By Rick Kaempfer
I knew a few things about Leo Durocher before I cracked open the pages of Nice Guys Finish Last (just re-released in paperback by University of Chicago press).
I knew that he was such an irritant as a player and manager in the 1930s and 1940s that he once provoked Cubs pitcher Hi Bithorn to throw a pitch into the Brooklyn Dodgers dugout.
I knew that his language was so foul it would have made Bobby Knight blush.
I knew that he was essentially an unlikable guy. When Vin Scully, a man who never has a harsh word for anyone, heard Leo took a job in Japan he said: “It took the U.S. 35 years to get revenge for Pearl Harbor.”
But most importantly, I knew Leo Durocher was the manager and wore No. 2 for the team of my childhood; the late 60s and early 70s Chicago Cubs.
What I didn’t know about Leo Durocher was his almost sociopathic motto: “Do whatever you feel like doing whenever you feel like doing it, and everything will turn out just fine.”
I learned that in Nice Guys Finish Last.

Read More

Posted on August 25, 2009

By Connie Nardini
The month of January is supposed to be a beginning, not the end of a beginning. To 13-year-old Jason Taylor it was both.
He is the January Man in David Mitchell’s 2006 coming-of-age-novel Black Swan Green. The story starts in the first month of Jason’s 13th year and ends, thirteen chapters later, in the first month of his 14th. So what happens to the January Man? Does he seem become a new person after these manic months of being lurched into adulthood, or is he still a beginning being? You must judge for yourself after you listen to his voice.

Read More

Posted on August 24, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
In 2006, I listed the books for sale at my local Kinko’s as a sort of cultural document, a sign of the times, if you will.
Today we revisit the same store to see how the books currently on sale reflect our culture now.
1. Chicken Soup for the Soul: Tough Times, Tough People.
By Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Amy Newmark
2. Become a Better You.
By Joel Osteen
3. Vinegar, Duct Tape, Milk Jugs & More.
By Earl Proux and the editors of Yankee Magazine

Read More

Posted on August 13, 2009

By The Beachwood Booknotes Desk
1. From the Independent Publishers Group:
“On Thursday, August 20, Steven Lee Beeber will host a reading and signing of his highly praised book The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: A Secret History of Jewish Punk (Chicago Review Press).

“The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s delves into punk’s beginning’s in New York City and discovers it to be the most Jewish of rock movements, both in makeup and attitude. Beeber interviewed more than 125 people integral to pre- and early punk; Tommy Ramone, Christ Stein (Blondie), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group), Hilly Kristal (CBGB owner), John Zorn and many others offer their thoughts on the early days of punk and the Jews who made the music happen.

Read More

Posted on August 11, 2009

By Katie Buitrago
A preface: I have a complicated relationship with fruit. Meaning: I don’t like it. Any of it. Not apples, oranges, mangoes, watermelon . . . not even [insert your favorite fruit you can’t fathom anyone ever hating here].
I know this is shameful, and bizarre, and horrifically unhealthy. I know. I don’t know why I was made like this, and it frustrates me endlessly. In my adult life, I’m trying really hard to rectify the situation. I can occasionally stomach a tangerine. I went on a romantic blackberry picking trip in summery Michigan, and not even bumblebees and sunsets could overcome my aversion to their seedy enfilade. There’s just something repugnant about seeds or fibers or little hairs swimming about my mouth, raining on my picnic of tart, juicy delights.
Not so with the Fruit Slinger.

Read More

Posted on August 6, 2009

By Scott Buckner
I was watching an episode of Route 66 a few days ago and, through the wonders of the disagreements that sometimes arise between the digital TV signal and my cheap-ass Radio Shack TV antenna that doesn’t quite work like it should sometimes, I spent the hour watching the program in a herky-jerky, stop-motion fashion. Normally, this would be a major annoyance. However, I’ve came to appreciate the cinematography that made Route 66 one of the best TV shows ever made some time ago; that’s why every third frame of any Route 66 episode would be an awesome photograph on its own.
This is why I thought of This Place On Third Avenue: The New York Stories of John McNulty, a book which I have come to treasure for no reason other than it’s what American newspaper-columnist journalism could be again if newspaper-columnist journalism actually started giving a shit about what happens to it.

Read More

Posted on August 5, 2009