It's not a chill either. It's like a surge of electricity going through you. It's almost like making love, but it's even stronger than that...I don't calm down till two or three hours after I leave the stage. Sometimes I think my heart is going to explode.

Detail after detail about his rise to fame are recounted by author Guralnick, researched from original newspaper articles, promotional playbills, and interviews with hundreds of friends, family, and promoters, giving this bio a compelling, immersion into Elvis's world and the current business of music production. And, of course, it details the resistance he faced.

It was becoming all too clear that rock 'n' roll now served as a lightning rod for a more and more sharply divided society. Denounced from the pulpit, derided in the press, increasingly linked to the race issue, and even subject to congressional hearings, the music was being used to stigmatize a generation.

We read about the girls he almost married, his interactions with radio DJs and recording producers, his solid family life and encompassing love for his mother, the loneliness of the tours, and his first few movies where he played serious roles (with occasional songs). In his early films, Elvis received praise from directors and fellow actors for his honesty, dedication to the craft, desire to learn, and quick memory. Many people remember only his later song-filled quickie films, but his early work was notable, if now forgotten. He knew and was friends with Natalie Wood, Vince Edwards, Marlon Brando, Robert Mitchem, Rita Moreno, and Dennis Hopper. According to Grelun Landon, a music publisher,

He knew what he was doing at all times. I really believe he was like a novelist -- he studied and watched what was going on. It was really just second nature with him.

"Hound Dog," Graceland, Colonel Parker, the army, Beale Street, Sun Records, Ed Sullivan, the Jordanaires, gospel, pink Cadillacs, and screaming fans are all here in this mesmerizing  book, all flowing together as influential roles in Elvis' life. 

What I took away from this book was a new respect for the struggles and perseverance Elvis displayed throughout his life, as well as his genuine humility, honesty, and devotion to his family and religion. During these years, he neither smoked nor drank, called both his mother and current girlfriend every night, was loyal to his original backup group of musicians and singers, and showed a complete mastery of musical production in the recording studio.

I also learned what it was like to take a tour and face screaming fans nightly who threatened to tear you apart out of joy. I finally could understand the need for an accompanying entourage of friends on such a tour, a group who did nothing except remind the star of his normal life, joke around with, eat with, and provide a safe haven with whom to unwind. Never thought about that before.

Yes, this is a long book, with another volume on his later life waiting for you in the wings. But such attention to detail by Guralnik is a worthy reward for picking up this book. He brings an iconic figure to life, with all the trials, triumphs and influencing factors in Elvis' world carefully laid out.

This nice, polite, well-mannered boy became transformed onstage in a manner that seemed to contradict everything that you might discern about his private personality. His energy was fierce; his sense of competitive fire seemed to overwhelm the shy, deferential kid within; every minute he was onstage was like an incendiary explosion.

I was deeply, deeply involved with this book, constantly grabbing at any time I could scrounge up to read it, even if only in small snatches. I fell into the previously unknown (to me) world of music in the 1950's, and  Elvis Presley. Even if you are not a fan, Last Train to Memphis is a revealing look into the earliest years of rock 'n' roll and the people who shaped it. Highly recommended, but please don't be put off by its length. You won't be sorry.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Ronstadt, Linda. Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir 

An absolutely stunning autobiography of Linda Ronstadt that follows her career from singing Spanish songs with family and friends to rock and roll fame, and even singing Gilbert and Sullivan light opera. What a voice she had and what a musical life she led.  (previously reviewed here)