“I disapprove of what you say…”

… but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

My wife an I recently attended several movies at our local film festival, once of which was Late Night, the new Mindy Kaling/Emma Thomson comedy, which has received glowing reviews from some major sources.

Long story short, I hated it. I found it too clichéd: an outsider with no experience gives a comeuppance to the established order to rousing business and personal success. But as a man in the current political climate, it felt imprudent to voice my opinion.

That’s kind of the way I feel when it comes to a lot of these lists of best baseball books. I wonder how much due diligence the writer/reviewer actually does. In this time-and-space crushed journalistic atmosphere, can they actually be expected to, you know, read the books, or do they just go by the press releases from the publishers?

Ever notice that it’s almost always the same books that pop up in these articles? What about the ones that don’t come from major publishers? I guess the budgets of the smaller houses don’t allow for mass publicity. Too bad, because there are some very good books out there that go under the radar. I’m sure you can think of some.

That said, here are a couple of those “review roundups” that put together several titles in one shot. Note that these pieces are frequently syndicated and may not originate from the publication in which they run: from the Greensboro News & Record. Perfect example of the note above as this article — which features exclusively books about New York teams, and therefore a tad odd for a southern paper to publish — originally comes from Newsday. And here’s is  an even dozen from the Washington Post.