Reflections On…Books (book #4)

I have been keeping track of the books I read on Goodreads since 2020, but since 2023, I have been writing reviews. You see, I had an online writing presence since 2011, and piggybacked on that.

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I was a high school football statistician for the Texas Sports Radio Network (TSRN) from 1997 to 2014 and for Thursday Night Lights (TNL) from 2009 to 2015. I also was the statistician for UTSA football in 2012. TSRN broadcasted games on the radio, the internet, and on their app. TNL broadcasted games on television, the internet, and their app.  

In July of 2011, I jumped on the internet BLOG bandwagon and immediately, I came up with the name of thestatmanspeaks.com. It tells you who I am; THE STATMAN. Then it tells you what I do; SPEAKS. But the speaks part means, I speak in words not audio. 

I shared my thoughts on the games I worked, posted photos, and of course there were stats, stats, and more stats. I would often compare my stats to the official newspaper stats, and I was always very close to them! 

I watermarked all the photos I used, and it made me happy when my photos would get shared by the players as they liked seeing themselves in action. To this day, I still see my pictures being shared online.

I took renovation photos of Alamo Stadium, a football stadium and the adjoining Alamo Convocation Center, a gymnasium in 2013 and 2014. Those photos appeared in a book, on television several times, the school district’s athletic website, and I was featured in a television interview with the local ABC station. I also took renovation photos of Lehnhoff Stadium in 2015 and the new Northside Independent School District gymnasium in 2016.

In March of 2015, my wife asked me if I liked being a statistician or a writer better. Without any hesitation from me, I replied I liked writing better.

So, I retired from the Texas Sports Radio Network in 2015 and Thursday Night Lights in in 2016 and became a freelance writer and photographer. The last game I covered as a writer was in 2017. I did make a one game special comeback as a statistician in 2019.

When Nina (my wife) and I announced to the world on October 31, 2015, that we were pregnant (she was, I just helped a little bit), I started writing about it on www.thedadspeaks.com.  

In 2023, I started sharing book reviews on www.bookmarkdad.com.  

In 2025, I backed up everything from thestatmanspeaks.com and bookmarkdad.com, and allowed the domain names to expire. I exported all the content from bookmarkdad.com to www.thedadspeaks.com. For, thestatmanspeaks.com content, I exported all the content as well, but they are all in draft mode.

I rarely don’t like a book other or do not finish a book. I actually have a few in my Kindle library that I got from Netgalley that I thought I would like, but I don’t. Netgalley provides Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs), basically, that means I get to read and review books before they are published officially to the world. I wish they had a way for a free sample like Amazon does. I have not yet completely given up on those books, and I really want to like them, so they remain.

I would say that 99.9% of the books I review get a 5-star rating. It means for fiction books, I liked it, the characters were fun, and the action kept me on my toes. For memoirs, it means this person had a really cool life and I enjoyed the stories they told. See, I am pretty simple. I am not a professional reviewer, I just write what I like about them and move on. Sometimes, as I am reading, other books are mentioned. If that books looks interesting to me, I will look it up and save it for a future read.

I don’t remember as a child, teenager, young adult, or even a mature adult reading books. I guess I had other things going on. I didn’t even enjoy reading school text books as I found them boring. I was 43 years old when I read several fiction humor books by Dave Barry and Carl Hiaasen! That was a great start for my reading for enjoyment and I haven’t slowed down since!

I was talking to my dad about books and he told me this story about himself, which is published in his unpublished memoirs:

My parents didn’t get beyond the eighth grade in school but they were big readers. One might think that working-class people like my parents wouldn’t be able to afford to buy too many books. True, but they had a source. Uncle Bill was our family’s book supplier. Once or twice a month either he would visit us, or we would go to his apartment in the Bronx, or we might meet him at my Grandmother’s apartment. A shopping bag or two would change hands, from Bill to my father.

Uncle Bill worked as a porter for the NYC Subway system. He cleaned trains at the end of the day. He would throw trash out but keep the discarded books. I can visualize him lugging bags of books after work and stashing them in his apartment until the appropriate hand-off was arranged.

These bags were filled with paperback books. My father would grab his mysteries, my mother would locate her favorites and I would get my fix with Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson or some unknown writer, it didn’t matter. In the days of black and white TV, with only a few channels, these books provided me entertainment without parallel.

I started getting these books when I was around ten or eleven years old and the handoff continued until I was close to thirty years old. The most appreciated books came during my year in Thailand. Regularly a shoe box, wrapped and taped tightly, would arrive with books.

It’s so awesome seeing my nine-year-old son read and listen to books. I always tell him that I will never say no to books! He recently started listening to the Percy Jackson audiobooks, and it’s great to see him paying attention to the words and he also understands what is happening (unlike me, where I can’t even pronounce some of the names in the books). He also carries the Percy Jackson physical book that he is listening to in his school backpack.

I can’t even tell you how many boxes of books we have packed as we are moving out-of-state next month, but It will be very nice when the three of us can unpack them and put them away in bookcases. One of the areas in our new house is going to house a very large bookcase, and I know smaller bookcases will be purchased and placed in other areas of the house.

See, books are a part of us and they are available to each of us in the format of our individual choice.

For me, I know that when I am out in the world alone, my Kindle will probably come with me. I can be very happy reading while everybody else is doing something stupid on their phones.