Book Report: Week of January 18

Books I've recently finished:
Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Created, by David Halberstam
Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and a Dream, by H.G. Buzz Bissinger

Books I'm currently reading:
Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street, by Michael Lewis
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

The On-Deck Circle:
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann

Not being in school for a prolonged period for the first time in my life, I've tried to keep up on my reading as much as possible, since my job occasionally feels less-than-intellectually challenging. As a result, I recently started setting aside at least an hour a day to read, with a specific focus on books, since even a series of magazine pieces from New Yorker, Vanity Fair and The Atlantic can't be considered a substitute for a few good books. Feel free to give me tips or feedback on suggestions for The On-Deck Circle in the comments below.

Playing For Keeps: B+
I'll admit, I went to the library looking for The Breaks of the Game, but came away pleasantly surprised with this after my local library didn't have the former in stock. The first three-quarters of this one are fantastic. Halberstam does an incredible job making Jordan an accessible subject from his early days up through his first championship, through interviews with Jordan's friends and family as well as former basketball associates. The book, written during and just after Jordan's final season with Chicago, alternates by chapter between Jordan's past and the 1997-98 Bulls season. The depth, style and development of tension throughout are fantastic, right up until Halberstam gets to Jordan's baseball foray, at which point it seems to lose a little steam, perhaps because by that point in his life, Jordan had successfully sequestered himself so thoroughly that few people who knew him well would talk on record with Halberstam. As a child and a Knicks fan during the 1990s, my exposure with Jordan came mostly from the annual ass-kicking the Bulls always seemed to put on the Knicks in the playoffs, and through Space Jam. Needless to say, I learned A LOT from this book, enough to realize that the Monstars may or may not have been based on a certain other NBA team.

Friday Night Lights: A+
One of the most complete works of extended journalism I've ever read. Before he became a crazy person, Buzz Bissinger was an incredibly talented journalist and author, probably best-known for this book, which later pulled off a rare trifecta by becoming the basis for a good movie and an even better TV show. The book details the 1988 iteration of the Permian Panthers, a high school football team in Odessa, TX. I won't get into the details, since most of the planet has probably consumed them in some media in the past twenty years. I'll leave my critique to this - for anyone looking for a good read on the way sports, politics, race, economics and society all intertwine, read this book, especially if you're not a sports fan per se. It's fantastic.