Tagged with books

Jim Wellington, aka "The Duke" of Waterloo and Harvard goes to the Berlin Olympics to run the 1500 meter. I used to love this book, and now I don't know why. The Duke is a dullard. Plus, written in 1939, Tunis has an inkling what German fascism is going to look like, but he's a bit of a dick about the "colored boys" and doesn't give much attention to Jesse Owens (who he refers to by another name, Washington, maybe).

This is an old favorite, that I ILL'd partially for Eric's benefit because it's about a runner. It's 1930s young adult sports fiction. Our protagonist, "The Duke," is an Iowa boy struggling to find himself at Harvard University, which is full of prep school snoots who won't give him the time of day until he accidentally becomes a sports hero. His best buddies, football star Mickey McGuire and the urbane Faugeres Smith, are more interesting than Duke. Even if Duke is a little hayseed, his story is compelling, and I like the way Tunis gives it to Harvard.

Twenty five Muslim women, most of them pretty observant, many of them converts, share their love stories. To a heathen like me the mystery of these women's lives isn't Islam; it's their devotion to it. Maybe I was expecting some secular Muslim contributions, but that was probably dumb. Anyway, the women's tales are heartfelt and straightforward. Surprises include the two chapters written by lesbians and the matter-of-fact and reasonable sounding appeal of polygyny.

As I mentioned in my previous review, I was saved from the unimaginable discomfort of having nothing to read on the 8-hour overnight bus ride home from Pittsburgh. My savior was Kelly McElroy, who as I tweeted via BarnLib has a reading life I'm jealous of--serving on ALA/GLBT round table's gay bibliography posse and being in a celebrity memoir book club. She gave me first A Year Straight and the next day Jennifer Baumgardner's new book. (Kelly must be a mad-fast reader, something I think would be more of a blessing than a curse, unless you had, like Kelly, and endless supply of gay books to read.) Azzoni's confessions are a pretty quick read, so maybe Kelly is neither blessed nor cursed by speedreading.