June 23, 2009 at 11:18 am by Monica Potts
Liz and Dave, I’ve read through the prologue and first three chapters of “A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez,” and so far my initial response is the most important: I’m done reading prologues. I always find them frustrating. In this one, I feel as though Selena Roberts is trying too hard to place herself in the story for no good reason — she talks about walking up to A-Rod in a gym where he wasn’t expecting to find such a dogged reporter — and to psychoanalyze A-Rod. Also, she poses a question at the end, a point-blank, “I think you used steroids,” question, but she doesn’t let him answer. She’s trying to build tension, but it’s just frustrating.
The first chapters are full of Stuart Smalley-esque aphorisms, in which she places blame for A-Rod’s perceived desire to be loved at the feet of his father, who left the family when A-Rod was 10. It’s all about A-Rod wanting to be good enough to please others, and you can imagine A-Rod staring at himself in the mirror, “And doggone it, people like me!” I have to admit, I nearly chuckled out loud when I read one paragraph:
All Alex had ever wanted was to stand out. Baseball made him special. He loved the game, and it loved him right back. Baseball gave and gave to Alex. It supplied the attention he craved. It soothed the insecurities he battled. It filled holes opened by childhood abandonment. Baseball wasn’t like his father. Baseball never left him.
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June 22, 2009 at 6:41 pm by Monica Potts
 Philip Gardiner, in character as the Joycean character Leopold Bloom, for Stamford's first-ever Bloomsday celebration. Chris Preovolos/Staff photo
Our colleague Jeff Morganteen wrote an article about Sunday’s celebration of perhaps the biggest novel of all, Ulysses, by James Joyce. Read the article from Monday’s paper here.
June 22, 2009 at 9:00 am by Monica Potts
Rightly or wrongly, a lot of the criticism of the A-Rod book can probably be attributed to the columns Selena Roberts wrote for The New York Times when Duke lacrosse players were accused of rape in 2006. Charges were later dropped, but not before the three accused young men had been named in the national media in several articles. Roberts, perhaps more than most, criticized the players and the sports-playing culture to which they belonged. Also, probably in part because of the big platform the Times gave her, she has since been criticized more than most for her coverage. The criticism extends to her book about A-Rod, as Elizabeth mentioned in her earlier post.
A former colleague pointed me to the best case I’ve seen made for doubting the veracity of some points made in the Roberts’s coverage of A-Rod: here’s Jason Whitlock’s column for the Kansas City Star.
Proven inaccurate, Roberts never wrote a retraction for the columns that contributed to the public lynching of Reade Seligmann, Colin Finnerty and David Evans.
Instead, she moved on to Sports Illustrated, a seat on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters” and a new target, baseball slugger Alex Rodriguez. . . . .
Roberts’ book is a long-winded blog. Why it’s being treated as an unimpeachable piece of journalism can only be explained by the cushy position she’s been handed by The New York Times, ESPN and Sports Illustrated and the unchallenged institutional bias found within the elite sports media institutions.
June 21, 2009 at 11:22 am by Olivia Just
I recently finished reading “Saturday” by Ian McEwan, an author whose books never cease to amaze me. He has a very precise, detailed style of prose that can adapt itself to any subject — he mastered the big sweeping wartime epic with “Atonement” and captured the essence of British journalism with cruel accuracy in “Amsterdam”. With “Saturday,” he manages to consolidate an
astonishing array of themes and events into a concise and easily paced novel.
Henry Perowne is a neurosurgeon who wakes early on a Saturday morning to the sight of a plane heading in a fiery wreck across the London sky. This would be a horrific vision in any circumstance, but this particular Saturday is February 15, 2003 and the sight brings to his mind a terribly familiar jumble of possibilities — a violent tussle in the cockpit, a furtive shoe bomber sneaking aboard, a blurry, triumphant video of Al-Quaeda claiming credit. This is life in our post-9/11 world and McEwan examines its
implications with perceptive clarity and crisp description.
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June 19, 2009 at 9:56 am by Monica Potts
Nancy Pearl, a librarian, author, and critic, visited NPR’s morning edition today to recommend newly-released books for your summer vacations. On the show’s site, you can vote for the best beach book ever. What are yours?
June 18, 2009 at 6:34 pm by Dave Ruden
As far as the best sports books, two to me are head and shoulders above the rest.
The first is John Feinstein’s “A Season on the Brink,” his fascinating look inside the Indiana basketball program and, in particular, coach Bobby Knight, a unique and polarizing personality. Feinstein was given tremendous access, which Knight probably regrets. The result is an utterly absorbing book.
The second is H.G. Bissinger’s “Friday Night Lights,” in which he tells the story of the 1988 Permian High School football team in Odessa Texas. The book was made into a decent movie and an outstanding television show — the best currently on the air in my opinion. The book is equal parts inside-sports look and sociological study, and it stays with the reader long after the final page has been closed.
June 18, 2009 at 4:56 pm by Elizabeth Kim
Another reason I was interested in reading the A-Rod book is because of the reception it got from the sports world. The Huffington Post had a nice run-down of how some have done a 180 on Roberts:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kyle/the-decline-and-fall-of-s_b_196747.html
And here is the review from the Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/books/15book.html?scp=5&sq=Selena%20Roberts%20book&st=cse
June 18, 2009 at 3:39 pm by Christina Hennessy
 The Ferguson Library dedication in 1982 It took me five months, but I finally finished “Roots: The Saga of an American Family,” by Alex Haley. The thick novel has been sitting on a bookshelf for longer than it should, one of the many “to-dos” that I don’t always have time to do. I was too young to read it when it was published in 1976, though I recall watching parts of the ensuing (and highly successful) miniseries, which aired a year later.
The 500-plus page book is a narrative account of one of Haley’s descendants, Kunta Kinte, who was captured near his home in the Gambia in Africa in the mid-1700s and brought to America where he was sold into slavery. The story tracks every successive generation up to the life of the late author, who spent about 12 years in the 1960s and ‘70s, traveling across multiple continents, visiting numerous libraries and institutions and poring over many documents to authenticate the stories that had been passed down through the generations.
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Meet the Authors:
Marilyn Ramos is a partner at the Stamford litigation law firm of Silver Golub & Teitell. She is a member of the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association and the Connecticut Bar Association. She is currently on the Board of Directors of the Fairfield County Bar Association and the Fairfield County Bar Foundation. She received her law degree from Pace University School of Law in 1989 and is a member of the Connecticut and New York bars. Prior to her career in law, she was a teacher with the Greenwich Public Schools and worked for the Stamford Human Rights Commission. Her views expressed on this blog are completely her own and do not represent those of Silver Golub & Teitell.
Roy J. Nirschel is president of Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I. He grew up in Stamford and his father was a firefighter on the West Side. He received his bachelor's degree from Southern Connecticut State University and went on to receive a master's degree in public administration and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Miami. He has traveled around the world, visiting 35 countries, but said, "I can’t credit on the road with getting me on the road."
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