Non-sports book review - "Too Late"

No worries, I am NOT stopping my reviews of sports books.  But as I note in the review, at times one just has to read something outside the usual genre.  So I did that and it was so good, I wanted to post it.  

Title/Author:

“Too Late” by Colleen Hoover

Rating: 

5 of 5 stars (outstanding)

Review:  This review is for a book that is way out of my usual fare.  Readers of my blog or followers here or Substack know that I write reviews on books about sports.  I don’t recall seeing ANYTHING about ANY sport in this book.  But as any bibliophile knows, sometimes you just have to pick up a book that is not your usual type to cleanse the palate.  Wanting to find a good psychological thriller for that cleansing I wanted, I decided to go for one by one of the hottest authors lately, Colleen Hoover.  Boy, was I pleased with that selection.

Without going too far into describing the story, it is part love triangle, part drug trafficking and part mind control.  The main characters are Asa Jackson, a notorious drug dealer who falls in love with Sloan.  Sloan is a college student who had to take care of her younger twin brothers on the spectrum.  One tragically died during a seizure; the other is in a group home that was paid by the state.  Sloan went to Asa for help when the funds allegedly ended (I use “allegedly” because that’s important to the story) and she slowly fell under Asa’s control.  Then comes Carter, who is working undercover to put an end to Asa’s drug ring.  There is an unmistakable attraction between Carter and Sloan and this puts both them and Carter’s mission into danger.

The goal was to enjoy a book outside of what I usually read – mission accomplished.  I finished it in one sitting, something I very rarely do.  I was so impressed with the character development of not only those three, but even for some of the minor characters like Stephen, Sloan’s brother who lives at the group home.  The scenes of when Carter and Sloan are together and the former is trying to calm down the latter are just a small part of how well this story is told and what draws a reader into the characters. 

One thing that I will try to learn more is that since I will be reading more of Ms. Hoover’s work now that my first book from her is one I really enjoyed is if her work usually includes graphic sexual scenes and foul language like was in this book. It certainly doesn’t bother me, but in the introduction, Ms. Hoover notes that these could be triggers so it made me wonder if this is something that is not usually in her books or she has that warning for all of them.  Regardless, when I need to take a break from sports books, this will be a go-to author for me.

 

Link: https://www.amazon.com/Too-Late-Definitive-Colleen-Hoover/dp/1538766248/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0  

 

Review of "Escape From Holland"

In between watching baseball, hockey playoff games and basketball playoff games, I've had the chance to do a lot of reading.  This book was one where I received the request before its publication in March, but due to various setbacks, I did not get to it until a couple days ago.  The timing was good as today, May 10, marks the 86th anniversary of this escape.  Here is my review.

Title/Author:

“Escape From Holland: The Dash for the Last British Boat Out of Holland in May 1940.  A Thrilling True Story of Football, Ballet, Journalism and War” by Chris Hunt

Rating: 

4 of 5 stars (very good)

Review:  The old saying that sometimes real life is more exciting or dangerous than fiction was certainly the case for this story.  Many people from various walks of life living in Holland were drawn together by the threat of war.  Their escape from the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940 and eventual safe return to their native Britain is told in this very good book by Chris Hunt.

Because I will review sports books for this site, Mr. Hunt thought I might be interested in reviewing this book because one of the main celebrities who made this daring escape, Billy Marsden, was a well-known football player and manager in England.  There isn’t a lot of football mentioned in the book, except for two significant passages.  One is how Marsden’s playing career came to an end due to injury.  He was very thankful for the German medical personnel who helped him recover – something he felt was ironic given that it was now Germany who was pulling Europe into war.

The other section of the book where football was the main topic was a recreational game between native Dutch men working at the hotel where English refugees were staying and a group of the English refugees.  These players were mainly from the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company.  The dancers were putting on shows in Holland when the invasion started and the hotel was where they and other refugees were awaiting the boats that would take them out of the country.  I thought that was great that for at least a short period of time, there was some recreation that would take minds off of the desperate situation, whether as a player or as a spectator.

Most of the book is a very good portrayal of footballers (Marsden is the most prominent, but not the only one profiled here), dancers and journalists who were in Holland for one reason or another.  Their escape from the bombing and invasion is just as dramatic as any wartime movie produced in Hollywood.  The details Mr. Hunt writes about each person, each narrow escape and each brief pause of relief make for great reading. While it took me a little longer to read this book than usual for a review request, it is a book that should be consumed carefully as no detail mentioned is unimportant to the story.

This might be better classified as a war or military book than a sports book, but that doesn’t really matter.  What does matter is that this is a gripping look at a daring escape by people of various walks of life for who were brought together for a dangerous expedition that ended with a well-deserved trip home.

I wish to thank the author and Mile Away Publishing for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.

Link: Amazon.com: Escape From Holland: The dash for the last British boat out of Holland in May 1940, a thrilling true story of football, ballet, journalism and war: 9781919271828: Hunt, Chris: Books

Review of "The Texas Rangers and Me"

Keeping up with my personal policy of reading a book relevant to the sporting event I am attending, I read this book while on a bus trip to Yankee Stadium. I gave myself brownie points for not only reading a baseball book, but the subject was one of the teams I was seeing that night, the Texas Rangers.  I won't say the Rangers won that game because I enjoyed the book - but if one wants to believe so, go ahead!  Here is my review. 

Title/Author:

“The Texas Rangers and Me: A Baseball Writer’s Thirty-Two Years in Arlington” by T. R. Sullivan

Rating: 

4 of 5 stars (very good)

Review: 

If a reader wants to get the inside scoop for their favorite baseball team, the best source of information would be one of the beat writers who cover the team regularly.  T.R. Sullivan was one of those writers for the Texas Rangers and his career covering the team is a good collection of his time performing that task.

Sullivan’s career covered a lot of ground for the history of the team, through the good times and the bad ones.  Players he highlights in the book could make up a Who’s Who of Texas Rangers history.  There is great information on stars who had great seasons with the Rangers.  These include Nolan Ryan, Michael Young, Adrian Beltre, Josh Hamilton and Alex Rodriguez.  Not only are their exploits on the field covered, but Sullivan also shares personal stories about interactions he had with them and for some, such as Rodriguez, how they ended up becoming Rangers.

The stories are not limited to the players. Sullivan also shares anecdotes on managers and front office leaders as well. The best of the managers during Sullivan’s time covering the team, Ron Washington, gets a great write up.  For front office staff, that honor would go to Jon Daniels.  It probably is no coincidence that these two individuals got this amount of text in the book as they were the field manager and general manager respectively when the Rangers won back-to-back American League pennants in 2010 and 2011.  Sullivan retired after the 2020 World Series (played in Arlington even though the teams were the Dodgers and the Rays) so he did not cover the first championship for Texas in 2023, but he did include his observations on that team as well.

Through these personal stories, Sullivan also takes the reader through the Rangers’ seasons, both good and bad.  He starts with an event where the Rangers were not playing – the 1989 World Series between the Athletics and Giants and the earthquake in San Francisco that interrupted it for ten days.  From there, he works for a Dallas-Fort Worth newspaper covering the Rangers and occasionally will give the reader a peak of life as a beat reporter.

Because of all these interconnected stories about the people and the team, there is repetition of many events in Rangers history.  From that, it appears that Sullivan wrote each chapter without looking back to see if an event had already been addressed.  That is the only true flaw I found in this book and if that’s the worst thing one can find, it’s truly a book worth a reader’s time.  Even if that reader is not a Rangers fan, it’s still fun to read about this team’s personalities and history.

I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.

Link: The Texas Rangers and Me: A Baseball Writer's Thirty-Two Years in Arlington: Sullivan, T.R.: 9781496246806: Amazon.com: Books

Review of “Royal Treatment”

Next year will mark the 80th anniversary of the integration of Major League Baseball by the Dodgers and Jackie Robinson. So, just like when he played in Montreal the year before integration, I received a book about his time with the Royals a year before that anniversary. Here is my review of that book.

Title/Author: “Royal Treatment: Jackie Robinson, Montreal, and the Breaking of Baseball’s Color Barrier” by Sean J. McLaughlin

Rating:  4 of 5 stars (very good)

Review: When Jackie Robinson spent the 1946 baseball season with the Montreal Royals, it was part of the plan by Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey to integrate Major League Baseball. This was done not because Robinson needed the year at the Dodgers’ top farm club to work on his baseball skills. It was done to prepare him for what he might face as the game’s first Black player. How Robinson and his wife Rachel fared in Montreal and how the city treated him is the main focus of this book by Sean J. McLaughlin.

The book isn’t all baseball, all the Robinsons or all Montreal. McLaughlin does a very good job of weaving the topics together in a way that it doesn’t get too bogged down in one topic. While that’s a strength of the book, there are also good chunks of the book, several pages long, about subjects that are really only peripherally relevant to the main subject of Robinson. Two examples of this are the lengthy sections on Canadian racial history and a later description of the same thing for the city of Louisville, who was Montreal’s opponent in the 1946 Junior World Series. 

While these subjects may not have been directly related to the Jackie Robinson story, when McLaughlin concentrated on Robinson, the city and citizens of Montreal, or the action on the field during Royals games, the writing is great. It’s clear, full of important details, and makes the reader feel like they are in a time warp and takes them back to post-World War II Canada. I especially enjoyed reading about the warm reception that the Robinson received in Montreal, whether it was in their neighborhood or enthusiastic baseball fans cheering the soon-to-be Dodger on. 

This step of the Jackie Robinson story is one that is often passed or glossed over and this book finally gives it the recognition it deserves. No matter what the checkered history of racial relations may be in both the United States or Canada may be, this book shows that even that may be pushed aside when a talented player can make an entire city cheer. 

I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book. The views expressed in this review are strictly my own. 

Link: https://www.amazon.com/Royal-Treatment-Robinson-Montreal-Baseballs/dp/1496244311/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0 

Review of “Certified Beauties”

Having spent a good chunk of the last three days on the road, it gave me time to listen to a audiobook. Having been on a hockey kick lately between attending an ECHL playoff game and watching a lot of the NHL playoffs, it’s only logical that I listened to a collection of hockey stories.

Title/Author: “Certified Beauties: More of Hockey’s Greatest Untold Stories” written and narrated by James Duthie

Rating:  5 of 5 stars (excellent)

Review: Every sport has stories that are amusing, shocking, inspiring and heart-tugging. Hockey is no exception and James Duthie has compiled an excellent collection of them for this book. He also narrates the audio version, which was a great listen.

There is no one theme for these stories and that makes this collection even better. If there is a common thread between any of them, it would be that a few of them involve players either missing a bus from the hotel for a morning skate. There are also some that involve a player who has just been called up to the NHL and has to catch a plane or arrange ground transportation to get to the arena. Many of these stories are during the time when hockey teams flew commercial and there were no cell phones . They all were fun to listen to. 

There’s also stories about former hockey personalities battling disease, some stories only made possible by the world situation during the COVID pandemic and even a couple of comebacks. That was the final act in my favorite story in the book, the one about Terry Ryan. A former first round draft choice, Ryan suffered several setbacks both in hockey and in his personal life. To flash forward to the best part, he made a comeback to the game in a minor league game at the age of 47. Hearing Duthie read this helped me imagine Ryan telling it, which made listening to this as an audiobook a good choice. This book is one that every hockey fan will enjoy whether reading or listening. 

Link: https://www.amazon.com/Certified-Beauties-Hockeys-Greatest-Stories/dp/B0DV69DM76/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0 

Review of "The Messi Effect"

Major League Soccer (MLS) has been in existence since 1996, but the bug didn't hit me until 2017, when Minnesota United started play as an expansion team.  Since then I have followed the league and Minnesota casually, but of course I took notice when Lionel Messi joined Inter Miami in 2023.  This is a great book on how his arrival has impacted the league. 

Title/Author:

“The Messi Effect: How the Global Legend Changed the Future of American Soccer” by Paul Tenorio

Rating: 

5 of 5 stars (excellent)

Review: 

When a global superstar in soccer decides to play for a team in the United States, it makes for a seismic reaction from soccer fans across the world and provides American soccer a lot of publicity.  Three examples of this are when Pele arrived to play for the New York Cosmos in 1975, David Beckham arriving from England to play for the LA Galaxy in 2007 and Lionel Messi’s signing with Inter Miami in 2023.  The latter of these events is covered in this book by Paul Tenorio.

It should be noted that this book’s primary focus is not Messi himself but the business of Major League Soccer (MLS), the highest level of professional soccer in the United States.  The “Messi Effect” is how his presence in MLS would affect the growth, quality of play, popularity and progression of MLS. The league has taken slow but mostly steady growth since its near bankruptcy in 2001.  There was a noted increase in many of these items when Beckham joined, a fact Tenorio notes often.

However, the connection between the two superstars of different eras is much tighter than that.  After his playing days were over, Beckham became one of the owners of the Inter Miami expansion team, thereby becoming Messi’s employer.  Why Messi decided to join Inter Miami is told in excellent detail early in the book by Tenorio and he does just as fine a job with his explanations of the inner workings of MLS ownership.

Tenorio notes how the principal owner of Inter Miami, Jorge Mas, is a visionary and forward thinker as Mas wants the league to use the power of Messi’s popularity to grow the league’s international status.  As a whole, ownership of MLS has always had a conservative view of growth and favored competitive balance, a formula what was working for the NFL.  Tenorio paints a terrific picture of these owners and how their actions were holding back the size of growth for the league.  There are changes coming that he points out, but they may be too late to complement the exposure the league is getting from Messi and the 2026 World Cup coming to North America.

I bring all these up because this is a fantastic look at not only Messi’s arrival and on-field performance but MLS as a whole – from its beginnings to its upcoming changes on the schedule and rosters.  Any fan of MLS or soccer in general will want to add this one to their library.

I wish to thank St. Martin’s Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.

Link: The Messi Effect: How the Global Legend Changed the Future of American Soccer: Tenorio, Paul: 9781250364173: Amazon.com: Books

 

Review of “For the Love of the Grind”

I take part in a monthly online reading challenge in which another participant selects books for me to read that month. I alway ask whoever draws my name to pick 4 books for me on sports - this one was one of the April picks by that person. Otherwise I would have passed on it, but I’m glad now that I didn’t.

Title/Author: “For the Love of the Grind” by Sara Hall

Rating: 4 of 5 stars (very good)

Review: Sara Hall had a successful rerunning career, even if she never was able to be on an Olympic team, whether in the marathon or the 10,000 meter run, which was the event for which stride to qualify in 2024. The ups and downs of her career are captured in her memoir which covers a lot of different topics.

The most interesting topic of the book has to be when she and her husband Ryan decided to adopt four sisters in Ethiopia. Part of Sara’s Christian upbringing that she felt strongly about honoring was to help the poor. During one of their many overseas trips for competition or training (Ryan was a world class runner as well) they decided to pursue adoption and saw these four girls. Sara’s description of everything she and her daughters have gone through while Sara was running and raising the girls in a new land was very inspiring.

Her memories of her running career - from high school to Stanford to turning professional to the Olympic trials - make for good reading as well. Despite her many injuries, she always seemed to not only stay positive but she always seemed to find a way to overcome any adversity. Her coaches, especially Ryan, always helped her maintain that determination. Overcoming these injuries, as well as periods of anxiety and obsession over results, made for an inspiring sports story as well. 

These are just a few topics and examples of what I liked about this memoir. It felt honest - not too much bravado but not too much self- criticism either. Sara Hall’s story is one that many readers will enjoy, not just sports fans or runners.

I wish to thank St. Martins Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are solely my own. 

Link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FLYNZ1KS/ref=x_gr_bb_kindle?caller=Goodreads&tag=x_gr_bb_kindle-20