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Unlike Epstein's previous book, Big Hair and Plastic Grass, there is almost too much baseball in here. The rest of the book is an excellent survey of 1976, from politics to music to the Bicentennial, and generally well done.

Too much baseball, you ask? Instead of a few anecdotes about a team, Dan digs into many of the teams each month, highlighting a few games and providing quotes from the players and sports writers involved. Most have a certain repetitiveness to them, each reading like a press release.

Fortunately, they all don't. This was the magical season of the Bird, the prime of Thurman Munson, and the twilight of Hank Aaron. Seattle's lawsuit and Labatt's Blue Jays also make an appearance. There was definitely a lot I enjoyed.

Just not all of it.

Complete ditto of other reviews here - it's just not that good. Perhaps I'm just not French enough. Next step - see the movie on the home screen.

Really enjoyed this memoir, which ran the gamut from childhood to retirement. Plenty of anecdotes and famous names, but the thing I learned is that Linda Ronstadt really has a deep appreciation for music. To read about how she can hear multiple musical influences in a given singer was wonderful; her description of the evolution of concerts to large venues leading to large sound rock (and metal) made complete sense. Not only is she a great interpreter of multiple genres and prolific entertainer, but she is primarily a student of music itself. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the craft.

Sir Arthur C Clarke wrote much of his science fiction along the same plan. A big mystery (space ship, planet, or ocean) and impact on a human scale (usually an explorer or scientist). This novel fits the bill perfectly.

Set far in the future, Earth has encountered galactic empire and retreated to nothing but a single city. The human scale mystery is a man, come of age and ready to explore (even though his fellows fear it). The grand scale is what he finds.

I believe I read the original novella (Against the Fall of Night) that this was expanded from; if I read this as a youth it didn't make much of an impact. While big in scope and message, I don't think this is one of Clarke's best works. It was a quick read, and fit the bill nicely.

Also fairly light reading, this is a decent collection of anecdotes about the show and the cast. Also contains an episode guide. Not as good as Russell Johnson's book, also read this year.

A good story which danced around a lot of points. Some character growth near the very end, a decent match to Shakespeare's famed tragedy. Really liked it, but not as much as Coffeehouse Angel.

Really excellent book, an adventure story and war history and mystery all-in-one. Chapters roughly alternate between a historical work and recent efforts to find the last of three B-24 Liberators that crashed near Palau. The pacing is perfect, the history touches on the men, the unit, and the complete war in the Pacific. I finished the 272 pages in just over a day, and hope to see more from this author soon.

Each two page spread has a photo and a passage from a book, along with a few bits of trivia. The photos are of the meals described in the text. I understand how some can evoke the book with the meal or vice versa, but that didn't happen for me, even for the books I've read. Not sure if I just breeze through those passages or really don't appreciate food, or perhaps both.

All that said, this is a very creative undertaking.

A quick little read, this book is aimed at younger children than I expected. Many chapters end on a cliffhanger, the villain is broad caricature, and above all the book is too short. Wanted to read it before reading one of Frank Boyce's commissioned sequels.

This very quick read is neither complete (there are websites for that, referenced in the introduction) nor comprehensive (it can be sold to those without a math PhD). It was enjoyable.

Each chapter starts with a reference or three from the Simpsons (and later Futurama) then moves forward to explore the mathematical concept referenced (from Pi and Fermat to Topologies and Klein Bottles, with a side trip into Bill James and Erdos/Bacon Numbers). The explorations are necessarily brief. Singh also introduces the reason for all this math - the nerdy writers of both shows.

Read aloud with daughter, age 10.

Characters are solid, their relationships interesting - and they've matured somewhat in the week covered by the four books. Like the second book, this is mainly told from Pearl's point-of-view. The best part of this book is the focus on a main bad guy, hinted at in the previous novel. In this story, he doesn't reveal his face, but Dr. Woo does give a good chunk of history about him.

We are both really looking forward to the next book.