We are supposed to be doing summer reading and summer work for b-school, but procrastination has allowed some non-school summer reading to occur.
So far two of the best books were
Sunday Money (MacGregor) and
Stranger Than Fiction (Palahniuk).
Sunday Money: Speed! Lust! Madness! Death! A Hot Lap Around America with Nascar was hard to put down. We read it in just a few days and enjoyed nearly every bit. MacGregor follows the 2002 Nascar Winston Cup with his wife by buying an RV and criss-crossing the country to each race. If you are a newer Nascar fan (as we at MM are), this book combines a bit of racing history with the more recent (and hilarious) anecdotes and scenes. MacGregor is a gripping writer and this book is highly recommended. Rating: 5 (out of 5).
Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories was another non-fiction book. Our favorite author, satirist Chuck Palahniuk's first attempt at essays is not as interesting as his sometime gross, nihilistic, often anarchist fiction. And some of the essays are just straight boring (most of the 'celebrity' interviews). While others are interesting (most of the personal accounts from his childhood or about his family; naval submarine; festival in Missouri). Rating: 3.5
We're halfway done reading:
Old School (Wolff);
Haunted (Palahniuk). Both are excellent (5 rating potential) thus far.
Old School is different. Wolff is a prof at Stanford and the book is a bit literary, in the sense that some of the info about the historical writers seems a bit inside-baseball-ish to us non-engligh-major folks. But it is excellent writing and a great (semi-?) autobiographical story to boot.
Haunted is very very dark, disturbing and not a book for your mother, but good and very Palahniuk (he wrote
Fight Club, use your imagination; supposedly people were getting physically ill at his bookstore readings of this book).
