Holiday Readings

Photo Credits: Bill Simmons and Rick Olivares

Picked up a couple of books (okay, 1 book and 1 journal) these past few days. The first one is The Book of Basketball, by Bill Simmons, the other one is The 18th Banner, by Rick Olivares. Thoroughly enjoyed reading both of them.

The Book of Basketball
The NBA According to The Sports Guy
by: Bill Simmons

I was actually thinking of ordering the book from Amazon, but luckily, while looking around at Fully Booked Rockwell the other day, I saw a hardbound copy in their hobby/sports section and quickly picked it up.

I've been a huge fan of Bill Simmons since 1997, dating back to the days of his independent site (a site hosted by AOL I think), bostonsportsguy.com. During those days, he basically writes about the Boston area professional sports teams, the Celtics, Red Sox and the Patriots (maybe a bit of the Bruins too, before he totally lost interest in the NHL). He writes it from a fan's perspective, which in a way is refreshing because you could almost actually relate to him when you read his articles. He also has a tendency to include pop-culture references to his sports articles, which make them infinitely more entertaining. An example would be, instead of writing a straight forward piece about what happened during the most recent NBA off-season, he would somehow manage to write it using quotes from a movie (in this case, Almost Famous) He's a bit mainstream now, moving to LA and becoming a columnist for ESPN's Page 2. Although this has given him more access to the sports and pop-culture world, he still manages to be true to his roots, that of writing something that the fans or an everyday person can relate to (now, if only he can write more often and podcast less). Anyway, check him out on his Page 2 site in ESPN: Sports Guy's World

About the book, it's a must read for NBA fanatics. My favorite parts are the What If Game and the Hall of Fame Pyramid. The book is quite long, almost 700 pages, but there's no need to read it from cover to cover since it is not your typical beginning-middle-end type of book wherein you have to read it in one sitting. Its actually like a compilation of several short articles, so you can pick it up and put it down as many times as you want.

For those of you who haven't bought it, two things to take note of before buying the book:

1) Do not buy the Kindle edition for this particular book, it contains tons of footnotes (which is integral to the stories) and reading it through Kindle would be awkward.

2) The paperback edition is due to come out sometime late next year, for those who want updated information, better wait for that version.

The 18th Banner
Ateneo's UAAP Season 71
by: Rick Olivares

I've been waiting for this ever since Rick Olivares mentioned it in his blog. When it finally came out last week, I immediately went to the Loyola Schools Bookstore in Ateneo and got myself a copy.

The journal details the path that the Ateneo Blue Eagles took towards winning the 2008 UAAP Men's Basketball Championship. While it was full of photos, game accounts and even statistics (boxscores are posted below each game story), honestly, I was a bit disappointed because I was expecting a lot more inside stories, and I was hoping to know more personal stuff about our hardcourt heroes (not the fan-girl stuff but you know, personal basketball stuff that only the team or insiders know, like who's the best student after Chris Tiu, who's the team clown, who arrives the earliest at practice and who stays the latest after practice, who trash talks the most - probably Eric Salamat and Ryan Buenafe in that order...but yeah, something along those lines).

I don't know, maybe I'm just a bit spoiled, as I do get a lot of information already from Rick's blog: Bleachers' Brew and from the different Ateneo basketball fora (specifically, Blue Eagles' Nest from the Gameface Forum) But don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading the journal, and if you are in any way shape or form an Ateneo Blue Eagle fan, this is a must buy, a way to preserve the memories of that wondrous and epic season.

Anyway, try to get these books, you won't regret it. They're actually a nice segue to my next post, entitled Vengeance Mode. Stay tuned.