false149064true5689870read0true1462918currently-reading26true1462917to-read
<![CDATA[Roy added 'Seven Seconds or Less: My Season on the Bench with the Runnin' and Gunnin' Phoenix Suns']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/65222311
to: Seven Seconds or Less: My Season on the Bench with the Runnin' and Gunnin' Phoenix Suns (Hardcover)byJack McCallum
Do you like basketball? Well I used to but now, not rea…
Ever wonder what it’s like to be an assistant coach in the NBA? I guess maybe once, but …
Are you a big time Pheonix Suns fan? Um, no…
Well I’ve got a book for you!
I picked up this book because one of the main characters, Mike D’Antoni recently became the coach of the team I used to love. I was looking for a reason to re-kindle my passion for basketball, and maybe if this book could show me the NBA, in the same way that Moneyball breaks down MLB, well than I would have a new foot-hold to get back into the game.
I can’t say :07 Seconds did that for me. I can’t say any book could do that for me. I loved the early 90’s Knicks to an unhealthy degree, and it’s probably for the best that I am not a fan any more.
What :07 Seconds could do for you, if you were already into the NBA, is give you a few more morsels to digest and mull over at a game, during a huddle, or to help unpack an obscure court-side interaction. For me, a lapsed NBA fan, this book didn’t change my impressions of the game. It didn’t even change my impressions of assistant coaches. These guys are all desperately hard workers, but it is unclear whether what they do actually pays off in the end. The play in the NBA is so free-flowing and talent driven, that all of the stats and video in the world doesn’t seem like it could really make or break a game. What the assistants do helps the team shave off or add that last little percentage that may turn a win into a loss, but not always – not nearly as much as an injury to a key player, a bad call by a referee, or a hot night by an opponent.
]]>
<![CDATA[Roy added 'Harry Potter Boxset Books 1-7']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/11201448
to: Harry Potter Boxset Books 1-7 (Hardcover)byJ.K. Rowling
]]>
<![CDATA[Roy added 'The Road']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/11202715
to: The Road (Paperback)byCormac McCarthy
This is definitely not a beach book. I think my experience reading The Road was enhanced by me reading it in January, and while I was fighting off a cold. It's good to be in a miserable mood when you are reading about misery. Otherwise, I cant relate to what the characters go through, because I've never had to live such a hard-scrabbled, desperate life. Hell, I've only been camping twice, and both times I came to miss hot showers very quickly, so in those moments, I was on the road. When something good happens to the characters, I wanted it to last.
McCarthy gives a paucity of details. Even at the end you dont know anything identifiable about the characters (even their names) or what has happened to the world (I'm guessing a super-volcano went booom). However, I bought in pretty quick and am now thinking about buying a camping/survival guide, just in case the world ends itself.
This could easily be staged as a play. Leaving the actors and director to make it a wrenching display of a father protecting his son, or a mind-numbingly, bleak, and painful to watch diorama, only to be outdone, Waiting For Godot. The Road is much better than Samuel Beckett's shit. The two characters are real, if only sketched in, and live in an impossible, actual place.