The Imperfect Church
By Mark Cox
The Imperfect Church
By Mark Cox
The Road was a tough, but beautiful read. A friend of mine (and Tigue Moore's nephew) is a serious reader. He thinks Cormack is one of the greatest writers ever.
For sports fans, I recently read Grisham's Playing for Pizza. I'm not a big Grisham fan (but he did hold the door for me years ago at Square Books, Oxford MS), but this one is a hoot.
A quarterback out of Iowa is washed up in the NFL at 28, and goes to play for a team in Parma, Italy. which is even funnier than if he had been sent down here to play somewhere like Gueydan or Raceland. The team only has 3 paid players, the rest play for fun. And pizza, hence the name.
Needless to say, the Italian amateurs are not sticklers for niceties like staying on their man, executing their assignments, or even the rules. The blandness of Iowa meets the spiciness of Italy; I chuckled from cover to cover.
I also read his Sooley, about a kid from Sudan who escapes the massacre of his village and most of his family, because he is on a travel team in the US. He gets into a US small college on a basketball scholarship, works very hard, and ends up playing to the top. The story has a bitter-sweet ending. Great read, too.
For any of you who want to get your kids to read, Mike Lupica writes for kids about 8-14; his heroes are usually 12 years old or so. Travel Team, Heat, Million-Dollar Throw, etc. Great reads to share with your kids.
PS: I just finished Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon. It was one of several nuclear apocalypse books that came out about 1960, which also include Neville Shute's On the Beach, and Eugen Burdick's Failsafe; all three were best-sellers, and subsequently made into movies. After reading them, I have wondered how much of the protests of the '60's and '70's were a reaction to the stark, dark future kids were facing at that time.
Babylon was fascinating because there is not a lot of action (a great ambush shootout late in the book), but he keeps your interest up. A really good read, there's a reason it's considered a classic.
Mine will ruin your day.
Maybe your life. Almost everyone we admire from history was, in fact, a monster.
Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths.
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