A good reading month. I managed to read a lot of outside stuff while reading manuscripts from students as well. So, I’m back to making time to read for pleasure. It took a while to get there because my schedule has been so hectic, but I’m getting there!
I read a lot of fiction, but didn’t feel like recommending all of it. Nonfiction seems to be capturing my attention more.
I did, however, get back to reading short fiction, which felt good.
Here’s what I liked in November.
November, 2024
Babb, Kent, “Football Bonded Them. Its Violence Tore Them Apart.” The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2024, edited by Jane McManus, Triumph Books, 2024. This essay starts in 2022, when a group of former college roommates met in a bar and one of them asked a fateful question: If you had known then what you know now about football, would you play?
They had gone through the trauma of loss together, because they lost a friend to traumatic brain injury. Some of them refuse to believe that the game caused the injuries. Others know it did. And the problems inherent in the game drove a wedge between them.
I find this sort of thing fascinating because I find sport fascinating. Unlike almost everything else in life, you hit your peak when you’re in your 20s, not when you gain age and so-called wisdom. At the point when you understand things, your ability to function physically drops off. I can’t imagine living with that, and yet people do. In fact, I do, because Dean was a professional athlete. So I watch him struggle with being less effective and just as competitive. This essay is on that point…with the added terror of CTE. Read this one. It’ll make you think.
Bain, Katie, “Since She First Left Home,” Billboard, October 5, 2024. This profile was fascinating for a variety of reasons. First, it’s interesting to read how a woman created her own producing career. But also, for me, it was fascinating to read about someone who lived in the same town as I did when I did, only she was a lot younger. LP Giobbi’s parents were Deadheads who lived in Eugene, Oregon and went to the County Fair all the time. I went once. It was not my scene, man. But Giobbi grew up there, and the fair is home turf for her. Being raised among people who loved the Grateful Dead—and remembering when Jerry Garcia died (which was devastating for so many in Eugene)—gave me a whole new perspective on something I lived through, making this one of the more interesting profiles I’d read in quite some time.
Bowen, Sarina, “Blonde Date,” Extra Credit: Three Ivy Years Novellas, Tuxburry Publishing, 2022. Finally, Sarina Bowen’s covers are appropriate for her books. I have an older copy. This novella dates from 2014, when it was a standalone, but I got the Extra Credit book in paper—apparently before 2022. I plucked it off my shelf during a difficult month, and read all three novellas. I love “Blonde Date.” It focuses on a young woman who had a horrendous dating experience, and for a reason I won’t tell you, has to see the guy who treated her badly. (All of this before Brett Kavanaugh’s hearings.) She ends up going with a guy who is appalled by what he sees. And the story progresses from there. Told with great sensitivity and a lot of heart. By the way, apparently, the only way to get an ebook is via Amazon Kindle. (Mistake, imho.) I linked to the paper on B&N.
Bowen, Sarina, “Studly Period,” Extra Credit: Three Ivy Years Novellas, Tuxburry Publishing, 2022. The second novella in the book, “Studly Period,” is about a tutor who is working with a college hockey player whose first language is Russian. It’s a lovely piece about understanding, both in language and in life.
Fader, Mirin, “Greg Oden’s Long Walk Home,” The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2024, edited by Jane McManus, Triumph Books, 2024. I lived in Oregon when the Portland Trail Blazers picked Greg Oden first in the draft over now-superstar Kevin Durant. Portland needed a big man, and Oden was huge. He was a good player. But everyone knew that big men got injured easily. I’m not sure if that’s still true, but it was true then, before sports medicine improved player health tremendously.
In other words, the choice of Oden was iffy and quickly became a mistake. While Durant grew and became a major player, Oden got injured fast and almost never played. And then, when he got released from the team, I—like so many other fans—didn’t think of him again.
He was badly injured and constantly battling the problems that come with injury from weight gain to opioid abuse. He was isolated because when he went out, he was famous enough that people would catcall him and call him names. The least offense was that he was a mistake. It took him years to recover, and some of that came with the help of a good woman, whom he married. He grew and went home to Indianapolis and Butler University. He’s coaching now because he’s come back to the game.
This is an amazing story of survival, and I will never look at someone who failed after succeeding in the draft the same way again. (Let me say that the draft itself makes me nervous, in this country where there were things like slave auctions and such. The echoes bother historian me a lot.)
Fleming, David, “A Mother’s Vow To Find A Dallas Mavericks Barbie Leads to a Worldwide Chase,” The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2024, edited by Jane McManus, Triumph Books, 2024. I am not a Barbie fan. I am one year younger than the doll, and those early years were fraught. Not just in the world (no adult seemed to approve of Barbie) but also in my family. My mother made me emotionally pay for anything and everything I tried to do with Barbie.
That left a hangover and a bad taste for me. I didn’t realize until the Barbie Movie in 2023 that Barbie had become an icon and a role model for generations of women. Cool. Interesting.
I also didn’t realize that in the 1990s, Barbie was marketed to sports fans. She wore the uniform of a variety of teams, and one of them, in theory, was the Dallas Mavericks. I say “in theory” because a woman who collected Barbies couldn’t even find evidence that the doll was actually produced. She needed it to round out her collection. I’m not going to say much more, because this essay explores her quest, but it’s interesting and worth reading, even for non-Barbie fans.
Krugler, David, “Two Sharks Walk Into A Bar,” The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023, edited by Amor Towles, The Mysterious Press, 2023. From the title through the entire piece, “Two Sharks Walk Into A Bar” is glorious and unexpected. The best part? I don’t really play pool, and everything about this story was clear. Everything. That’s the mark of a good writer and a good story.
Lawson, Wayne, “Setting The Stage,” Vanity Fair, September 2024. Great essay on American theater in the 1950s in an otherwise mediocre issue of Vanity Fair. Wayne Lawson knew some big names before they became TV/movie famous, back when they were struggling actors who were shaking up Broadway. I know a lot about American theater in that time period. I didn’t know any of this. Fascinating stuff.
Lee, Michael, “Kobe Bryant’s Little Mambas Are Still Playing, For Him and Each Other,” The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2024, edited by Jane McManus, Triumph Books, 2024. When Kobe Bryant died in January of that awful year 2020, he was on his way to basketball practice with his daughter, and two other players, their parents, and another coach. Eight people in all, not counting the pilot, went down in that crash…and left the rest of the team behind. They were thirteen and grieving. And then Covid hit.
They still play. They’re still learning. But mostly, they work with each other because they have a couple of experiences that no one else has had. They were coached by Kobe and they have survived a horrendous life event. They have heart and they continue to play. Read this one.
Mallory, Michael, “What The Cat Dragged In,” The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023, edited by Amor Towles, The Mysterious Press, 2023. This is a story about a reporter who is down on her luck. I love stories like this, and then this one mentions cats and well, if I didn’t like it, the story would have been a complete failure. Turns out I loved it, and that’s pretty much all I can say without ruining it.
McCluskey, Sean, “Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday,” The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023, edited by Amor Towles, The Mysterious Press, 2023. I try to teach writers that titles are important, not just something to slap onto a story. And then, Sean McCluskey goes and proves it. You will understand this story without the title, but the title makes it just that much better. Top-notch piece of work.
McManus, Jane, The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2024, Triumph Books, 2024. I love the volumes of The Year’s Best Sports Writing. It’s one of my favorite reads every year. And this one is light years above the others. Every article is good. Even though I’ve picked several here (and in October), those are just my favorites. They’re not any better than the others. They just hit something with me. So if you want to read great articles and good essays, pick up this book.
Rankin, Ian, Midnight And Blue, Mulholland Books, 2024. It feels like I waited forever for this Inspector Rebus novel, but I think it was only a year or two. Then I get this and read the blurb (never read the blurbs) and decided I didn’t want to read it after all. You see, Rebus was arrested for murder at the end of the last book, and this one opens in prison. Because this is Ian Rankin, I know he actually researched the prison he’s using for his character. I didn’t want to read a prison novel. But I finally gave in and read it, and I’m glad I did. It’s quite the courageous and interesting novel, impossible to put down. If he hadn’t ended it the way he ended it, though, I wouldn’t have continued with the series. But he did right with us all. It’s a really good novel.
Rushin, Steve, “The Table-Slamming, Ketchup-Spraying, Life-Saving Bills Mafia,” The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2024, edited by Jane McManus, Triumph Books, 2024. I have never been more than a casual fan of sport…until I got season tickets to the Las Vegas Aces. Those women and their fans have become my tribe. I get it.
So reading about the Buffalo Bills fans, called the Bills Mafia, was fascinating. Mostly because this was about the development of the organized fan base. They have a wild reputation—well deserved, it seems—but also, they organize for charity. A lot. And they pick the charities and they also help fund-raise for individuals. They’re amazing. Read this one.
Sohn, Emily, “The Catch,” The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2024, edited by Jane McManus, Triumph Books, 2024. Fascinating essay about a woman whose name I recognize…not as a writer, but as someone involved in horse racing in the 1990s. I did not know that Virginia Kraft was a pioneering sports writer in the 1950s. She worked for Sports Illustrated and actually covered sport at a time when women were usually relegated to the secretarial pool.
At first, in this piece, I kinda identified with Kraft. She bulldozed her way into her work and continued to push despite her gender. I did that a lot in my 20s and 30s, when I was working for others. Sure, I was the first woman editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction but that’s not why I was the editor. I was the editor because of my abilities. I figured editors always got the degree of crap that I got, and only later did I learn that a lot of the hatred directed toward me came because of my gender.
But that’s kinda where the similarities end. Kraft was a walking bundle of contradictions. A woman who hunted big game and loved her pets to distraction. A woman who didn’t seem to notice the pain of others in some circumstances, and caused it in others. A woman who had a lot of opportunity but never used it to help other women.
This is a great profile of a forgotten writer and a trailblazer, which shows that just because someone was the first doesn’t mean they were the kindest.
