Book Review

Two Sentence Summary: Ted Conover wanted to write about being a correctional officer, but the New York State Department of Corrections wouldn’t let him shadow a guard for a story. So Conover became an officer for a year and was assigned to guard at Sing Sing.

Two Sentence Review: Conover’s book is a oft-cited example of strong literary journalism, and for good reason. It’s gritty and honest without engaging in stereotypes and grapples with some challenging ethical questions, all while being an engrossing read.

This summer I’m reading the complete works of Tim O’Brien — one book every two weeks between the beginning of June and the beginning of September. I posted about his memoir, If I Die in a Combat Zone, and now I’m catching up with the next two in the series.

I think if you made a graph of how much I like Tim O’Brien’s books so far, it’d be a slowly increasing line. If I Die in a Combat Zone had flashes of awesome, but wasn’t great. Northern Lights was better as a compelling adventure story. But Going After Cacciato is my favorite so far, and left me excited because I hope the trend continues.

Sometimes I just don’t want to read the book I’m supposed to read.

I want to ignore the shelf of review books (even though I am excited to read them), skip my pile of library books, and avoid the books pulled because of challenges of other book blogging projects. I just want to read something different.

So for the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to indulge that desire, since I think reading books I’m “supposed” to read when I don’t feel like reading them doesn’t work for anyone. And my rebellious reads have been a lot of fun.

Summary: New Yorker journalist David Grann set out to solve one of the biggest exploration mysteries of the last 100 years: What happened to explorer Percy Fawcett when he headed into the Amazon to find the mythical Lost City of Z?

Book Review: Some parts of The Lost City of Z are quite good, but the whole isn’t as entirely satisfying as I hoped it would be.

Summary: Stefan Fatsis, a 5-foot-8, 170-pound, 43-year-old sportswriter, wanted to find out what it’s like to play in the NFL. So he became a kicker and joined the Broncos.

Book Review: In this book, Fatsis is echoing the work of classic sportswriter George Plimpton who joined the Detroit Lions in the 1960s to write his book Paper Lion. Given Fatsis’ size, age, and changes in the NFL, the only position he had a chance at was NFL kicker, so he went to kicker training and tried to get almost every team to take him during mini-camp and pre-season training camp. Finally, the Denver Broncos agreed.

Summary: Journalist Laura Sessions Stepp looks into the changing youth dating culture. Instead of the traditional dating to relationship to marriage path, more and more women (and men) are “hooking up,” creating a no-strings-attached sexual culture that lets participants change partners at will and without ever committing to each other.

This week I got to read two memoir/travelogues that were also graphic novels — Carnet de Voyage by Craig Thompson and Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle.

I’m going to try to review them together because what I thought was most interesting was the way the graphic novel format allows for two pretty similar stories to be told in very different ways.

One Sentence Summary: After Bill Bryson’s father dies, the author decides to take a roadtrip through 38 states to recreate the feeling of roadtrips from his childhood.

One Sentence Review: Bryson’s characteristic sardonic humor was too dark, mean, and inconsistent for this book to work for me.

One Sentence Summary: After a devastating cyclone hits Burma and the corrupt totalitarian regime refuses international aid claiming everything is fine, journalist Emma Larkin returned to the country to chronicle life after the storm.

One Sentence Review: Despite a compelling story and careful writing, Everything is Broken lacks the type of forward momentum that characterizes truly great narrative nonfiction and therefore left me a little disappointed.