REVIEW OF #62 THE BOYS IN THE BOAT

 REVIEW BY TOM WELLS

How could a book about the 1936 US Olympics rowing team be one for our current Covid times? It’s about long training sessions in cold, wet weather. It’s about the physics of rowboats and their rowers. It’s about a sport that these days mostly gets attention every four years. But it’s also about a boy, kicked to the curb by his father and step-mother, who manages to stay in school while working a minimum-wage job, get accepted to the University of Washington at a time when 10% of pupils went on to higher education and there excel at a sport in which he has no prior training while working a summer job building the Grand Coulee Dam in conditions that make you think, yes, Health & Safety does have a vital social role. It’s also about the plucky underdog triumphing over those holding all the cards. And it’s about defeating fascists, if only in a boat race. So why is it relevant to current Covid times? Because anyone who thinks he/she has it tough needs to read it and reflect. 

*****

JFDI #62 THE BOYS IN THE BOAT-David James Brown

 

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT

David James Brown

An inspiring true story of the University of Washington crew who won the 1932 Olympics against all the odds.

JFDI BOOK #61 GOLDEN HILL Francis Spufford

GOLDEN HILL

by Francis Spufford

A lyrical yarn of 18th century New York

 

JFDI BOOK #60 YEARS FOR FEARS A Comment on an Era D.Eric Pettigrew

YEARS FOR FEARS

by D. Eric Pettigrew

Weekly Diaries and Editorial Commentary on the year 2016-2020

 

JFDI BOOK #59 IF THEY ONLY DIDN'T SPEAK ENGLISH Jon Sobel

by Jon Sobel

Comments on the US under Trump

 

JFDI BOOK #58 TRUE HISTORY OF NED KELLY REVIEW

 

REVIEW BY TOM WELLS
 
True History of the Kelly Gang—Peter Carey won his second Booker Prize in four years for this long,dusty journey through late 19 th C. Australia, a curious choice in any year but especially one that included Ian McEwan’s “Atonement” and David Mitchell’s “number9dream”. It’s not that the book is lacking in considerable merit: excellently written (if annoyingly punctuated); exhaustively researched; and impressively specific. But it’s the last merit that is its chief de-merit, because about two-thirds through the saga the reader begins to suffer from detail overload, as Ned and his gang of well-drawn, highly individual characters do a seemingly endless loop between jail, hideout and Mom’s house. But the
growing feeling of disinterest is nothing compared to the giant letdown of the denouement. Since all but the final chapter is in the form of a diary that Ned has kept for his daughter, it would be tough for him to write about the end of his short, violent days. Still, the authorial decision to change from Ned’s gritty, funny, punchy prose to the formal, wordy, soulless account of a newspaper columnist is the dampest of squibs. After a 500-page ride, the reader deserves better.
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JFDI BOOK #59: REVIEW OF IF ONLY THEY DIDN'T SPEAK ENGLISH

 

 

 

Review by Tom Wells

 

 

If Only They Didn’t Speak English—Jon Sopel has been the BBC’s North American editor since 2014, a stretch that has enabled him to witness up close and personal the most wrenching political transition to the ethos of e pluribus unum since the Civil War. His book tries to make sense of what to fellow Brits must look like wildly contradictory impulses of the American character—the simple willingness to help a neighbor versus the cynical mistrust of government beyond the community; the embrace of free enterprise to the extent it is literally hazardous to one’s health; the pious belief in the power of 21st C. technology to solve most problems and a vaguely worded amendment to an 18th C. Constitution to solve the others. The result is a well-written collection of anecdotes, experiences and observations backed up by cherry-picked incidents and statistics in an effort to be village-green middling. 

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