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‘No Place I Would Rather Be’ Review: We Miss Reading Roger Angell

Published

6 years ago

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Well, this was a treat. Surprisingly, the best baseball writing I have read all year comes in a book written about baseball writing. That new book is called “No Place I Would Rather Be: Roger Angell and a Life in Baseball Writing” by Joe Bonomo. In it, Bonomo takes the reader on a scenic journey through the annals of Angell, baseball’s preeminent philosopher-scribe. Nearing a hundred years old, Angell no longer writes much, and “No Place I Would Rather Be” evokes more than a little sadness at the prolific insight we once had access to as fans of America’s pastime.

This book comes out at a time when there are high profile clamors (including from the commissioner himself) of a crisis in baseball. A view of baseball history through the lens of Angell, whose first encounters with the sport occurred when its headliners were Ruth and Gehrig, alleviates this concern. Baseball is always in flux, and if something is eternally in crisis mode then there is no crisis at all.

What we do have in today’s day and age is a crisis in baseball writing, a fact little acknowledged throughout the game. Perhaps it is unfair to compare modern sportswriters to Roger Angell, since he was always sui generis, but even if Angell does not like to be lumped into such a group, past generations also had talents such as Grantland Rice, David Halberstam and Roger Kahn. Today’s readers, on the other hand, get to read an army of bloggers whose greatest strength is missing the forest for the trees.

Modern baseball writers can be divided into two categories. On one hand, you have the statheads, supremely knowledgeable about the way baseball is now played and how rosters are currently constructed, conversant not just in the alphabet soup of WAR and wRC+ and xwOBA but also in more immediately useful information such as batted ball profile and swinging strike percentage. This faction, sometimes called “the nerds,” is obviously ascendant and clearly has useful information to impart. (Fangraphs writer to MLB front office is now a legitimate career path). Unfortunately, its practitioners too often rely on numbers to do the talking for them, occasionally aided by graphs and GIFs. In combing through troves of data to find topics to write about, these authors have a tendency to lose track of the sportswriter’s prime directive — craft a compelling narrative for the reader to follow.

On the other side of today’s chasm, you will find the traditionalists, the old school BBWAA members whose work has appeared on the back page of your local sports section for at least two decades. This type of baseball writer has no time for baseball’s analytical revolution. Yet, instead of sensing an opportunity when the big brains of the baseball writing corps had trouble converting numbers to text, these writers went the opposite direction, lowering their standard to appeal to the lowest common denominator of baseball fan. Apparently thinking that any knowledgeable fan was already lost to the statheads, these traditionalists began filing stories so banal it is a wonder they get paid to write them (usually quite a bit more than the nerds).

Getting to relive Roger Angell’s heyday through Joe Bonomo’s book is a reminder that baseball writing can be intellectual and accessible. But it is also a reminder that the combination is rare and that save for some propitious circumstances we might not have been blessed with it in the first place. Although “No Place I Would Rather Be” is not a biography, it succeeds in exploring the conditions that made Roger Angell Roger Angell.

The son of a union leader and the first fiction editor of the New Yorker magazine (and stepson of E. B. White), Angell was born and reared in an environment in which words mattered. He also grew up in a city that featured the two best baseball teams of the first quarter of the 20th century, the Giants and Yankees, whose domination in their respective leagues would be enough to catch the attention and devotion of the lonely child from a broken home.

Unlike most so-called journalists, Angell did not set out to be a sportswriter. In fact, he did not pen his first baseball piece for the New Yorker until 1962, when he was over 40 years old. When given his first assignment, he brought his background in fiction-writing to the task and the rest is history.

With Joe Bonomo, this history is in good hands. For the book, Bonomo drew both from the vast archive of Angell’s published work and from the writer’s copious notes. Putting the two together, he is able to add color to the sketch that Angell has provided himself through all these years of confessional baseball writing. An anecdote about the 1986 World Series and Angell’s conflicting allegiances is most revealing in this regard.

“No Place I Would Rather Be” is a great read for devoted fans of Roger Angell as for those who are only obliquely familiar with him. Either way, it will make you pine for his take on the game. The good news is that even if another Roger Angell is not likely to grace us with his presence anytime soon, he has given us thousands of pages to revisit whenever we have the need to reminisce.

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Book Review: ‘The Final Girl Support Group’

Published

2 years ago

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January 18, 2023

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The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix, $12.18 Paperback 

Release Date: July 2021

Cozy up on your next snow day and read Gary Hendrix’s The Final Girl Support Group. 

Author of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires (2020), Grady Hendrix succeeds again in tapping into our favorite horror films to deliver this mystery. Six young women make up the “Final Girl Support Group.” Each survived horrific massacres that have been turned into successful film franchises. Movies such as Friday The 13th and Halloween actually happened in this version of America. Twenty years later the spotlight has moved on and society has found new monsters and victims. Still, these women sit in a circle of chairs in a church basement trying to figure out how to live their lives. Paranoid Lynnette Tarkington reluctantly participates in group therapy sessions with Dr. Carol Elliot along with fellow survivors Marilyn Torres, who has buried her emotions in wealth; Dani Shipman, who might have killed the wrong person; Julia Campbell, whose encounter left her in a wheelchair; and Heather DeLuca, who is succumbing to addiction. Some of them are in denial about what happened. Some still live in terror, always looking over their shoulders, imprisoned by their own fears. 

Photo via Amazon

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

After one member of this vigilant sisterhood is murdered and a series of persistent attacks threaten the rest, Lynnette becomes increasingly suspicious that the attacks are originating way too close to their inner circle. “Does this ever end?” Lynnette asks. “Will there always be someone out there turning little boys into monsters? Will we always be final girls? Will there always be monsters killing us? How do we stop the snake from eating its own tail?” The book is creepy enough on its face, but Hendrix’s use of narrative tools heightens the unease.

The Final Girl Support Group isn’t necessarily scary, but the plot is action-packed and delivers its share of gore. The novel is an ultimately entertaining and inspiring take on horror movies, trauma, and self-determination. Available on Amazon! 

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Book Review: ‘The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo’

Published

2 years ago

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October 5, 2022

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I first read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo this past month after my friend and I swapped our favorite summer books. I opened the book one Saturday morning and couldn’t put it down. Despite the fact that it was published nearly five years ago, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo continues to captivate readers’ interest on BookTok, Bookstagram, and Goodreads. 

“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” by Evelyn Hugo — $9.42 Paperback/$22.36 Hardcover

This story is about renowned Hollywood actress Evelyn Hugo who, after decades of blockbuster hits, is now 79 and ready to give an exclusive interview after years of dodging the press. But the only one granted access is a little-known journalist named Monique Grant. Though she can’t understand why she’s been chosen, Monique goes to Evelyn’s home and finds out Evelyn doesn’t just want to do an interview — she wants to lay out every piece of her truth for Monique to write and sell her biography. 

Though Evelyn won’t answer why she picked Monique to do the job, Monique agrees and Evelyn’s story begins to unfold from her calculated beginnings in Hollywood to the millions she enjoys in the present, each section of her life titled by each of her seven husbands and her reasons for marrying (and divorcing) them. As you journey through Evelyn’s life, it feels as if you’re being granted exclusive access to something you shouldn’t be seeing. It’s hard to believe the characters and events in this book aren’t real celebrities. 

To me, a great book is one that makes you forget you’re reading in the first place, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo does exactly that. It’s an instantly captivating book, thanks in part to the story, but mostly to Taylor Jenkins Reid’s writing. Her stories flow smoothly, her characters are complex and realistically flawed, and I happily got lost in the pages until the very end. This is the perfect cozy fall read!

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Book Review: ‘Verity’ By Colleen Hoover

Published

2 years ago

on

August 10, 2022

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Available on Amazon for $11.26 paperback 

Colleen Hoover is all the rage this summer. The author’s 2016 romance novel It Ends With Us gained fame due to the viral nature of #BookTok (the book lover’s community on TikTok). I’ve always loved reading, especially during the summer months by the beach and pool. Surely because of this, my “For You Page” has been flooding with recommendations and reviews as to what to read next. I can without a doubt say that Verity is worth the hype.

Verity was first published in 2018 and has only just become available worldwide in paperback. I started reading Colleen Hoover last summer when I first discovered It Ends With Us on #BookTok and have read four of her other books since. Given that I finished this one in a day, I would say it is extremely readable!

Verity is different from Hoover’s usual style and genre of romance. This novel is twisting, unsettling, creepy, and psychologically mind-bending. From the beginning, I could not put it down. The plot follows protagonist, Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer who accepts a job offer to complete the remaining books of an unfinished, successful series. Jeremy Crawford, the husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen due to his wife’s serious injuries. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity’s notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn’t expect to uncover is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. With shades of Gillian Flynn blending in with Hoover’s classic take on romance, our protagonist finds herself uncovering a story so horrifying, and all the while, falling for a grieving man. There is a thrilling twist at the end, which I am happy to debate, but I’m not giving any spoilers until you read it for yourself! Overall, I highly recommend the purchase. Find it on Amazon. 

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