Archive for the ‘Nonfiction’ Category

Facing Future (The 33 1/3 Series) by Dan Kois “What I do is minimum effort, but maximum pleasure. That’s part of being Hawaiian, brah.” — Israel Kamakawiwo’ole “ [...] its delicate beauty, its guileless reimagining of the standards, and its 4 a.m. willingness to go over the top in search of the sublime.” — Dan [...]

On Boxing by Joyce Carol Oates Six years ago this month my wife and I went and saw Million Dollar Baby at the theater. Amongst a myriad of other things that I thought about after seeing that film, one of them was that I needed to read some boxing nonfiction if for no other reason [...]

Society Without God by Phil Zuckerman I am told that America is an extremely religious country. Miles of poll data and statistics show that America loves religion almost as much as hammers love nails. Between the mega churches and the hours of religion-based conversation that talk radio and politicians produce in a typical month, it [...]

Columbine by Dave Cullen At 11:10a MDT on April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris arrived at Columbine High School. At 11:19a they began shooting at their fellow classmates in the cafeteria during lunch. They would proceed to shoot and throw pipe bombs at their classmates and teachers both inside and outside of the [...]

The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons There is only one word I can use to properly describe The Book of Basketball, the latest book from ESPN’s The Sports Guy (Bill Simmons): maddening. His maddening use of long-winded metaphors (David Robinson is like a maître d’ at a really fancy, upscale restaurant who happens to [...]

Eating The Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman An excerpt from the chapter titled “The Best Response”: “The best response to being arrested for carrying an unlicensed handgun into a nightclub and accidentally shooting yourself in the leg, thereby jeopardizing your pro football career. “First of all, you people probably don’t know anyone who’s been shot. I, [...]

I Want To Take You Higher: The Life And Times Of Sly & The Family Stone by Jeff Kaliss I blame Behind The Music. I think that the once-great VH1 show (Garbage, Everclear, and Nick Lachey got their own shows… really?) has ruined my ability to properly read any rock bios. The Behind The Music [...]

The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived by Allan Lazar, Dan Karlan & Jeremy Salter Wedding Crashers is the one of the worst comedies I have ever seen. And I say this not because the movie itself is uncomfortably unfunny or anything like that (it does have some great scenes) but because the movie [...]

Game Of Kings by Michael Weinreb “There are eighty-five billion ways to play the first four moves of a chess game, and it has been said that there are more variations in a single chess game than there are atoms in the universe.” –pages 67 & 68. The above quote represents the dichotomy that is [...]

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace More than anything else, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again–the collection of seven essays and articles that David Foster Wallace wrote during 1990-1995–makes one wonder how much editing goes on when a writer submits a piece to a magazine. For instance, [...]