Book Report
December 16, 2006
Cross-X: Book Report
Oh, the hours I spent at the goofy forensics tournaments! I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by how much I enjoyed Cross-X by Joe Miller. Given the amount of time and energy I devoted to the speech and debate team in high school (and, ahem, grade school), it's kind of a no-brainer that I'd be into a year-in-the-life story of an inner-city debate team from Kansas City. Oh, you're going to devote swaths of text to descriptions of van rides to debate tournaments, complete with details on the battle for control of the stereo? Check. You've got complicated theories about the evolution of high-school debate and the competing philosophies therein? Uh huh. You'll even include a couple pages of back and forth with Jim Copeland in re: the state of high school debate? Umm, yeah. That sounds about right. For the avoidance of doubt, I was very very into...
Posted by thatkid at 8:05 PM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2006
A Season With Verona: Book Report
After the World Cup, I pretty much needed to reread this I bought my first copy of A Season With Verona at a book shop at Heathrow airport. This was back when I was on planes to the UK fairly frequently, and loading up on footy magazines and literature at the airport actually became a regular part of the trip. That is, it was rare when I would return to New York without the most recent editions of World Soccer or Four Four Two, and, if I was lucky, an actual book about soccer. Said copy of A Season With Verona still carries the "3 for the price of 2" sticker from the sales promotion at said book shop. (Yes yes, I'm a giant nerd. Check.) I bought my second copy of A Season With Verona from one of the guys on the southwest corner of 80th and Broadway. It...
Posted by thatkid at 7:17 PM | Comments (0)
March 28, 2006
I Am Charlotte Simmons: Book Report
Finally, I take the time to write about a book that I hated To date, all of my semi-regular book report features have been fairly positive. Even if I didn't love all the books I reviewed, I certainly considered them worth reading -- and writing about. I've certainly read a bunch of other books since I started with the book reports, but not all of said books made it onto the web site. I Am Charlotte Simmons is the first book I'll write about that I genuinely disliked. Wait. Disliked isn't strong enough. Detested? Pitied? Was embarrassed to have paid for? Something like that. The worst part is that I thought it would make for some light plane reading -- wouldn't require too too much of me, and would at the very least make me think happy thoughts about college. Despite having been warned that it was "awful," I figured...
Posted by thatkid at 11:07 PM | Comments (1)
I Am Charlotte Simmons: Book Report
Finally, I take the time to write about a book that I hated To date, all of my semi-regular book report features have been fairly positive. Even if I didn't love all the books I reviewed, I certainly considered them worth reading -- and writing about. I've certainly read a bunch of other books since I started with the book reports, but not all of said books made it onto the web site. I Am Charlotte Simmons is the first book I'll write about that I genuinely disliked. Wait. Disliked isn't strong enough. Detested? Pitied? Was embarrassed to have paid for? Something like that. The worst part is that I thought it would make for some light plane reading -- wouldn't require too too much of me, and would at the very least make me think happy thoughts about college. Despite having been warned that it was "awful," I figured...
Posted by thatkid at 11:07 PM | Comments (1)
February 25, 2006
Imperial Grunts: Book Report
You Really Just Don't Think About All The Places That The U.S. Has A Military Presence After promises to make them a semi-regular feature, it's been a while since I posted a book report. It's not that I haven't been reading; more that I haven't read anything particularly inspiring, or at least inspiring enough to convince me to stop and write about it before I started the next book. Luckily, over the past few weeks (helped in no small part by a not insignificant amount of time spent on airplanes), I've done a lot of reading. And so the semi-regular feature returns! Perhaps I'll even fill in some of the gaps with other recent reads. Anyhoo, here we go. Title:Imperial Grunts Author: Robert D. Kaplan Tags: United States Military, U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, Special Forces, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Yemen, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Philippines, Fort Leavenworth, Empire, United States Military...
Posted by thatkid at 2:26 PM | Comments (0)
January 7, 2006
House Of Sand And Fog: Book Report
File under "I saw the movie before I read the book" So I was about to hop on the C@L - East Coast flight, more in need of a book than I should have been. Or, rather, more in need of a book I knew I would probably like that I could read on the flight. (I get real antsy about getting on long flights without ample reading materials. Antsy. Ample.) I had other books, but I worried they might not preoccupy me as well as I would have liked. So when I saw a copy of House Of Sand And Fog sitting on a end table at a buddy's place, I knew I had a winner. (And no, I'm not so proud that I won't read books emblazoned with the "Oprah's Book Club" logo.) I had seen the House Of Sand And Fog movie and liked it. So I...
Posted by thatkid at 4:26 PM | Comments (0)
January 2, 2006
On Beauty: This Is More A Book Report Than Review
I did not expect to read two (2) Zadie Smith books in See Why Ought Five So in re: previous posts where I talked some game about how I was going to try to post reports and/ or reviews of books I'm reading, I guess I've already missed some milestones. That is, I've gotten through four books since then, and haven't so much posted about any of them. Sigh. But I'm going to try. I may be a few titles behind, but I think I can catch up (or at least find a shortcut) and get these things up to date. For the record, ThatKid operates on a FIFO inventory system, so I'll have to power through a couple to get myself current with CY06. By way of introduction, I'll say that I resisted reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith for a good long while. It just seemed like it...
Posted by thatkid at 10:30 PM | Comments (0)
December 4, 2005
Charlie Wilson's War: This Is Almost A Book Review
Just in time for the holidays -- a new attempt at a semi-regular feature! So my big plan for this week was that I was going to debut a new feature on ThatKid -- book reviews. I tend to churn through books pretty regularly, said books tend to set me a-thinkin', references to said books tend to turn up in these pages anyway, so why not be a bit more disciplined about sharing what I'm reading? I didn't think I needed to come up with elaborate analyses -- just some top-level stuff on what I'd read, what I liked, what I didn't like, and whether I'd recommend it. Of course, in the course of writing this up, I mostly ended up formulating ridiculous conspiracy theories. But hey, that shouldn't prevent me from releasing the beta of ThatKid Book Reviews: Title: Charlie Wilson's War Author: George Crile Tags: Non-fiction, Cold War,...
Posted by thatkid at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)
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