Review: Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game

Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball's Longest Game
Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game by Dan Barry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The true(ish) story of the longest baseball game ever played and the subsequent lives of some of the people who played and watched it. Great sportswriting and a fascinating story. By a weird coincidence, there is a recent article in the NY Times by Barry about the same franchise. The new owners are moving the team out of Pawtucket. No joy in Mudville, but I guess that’s baseball.



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Review: Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty

Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty
Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty by Vikram Chandra

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lovely meditations on the beauty of literature, the beauty of code, and what they might or might not have in common. Chandra also writes about the differences between Western and Indian aesthetics.



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Review: More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor

More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor
More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor by George Lakoff

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lakoff argues that poetic metaphor is not essentially different from our everyday language or thought processes. And the metaphors in any poem are largely the metaphors of the culture it was composed in, only elaborated, extended, and wielded by an expert. Lakoff analyzes a number of poems and shows how they can be understood only by making use of a great many metaphors so basic and automatic that we barely notice them at all. Great stuff.



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