The Plentiful Vintage

The Midway Campaign — Jack Greene

If a book can be awkward, this book about the first six months of the war in the Pacific is awkward. ( Where did that come from? )

Just Ride: A Radically Practical Guide to Riding Your Bike — Grant Petersen

Real cyclists don't wear underpants. At least that's what the biking magazines have been telling us for the last thirty years or so. They also wear spandex shirts*, shoes that clip into bindings on the pedals, and bike shorts with padding in the seat rather than getting a more comfortable saddle. They fret over every single ounce of weight added to the bicycle or their person. And they pay through the nose for all of this gear.

* Often covered with logos providing free advertising for megacorporations.

( Becoming an unracer... )

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Meanwhile, back at the bike path, I had a singular year...

( New. League. Record. )

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Volleyball tonight, for the first time since I got sick back before Thanksgiving.

Ringo: Books are good.
Grandfather: *Parading's* better.
Ringo: Parading?
Grandfather: [nods eagerly] Parading the streets! Trailing your coat! Bowling along! LIVING!
Ringo: Well, I am living.
Grandfather: You? Living? When was the last time you gave a girl a pink-edged daisy? When did you last embarrass a sheila with your cool, appraising stare?
Ringo: You're a bit old for that sort of chat, aren't you?
Grandfather: Well at least I've got a backlog of memories! All you've got is - THAT BOOK!

( Books are good, the list... )

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I went out of my way to try to avoid rereads this year. Apart from one Wolfe book whose turn it was in the Wolfe sequence, all the books were new to me. Toward the end, I was sort of getting desperate to find new books, so I read two entire mystery series, one terrific and one terrible (the Hamiltons were the terrific ones). It was a good exercise. I finally got around to reading Pratchett's Witches sequence, which were wonderful and I highly recommend them. Plus there was a new Vimes novel, and Vernor Vinge's sequel to A Fire upon the Deep came out, as did Barry Longyear's long awaited (at least by me) collection of Jaggers and Shad stories.

There were some duds. I was looking forward to Charlie Stross's Rule 34, but was very disappointed by the ending, or lack thereof. I liked McDevitt's A Talent for War, but the sequel, Polaris, highlighted everything I dislike about his writing. The worst of the bunch, though, were the four Rex Graves mysteries written by C.S. Challinor. Badly plotted, badly written, they're only virtue is that they're short. I really should've cut my losses after the first one, but I already had the other three waiting.

Only one non-fiction, and no baseball books at all, although I have a couple on my night stand waiting to be read. Now I'm looking forward to rereading some favorites.

Three of the last four books I read have included talking ferrets as characters. Is that just a very strange coincidence, or the first inklings of a sinister trend? Is there some sort of ferret conspiracy a brewing?

( Dogs Don't Lie — Clea Simon )

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( Graceland — Deborah Grabien )

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( Jaggers & Shad: ABC Is for Artificial Beings Crimes — Barry B. Longyear )

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( Rule 34 — Charles Stross (spoiler alert) )

Snagged from snurri...

The book I am currently reading: A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt, the first of his novels about Alex Benedict. So far I'm liking it better than his Priscilla Hutchins books, which annoy the crap out of me.

The book I am currently writing: I've been revising the first scene of a book about the Sang Sacre City Watch for the last couple of years or so.

The book I love most: Hard to say for certain. There are lots of books I like a lot. One is Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light.

The last book I received as a gift: Fail Nation, a compilation from failblog.org.

The last book I gave as a gift: I gave my mother a copy of How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog by Chad Orzel for Christmas. One of these days I need to post a review, because it's a terrific book.

The nearest book on my desk: Not on my desk, which today is oddly book free, but the shelf right next to my desk is where I keep a bunch of cookbooks.

Aftermath — Jim Butcher

A novella set immediately following the events of Changes. It's narrated by Karrin Murphy, whose internal voice sounds a heck of a lot like Dresden's. When several of Dresden's werewolf posse go missing, Murphy investigates. Butcher probably shouldn't have written it using first person, but it's fun to watch Murphy kicking major ass on her own.

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My Man Jeeves — P.G. Wodehouse

A collection of short stories, some about Jeeves and Wooster, the rest about Reggie Pepper. The Jeeves stories are all tales that appeared in the Laurie and Fry adaptation. The Pepper stories just feel odd. Reggie is basically Bertie without Jeeves, and his pals are always finding themselves in the same sorts of situations that Bertie's chums do, so Reggie has to both come up with the Jeeves-like plan to sort it all out, and then wind up being the one to take one for the team when the unexpected consequences arise. It's never quite as satisfying. And as above, it's hard to tell the difference between Bertie's and Reggie's internal voices. It was several pages into the first Pepper story before Reggie introduces himself, and up until then I thought it was Bertie.

Heat Wave — "Richard Castle"

I just watched the "Nikki Heat" episode of Castle, which was a hoot, and even more so because I'd just finished reading Heat Wave. In the episode, The actress who's to play Nikki Heat in the film version of Heat Wave shows up to do some research into the role by following Beckett around. As Castle notes, it's all very meta. And often hilarious. I enjoyed the heck out of the episode.

I wasn't sure I was going to get through the book at first. The prose tends to the purple end of the spectrum. I saw someone write that it's written like a Dan Brown novel. My own thought was that they probably tries to emulate James Patterson or (the late) Stephen Cannell, who have both appeared on the show as Castle's poker buddies. I don't actually know, since I haven't read any of them.

Anyway, the prose eventually settles down to something a bit more tolerable, and the mystery is a good one. There're lots of meta references to snicker at. Nikki Heat keeps wanting to hear the balding, poker playing Judge Simpson say "D'oh. In the series, the poker playing judge is played by Dan Castellaneta. There's also way more nakedness than on the show. There are worse ways to spend a few hours.

Bob Feller taught me how to pitch. Or at least he tried to. When I was a kid, I picked up a used copy of his book, How to Pitch. I still have it, and the inside cover informs me that it cost me 20¢. It's a thin volume, only 90 pages, but there is quite a bit useful information, especially should I have ever found myself in the unlikely position of having to come up with the perfect pitch to throw to Ted Williams. Alas, the ragginess of my arm never allowed me to put Feller's tips to effective use. It's one thing to know what to do. It's quite another to have the physical ability to actually do it.

Feller died a couple of weeks ago at the age of 92. I suppose one shouldn't be much surprised when a 92 year-old man dies, but until he took ill with leukemia earlier in the year, he was still one helluva a vigorous nonagenarian*. He had some of the best nicknames in baseball—Rapid Robert, Bullet Bob, and the Heater from Van Meter.

* Feller was one of the starting pitchers at the inaugural Baseball Hall of Fame Classic last year (photo below). Apparently he could still bring it. And unlike a lot of celebrity throwers of a first pitches, the ones who bounce them from forty feet out on national television, Feller always insisted on throwing them from the rubber.

For those unfamiliar with his work, Feller was the Nolan Ryan of his era, a pitcher who threw fast balls that blurred**. Like Ryan, he occasionally had control issues. Not only did he often lead the league in strikeouts, but also in walks and hit batsmen. And like Ryan, the control eventually came.

** Feller once threw a pitch that was clocked at 107.6 mph.

Feller became a national sensation in 1936 at the age of 17. He signed with the Cleveland Indians in his junior year of high school, and, as he later put it, spent his summer vacation pitching in the major leagues. His high school graduation in Van Meter, IA, was covered by the NBC radio network. He never did play in the minors.


In the three years (1939-41) leading up to the war, he established himself as the best pitcher in the American League, leading the league in wins and strikeouts every single year, and in ERA in 1940. Even so, when Pearl Harbor was attacked he enlisted in the navy the very next day, the first ballplayer to do so. Given his stature, he could easily have pulled light duty in Hawaii***, but he volunteered for combat duty, and served as an anti-aircraft gunner aboard the battleship Alabama. He lost almost four full seasons to the war. He returned to baseball towards the end of the '45 season.

*** <coughDiMaggiocough>

After the war he picked up pretty much where he left off, and pitched for another 11 years. He was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1962. He is the only chief petty officer in the Hall.

He was ahead of his time in many areas, and always outspoken in an era when outspokeness wasn't especially appreciated. In the off-season he barnstormed around the country with Negro League players (he often pitched against Satchel Paige), and was an advocate for integration of the majors. The barnstorming also left him financially independent, so that he did not need an off-season job, a rarity in those days. This afforded him the time to work on his conditioning all year round, another rarity among ballplayers of that era. There's a whole chapter in his book about conditioning. He also spoke out against the reserve system, long before there was a players union.

He did not fade quietly into the background once his career ended. Perhaps the best adjective to describe him was irascible. He often chided modern players over various matters****, and once the internet fully kicked in, it often seemed that the snark "Get off my lawn," was invented for him. And yet even when he was at his most curmudgeonly, a fair reading of his comments would almost always find that he was making a valid point. He became the grand old man of baseball, and he will be sorely missed.

**** Most recently it was over the hoopla surrounding young phenom Stephen Strasburg, who has occasionally been compared to Feller. Feller's comment about the young man, who has pitched all of 12 games in the majors, paraphrased, was let's wait till he wins a hundred games or so before doing any comparisons. Not long after that Strasburg blew out his elbow, and required Tommy John surgery. He'll miss most, if not all, of next season.

Spent a long weekend in Burlington, MA, riding my bike, eating terrific barbeque, and attending Readercon 21. The weather was really muggy, but otherwise I had a pretty good time. I drove up Friday morning, so I missed Thursday night's session, which looked like it had some interesting stuff. Anyway....

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( Friday Sessions... )

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( Saturday Sessions... )

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( Sunday Sessions... )

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( Other... )

 

How I spent last weekend...

( Friday Panels )

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( Saturday Panels )

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( Sunday Panels )

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( Odds and Ends )

These were most of the panels I attended. There were a couple of others I went to mostly as time fillers, and even those I found engaging, although not enough to write about them.