Book Rec of the Day 11/10-13/09

A GAME OF KINGS

Journalist Michael Weinreb is best known for his sports writing. The game in The Kings of New York, however, isn’t the usual baseball, football, or basketball that high-school kids go in for. These players are members of Brooklyn’s Edward R. Murrow High School chess team. He follows these students for a year, from quick money games in Washington Square Park to the Supernationals in Nashville. The book is full of great characters, and what makes it such an enjoyable read is Weinreb’s obvious fondness for these kids.

THE KINGS OF NEW YORK: A YEAR AMONG THE GEEKS, ODDBALLS, AND GENIUSES WHO MAKE UP AMERICA’S TOP HIGH SCHOOL CHESS TEAM, by Michael Weinreb (Gotham Books, 2007)

Derek Walcott won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1992. This selection from his work of the last 50 years includes beautiful lyrical poems in free verse as well as experiments with rhyme and meter. There are also excerpts from longer works, including his wonderful Omeros, a Homer-inspired epic set on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. Walcott’s poetry is tough, bright, smart, and evocative. He has a talent for the arresting phrase and for keen observation of the warm Caribbean as well as colder places to the north.

SELECTED POEMS, by Derek Walcott; introduction by Edward Baugh (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007)

THAT SOCIAL SECURITY PROBLEM

Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” has been updated and Americanized in this cheeky satire by the author of Thank You for Smoking. This time, a younger blogger wants to give Baby Boomers government incentives to commit suicide by age 75, thereby solving a lot of messy demographic problems heading our way. Her idea catches on and the Washington spin machine starts rattling it around, and a fun time is had by all, or at least by the reader.

BOOMSDAY, by Christopher Buckley (Twelve, 2007)

WHAT, ME WORRY?

Brian Remy is a cop who shoots himself in the head, has a kind of selective memory, and gets involved in some type of fishy government plot. What makes this suspense tale worth going out of your way for is that it begins a week after 9/11 and is bitingly knowing about all the ways politicians and marketers could take advantage of that tragedy. Walters, an Edgar Award winner, takes us on a surreal and often humorous journey into a grotesque modern hell.

THE ZERO, by Jess Walter (Regan, 2006)