A Top Ten List
We can’t go out and
socialize. There are no sports on TV –
and thus no fantasy teams to track. The
gyms are emptying. Hollywood has shut down
production.
What will we do with our free time?
There are all sorts of activities
to fill the day, of course. Video games
and board games, puzzles and podcasts.
You can learn to juggle or tango or speak Portuguese.
Or – you can read.
As a public service I’ve put
together a list of entertaining books. This
is not a list for hardcore book readers – or, if you’ll allow me a moment of
literary snobbery, it is not a list for people who got the reference in the
title of this post. Most of these books
haven’t won a coveted Johnny-Bingo Award.
Rather, it is a list for the
casual reader, one who knows the wonderful feeling of a great read but can’t
name many authors beyond Grisham, Rowling, Patterson, and King.
Some of these books are light,
fun, frothy. Some are a bit weightier,
but still page-turners.
Here we go:
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
The greatest Western ever
written. Yes, it is long, nearly a
thousand pages. But don’t be daunted by
its length. If you watched 73 episodes
of Game of Thrones you can handle a thousand-page book; just treat each chapter
like an episode. And the pages fly by –
cattle drives and saloon fights and horse rustlers and Indians and – at the
heart of it all, Woodrow Call and Gus McRae, two of the greatest characters in
literary history.
Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer
Let’s move to non-fiction now, and
this extraordinary tale of a catastrophic climb of Mount Everest.
Mild spoiler alert: early in the
book we learn a major character doesn’t make it, but even though I’d known this
for hundreds of pages I was still shaken when it actually happened. This is reporting + storytelling at its
finest.
The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara
A thousand pages is too long? Then warm up with this 370-pager about the
battle of Gettysburg. You’ll bounce all
around the battlefield and experience the personal stories from Union
cavalrymen and Confederate generals and foreign observers. You’ll learn about the most important battle
in American history but be so captivated the whole time you won’t even notice
you’re learning.
Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion’s World
Series of Poker, James McManus
It’s part murder trial reporting,
part memoir of his run in the tourney, part history of poker. Awesome stuff.
The Winds of War/War and
Remembrance, Herman Wouk
Okay, this one’s a big one
again. Not one, but two long books.
Herman Wouk conveniently places
members of the Henry family all over the world during (and before) the Second
World War. If you want to learn all
about that global conflict while immersed in a rip-roaring yarn of a family
saga, this is your book(s).
Neither Here Nor There: Travels in
Europe, Bill Bryson
Your trip to Europe was
cancelled. Want to travel there vicariously
with a hugely entertaining and witty writer instead? Bryson's got you covered.
Who’s Your Caddy? Looping for the
Great, Near-Great, and Reprobates of Golf, Rick Reilly
The noted Sports Illustrated wit spent
a year caddying with everyone from PGA pros to Vegas golf hustlers. He caddied for the blind
golf champion and Jack Nicklaus. He caddied for Donald Trump and Deepak Chopra. He even caddied at the Masters.
A fun read for anyone who loves
golf or used to look forward to reading the back page of SI.
The Myron Bolitar series, Harlen
Coben
I read a lot of crime series. Maybe all of them. And this isn’t the best one. It’s not even the 9th best
one. BUT –I have a lot of friends who never
read books but only watch sports and listen to sports radio, and this might be
the series for you.
Myron is a former college basketball
star whose NBA career was derailed by injury.
He becomes a sports agent – and, like those ridiculous 1970s TV series like
Hart to Hart where ordinary citizens get involved in crime-fighting escapades - Myron is constantly having to save his clients from some evil villain.
They are fun and funny and have
just enough darkness in them to save them from being too frothy.
The Princess Bride, William
Goldman
You’ve seen the movie. Now read the book! William Goldman is a screenwriting legend
(Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men) but he wrote TPB
as a novel first and a screenplay writer. And the novel is as charming and delightful as the movie.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy, Douglas Adams
What Not to Read
The Passage Trilogy, by Justin
Cronin
This vampire-horror sage about a
bat-borne virus that leads to a near-apocalypse…well, unless you’re a masochist,
maybe wait on this one.
Happy Reading!
