Reviews this week: not just Palin and Agassi

This week, there were some small books competing for attention against some blockbusters. Andre Agassi's memoir, "Open," is charming everyone, including our reviewer David Davis:

This literate and absorbing book is, as the title baldly states, Agassi's confessional, a wrenching chronicle of his lifelong search for identity and serenity, on and off the court.

Peter Mayle, best known for "A Year in Provence," begins in Malibu but swiftly heads back to France, in a wine-and-food fiction this time around. Reviewer Bernadette Murphy writes:

"The Vintage Caper" is just that -- a caper -- a lighthearted romp through Bordeaux and Marseille, in which picking the right restaurant, choosing the best dish on the menu and, of course, finding the perfect wine (and female companion) to accompany the feast is every bit as important as catching the thief.

Well-known French children's author Jean-Claude Mourlevat has tried his hand at young adult fiction, and the results are not good. George Ducker writes:

For the characters in "Winter's End" -- and this should go for the readers as well -- the book's end just can't come soon enough.

And don't forget Sarah Palin. The former vice presidential candidate visited with Oprah, hit the road in a decorated tour bus and remained at the top of Amazon's bestseller list. As for the book itself, Tim Rutten says:

"Going Rogue" is so obviously a campaign biography that a reader comes away trying to figure out what he thinks of Palin's presidential chances rather than what he thinks of her.

So far, Palin isn't running for anything. Officially, that is.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Andre Agassi, honored at the U.S. Open in 2009. Credit: Charles Krupa / Associated Press

Upcoming Andre Agassi memoir reveals drug use

In his upcoming memoir, tennis star Andre Agassi admits that in 1997 he used the recreational drug crystal meth -- or "gack," as his assistant, referred to only as Slim, called it. The book "Open: An Autobiography" will be in stores in November, but is being serialized by the Times of London beginning Thursday. And they ran this excerpt today:

Slim dumps a small pile of powder on the coffee table. He cuts it, snorts it. He cuts it again. I snort some. I ease back on the couch and consider the Rubicon I’ve just crossed.

There is a moment of regret, followed by vast sadness. Then comes a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought in my head. I’ve never felt so alive, so hopeful -- and I’ve never felt such energy.

I’m seized by a desperate desire to clean. I go tearing around my house, cleaning it from top to bottom. I dust the furniture. I scour the tub. I make the beds...

Later, Agassi tested positive for the drug. It would mean a public suspension, and he feared, a lot more.

My name, my career, everything is now on the line. Whatever I’ve achieved, whatever I’ve worked for, might soon mean nothing. Days later I sit in a hard-backed chair, a legal pad in my lap, and write a letter to the ATP. It’s filled with lies interwoven with bits of truth.

I say Slim, whom I’ve since fired, is a known drug user, and that he often spikes his sodas with meth — which is true. Then I come to the central lie of the letter. I say that recently I drank accidentally from one of Slim’s spiked sodas, unwittingly ingesting his drugs. I ask for understanding and leniency and hastily sign it: Sincerely.

I feel ashamed, of course. I promise myself that this lie is the end of it.

While the admission now may get him in hot water with some sports officials, it certainly can't hurt his book sales. How many people knew the 1992 Wimbledon champion had a memoir coming out? Now, we all do.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Andre Agassi at a 2007 press conference. Credit: Ian Salas / EPA

Golfing like it's 1744, or like you're Dino -- take your pick

I'm a little tired of all the rules my fellow weekend warriors toss out over a friendly game of golf. Whenever someone starts counting the clubs in my bag, I think of guys like Ian Woosnam back in 2001 who was penalized for having 15 clubs instead of 14 in his bag. Dude, this is not the U.S. Open, can we just get on with it, please? Can we just infuse a little of the spirit found in the new book "The Original Rules of Golf" (Bodleian Library/University of Chicago: $12)? Times were simpler, and so were the rules.

Those rules, formulated in Edinburgh in 1744 -- just 13 of them! -- are introduced by Dale Concannon, who offers a splendid overview of golf's long evolution, starting with paganica (a game Romans in ancient Briton played with a curved club and a leather-covered ball) and continuing with golf's expansion into the 19th century. In 1744, things were much more poetic -- your opponent was "your adversary" then -- and straightforward:

Rule No. 7. At Holling, you are to play your Ball honestly for the Hole, and, not to play on your Adversary's Ball, not lying in your way to the Hole.

And there's unexpected poetry as well:

Rule No. 10  If a Ball be stopp'd by any person, Horse, Dog, or any thing else, the Ball so stop'd must be played, where it lyes.

I wonder if Joan Didion borrowed from Rule 10 for the title of that novel of hers. "The Original Rules of Golf" is a delight. If things were kept this simple, you wouldn't have countless experts offering their insights in countless manuals!

As a reluctant connoisseur of many of these guides (one of my favorites, for its economy and clarity, is Lawrence G's at Sportsmania), I'd have to say the mechanics of golf instruction today are somewhere between Zen Buddhism and lunacy.

“What’s A Golfer to Do?” (Artisan/Workman: $16.95) caters to both extremes, offering 343 tips (so much for round numbers) that are highly useful, such as how to roll putts -- the key is to keep that right elbow, if you’re a righty, close to your body -- or else highly dippy. How do you get over first-tee jitters? The answer: “Pretend you’re Dean Martin.” Got it, baby?

Other tips include attaching a golfball with duct-tape to your club to practice swinging harder (don’t forget to take it off when you actually play) and not to overpower your swings but strive for a smooth, relaxed motion -- even when a wide-open fairway is tempting you to unload like a gorilla. Then, there is this muscle relaxation tip, as you're standing at the tee, which sounds like something you'd hear on a Rodney Yee yoga video: “I want you to maintain a feeling of a soft right leg on the downswing.”

How do I do that? What, with all those people watching me? Instead, I think I’ll just hum a few bars of “That’s Amore,” baby.

-- Nick Owchar

Photo: Dean Martin ruled the 19th hole. Credit: Chris Graythen / Getty Images

Alyssa Milano loves baseball, bookishly

When baseball season started Sunday night, Alyssa Milano was paying attention. The actress -- who also has the sports-oriented clothing line TOUCH and blogs for MLB.com -- has been a baseball fan since childhood, she writes in "Safe at Home," a new memoir she calls her "love letter to baseball."

What the book is not, boys, is a letter about the loves in her life (she's dated baseball players, I hear). She kicked off her book tour last week and discovered that some people would write about her book without actually reading it. She clarifies:

• WHAT WAS REPORTED - The book is a tell-all where I go in depth about the baseball players who I've dated.
• FACT - Ummmm. Not even close. It is a retrospective look back on how baseball has been a constant in my life and what the sport has meant to me though the years and how it brought my father and me closer. Considering that there are only four pages out of 253 that focus on my exes, if you are considering buying the book to read me kiss and tell, you will be disappointed.

• WHAT WAS REPORTED - I write that Brad Penny made me wear his jersey to bed.
• FACT - I wrote about wearing BP's jersey in the batting cage at Dodger Stadium. I never wrote, nor would I ever write, anything about what I sleep in.

Milano will be talking about her book and about baseball Saturday, April 25, at the L.A. Times Festival of Books with L.A. Times Dodger blogger Jon Weisman. I'm sure he'll read it.

Me, I have read only the introduction. It's a pleasant, conversational read, and Milano's affection for baseball shines through. It's a lot like listening to any genuine sports fan who begins talking baseball -- stats and favorites and debates, like this one from later in the book:

Q: Is Jeff Kent going to run like he's got a piano on his back?
A: Yes, Jeff Kent always runs like he's got a piano on his back -- especially if it matters.

Heh. I've been to enough Dodger games to know that this is true, so true.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: TOUCH by Alyssa Milano

The most hated man in baseball?

Photo: Newly minted Los Angeles Dodger fans at Dodger Stadium, opening day, 1962.

When owner Walter O'Malley announced in 1957 that he would move the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, many New Yorkers decided he was "a money-grubbing weasel who ripped the soul from their community." That's how David Davis describes the enmity the move generated in his review of "Forever Blue: The True Story of Walter O'Malley, Baseball's Most Controversial Owner, and the Dodgers of Brooklyn and Los Angeles" by Michael D'Antonio.

D'Antonio makes the case, Davis says, that O'Malley was driven to leave New York by Robert Moses, who wouldn't give him enough land for a new ballpark. But that rationale won't satisfy those who repeat the joke, "If Stalin, Hitler and O'Malley are in a room and you only have two bullets, who do you shoot?" (The answer: "O'Malley, twice.")

As for that new ballpark, Davis writes, "D'Antonio debunks the myth that Dodger Stadium ruined Chavez Ravine. Its dismantling happened before O'Malley's arrival, when residents were displaced in advance of a public housing project that was to be built on the site." Which isn't exactly the whole story -- a 2003 documentary maintains that "the residents were told that they would have first choice for these new homes"; eventually the housing project was the victim of both Red Scare politics and a land trade that City Councilman Ed Roybal called a "sweetheart deal" for O'Malley.

"If there's a flaw in 'Forever Blue,' it's that D'Antonio is too deferential," David writes.

Walter O'Malley doesn't need an apologist. Alternately shrewd and ruthless, he operated with one underlying principal: doing what was best for the Dodgers and O'Malley. Often, that meant parting company -- with players who'd lost a step, with executives who became too independent, with cities that refused to negotiate on his terms, with fans unable to let go. By the time of his death, in 1979, the legacy of his Hall of Fame career was secure: Professional sports is, first and foremost, a business.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: courtesy G2 via Flickr.

Joe Torre and his Yankee years. Yikes.

One of those things they tell you in career advice columns is that you shouldn't complain about your boss. Especially, if they think of it, on a blog. You really shouldn't complain about him on a blog that he reads. But I have to tell you, there is something about book editor David L. Ulin that's just not right.

He's a Yankee fan.

Ulin got an early look at the new Joe Torre book "The Yankee Years," written with Tom Verducci, and he finds it:

... an unexpectedly thoughtful, even nuanced, history not only of Torre's 12 years as manager of the Yankees but of Major League Baseball during that time. It's a period ripe for just this sort of overview: the steroid era, the rise of moneyball....

"The Yankee Years" masterfully interweaves these larger issues into a detailed account of the rise and fall of Torre's dynasty, a team that won four World Series in the first five years he was managing -- and then did not go all the way again.

Honestly, I can't think of anything more grating -- and I'm sure it has everything to do with the fact that I spent a couple of decades rooting for the Red Sox and then transferred my affections to the Dodgers. Does the world really need a thoughtful, powerful book by a former Yankee manager about his winning team? Gah! Those hegemonies from the Bronx! Those overpaid robots! Oh, wait, Torre's book talks about that. Ulin writes:

He's terrific on the day-to-day dynamics of the Yankees, the way the selfless, win-at-all-costs culture of the championship teams dissipated with the departure of Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius and Tino Martinez after the 2001 season, leaving a void filled by selfish superstars.

Such a trend began with the 2001 signing of Jason Giambi -- a move Torre opposed in writing, so he couldn't be held responsible if it didn't work out -- and it's personified by the contradictory figure of Rodriguez, perhaps the most talented and least endearing superstar in American sports, an insecure stat machine utterly unable to hit when it counts.

Much of the media buzz around "The Yankee Years" has involved reports that Yankee players called Rodriguez "A-Fraud" or that the player was so obsessed with shortstop Derek Jeter that it "recalled the 1992 film 'Single White Female.' "

More about name-calling and obsession after the jump.

How about an e-book reader for your treadmill?

With holiday festivities expanding waistlines and the New Year and its demand for resolutions looming, thoughts may turn to exercise. They have done so at the interesting design-and-more blog IronicSans, which has posted an idea: a treadmill e-book reader. Don't blame Ironic Sans' David Friedman for the awkward mock-up above (that's all me) his idea is solid:

some people see the treadmill as a good place to get some reading done. I see them struggling to figure out how to place a book or magazine on the machine without it falling, and even with a Treadmill Book Holder, it can be awkward to turn the pages. ... how about adding an eBook reader to the list of treadmill features?

Is it really possible that this doesn't exist yet? It seems like an obvious pairing. And just think, you could choose to read a haiku for a very, very short workout, or call up some Dickens for a marathon.

The best part of all is David's name for his invention: the tREADmill.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Image credits: Photo of treadmills by Kenny Miller via Flickr. Sony Reader courtesy of Sony.

Stephen King, cranking out Sports Center copy

Stephen King might be a master of horror and suspense, but that doesn't mean he can't enjoy a good ball game. In fact, King is a longtime fan of the Red Sox, going so far as to co-write "Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season" with Stewart O'Nan. Maybe it's his dedication to his favorite ball team that prompted him to appear in this new Sports Center commercial, set to debut on ESPN on Monday.

"Ghost writer" -- heh. And out in time for Halloween.

Thanks to the literary blog Syntax of Things, which found the video here.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

19-0?

As a New York sports fan, I loved watching the New England Patriots lose the Super Bowl (and their bid for a perfect season) to the Giants last night. Not only for the victory itself but also because it offered cosmic repercussions — a restoration of the universe’s essential order, a victory by New York over Boston, a reminder of the way things are supposed to be.

The Patriots' loss also represents its own brand of karmic comeuppance, a reminder not to count your 19th chicken before it's hatched. As late as this morning, after all, a book called "19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England's Unbeatable Patriots" by the sports staff of the Boston Globe was burning up the charts at Amazon.com.   

Although the book has since been yanked, the Associated Press reports that it was first offered for pre-sale as early as Jan. 29, nearly a week before the Super Bowl. The irony is that, according to a post at America Online's Fan House, "The Patriots famously fired themselves up to beat the Eagles in [the 2005] Super Bowl by listening to [coach] Bill Belichick reading off the plans for the Eagles' post-Super Bowl parade route."

Hubris, anyone?

David L. Ulin