reading list, october - december 2024

Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees. NY: Harper & Row, 1988. This book is wonderful: beautiful prose, interesting characters, real problems, and lots of love. Jenna Levine, My Roommate is a Vampire. NY: Berkley, 2023. Frederick needs help navigating the modern world, so he places an ad for a roommate. The “serial killer looking for victims’ low rent means that Cassie, as the only applicant, gets the room. And proceeds to fall in love, i spite of every warning against it. Ned McIntosh, Managing Little League Baseball. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1985. A quick and easy guide, not to baseball game play -- see something like Tim McCarver’s Baseball for Brain Surgeons (and other fans) for that -- but to Little League success, which starts with rookie evaluation before the draft and emphasizes teaching the basics and making it (practice, that is) fun. McIntosh then outlines drills for players on the rules, hitting, base-running, defense, and pitching: drilling acts until automatic is how the New York Giants became the best team in baseball back in the 1900s, and it still works.