On My Book Shelf: Play Their Hearts Out By George Dohrmann

April 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

George Dohrmann glued his “grassroots” basketball tour de force, Play Their Hearts Out, to my fingertips and even flipped the pages for me this weekend. Hell, he cooked the beef-flavored ramen I ate while reading too. I’m not sure how he did it, but he did.

Play Their Hearts Out proved impossible to put down. I am a fan of sports non-fiction, in general. Dohrmann’s chronicle of AAU coach/glorified pimp Joe Keller, his star player Demetrius Walker, and their ups and downs over an eight-year period held my interest like few other books I have read in recent memory.

Reading Play Their Hearts Out provided me the same feelings of joy, heartache, and anger I felt the first time I watched Hoop Dreams or read Friday Night Lights. To label Dohrmann’s work a basketball book would be like labeling David Simon’s classic HBO drama The Wire a cop show.

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Books, Sports Tagged With: , , , , ,

On My Book Shelf: The Happiness Project By Gretchen Rubin

April 14, 2012 By 1 Comment

The Pacific Northwest’s never-ending winter has a way of choking happiness out of people. There’s something about staring up at gray skies day after day after day that has a negative psychological effect, particularly on a bayou boy like me.

So, with that in mind, I picked up a copy of Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project at Powell’s a few weeks ago. I had never heard of the New York Times bestseller. Powell’s has a bestseller’s bookshelf, and sure enough this paperback with its fun, light blue cover attracted me.

So did the thought of being happier.

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You say Tuh-may-toe. I say Tuh-mah-toe. Same difference.

April 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Greetings Cajun Tomato readers,

April will be a fun month over here at the Cajun Tomato — I just referred to the site like it was an office or something; the site exists on my laptop (ha). Anyway, I plan to write about music, movies, and sports, plus my random Portland experiences. Pretty much the usual, but then again nothing is usual here.

Here is a list of blog items you can look for this month:

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Dig This Tomato, Yo!, Music, Musings, Portland Tagged With: , , , ,

Homicide by David Simon: A Cajun Tomato Chat

April 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Proof Simon is a genius!

Ed. Note: My friend and fellow journalist, Nate Monroe, decided to experiment tonight while talking about a mutual interest of ours — David Simon’s seminal journalism work, Homicide: A Year On the Killing Streets. We did a gmail chat much in the same manner we would have done a podcast. Here is a transcript of our chat. Enjoy!
PS: Nate is denoted in the conversation as “me.” I am “raybaybay3.”
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Books, Podcast, World Affairs Tagged With: , , , , ,

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

October 8, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I used to write book reviews all the time. I would read a book, write a review, get a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut and start the process all over again. Those were the days when I saw the world from pepperoni-colored glasses. I didn’t have to worry about calories or fat content. Hell, I didn’t even really have to worry about reading. Just cut and paste a few words of synopsis off the back cover and — voila! — Pizza Hut here I come. Who cares, right? It was just a personal pan pizza. Wasn’t like it was a medium, or, better yet, a large. Now that I am older, and Pizza Hut’s personal pan pizzas are a distant memory, I don’t read as much. I was spoiled as a schoolboy. Now there’s no incentive. I have to pay for my own pizza; I have to pay for my own books. The world is not fair.

So without further lusting over undersized, constipation pies served in a cardbox board ornamented in a gallon of grease, here is my review of Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. Spoilers are all over this mug, as my old English teacher Grem would say.

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