Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
In the “here’s something you don’t see every day” category: With so many books, it’s a rare thing when Publisher’s Weekly does something with a baseball title, but here’s what they had to say about Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America’s First Baseball Hero, by Thomas Gilbert. From America Magazine: The Jesuit Review […]
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Deciding what to post for TT is always challenging, but one of my Google Alerts today was “How John Grisham Lost His Love for Baseball” from Crimereads.com. Perfect. It that reminded me of the time I reviewed his 2012 baseball novel, Calico Joe, for Bookreporter,com, reprinted here for your convenience: John Grisham is highly regarded […]
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My wife belongs to a couple of book clubs. In one of them, once a year, the partners are invited to participate and are charged with suggesting a work of fiction or non-fiction. For the upcoming couples get-together, I suggested The Resisters, a 2020 dystopian novel by Gish Jen. Unfortunately, it was not selected.Not baseball fans, […]
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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]
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Now that the season is over, it’s time to look ahead to see what reading material will carry us over to “pitchers and catchers.” As with previous lists like this, I have omitted anything that falls into the general category of “romance novels.” Also, no books about trivia or designed for younger readers. In last […]
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The Northern: A Novel, by Jacob McArthur Mooney As readers of this blog will recall, I usually don’t delve into baseball fiction. Fiction in general has lost its allure to me over the years. But once in a while I will indulge. And since I’ve been on a baseball card kick for the past month […]
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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]
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Well, maybe not that old, relatively speaking. David Jordan, who collaborated with the late Dave Parker on Cobra: A Life of Baseball and Brotherhood, posted this essay on one of the most talked about baseball novels in memory. Reprinted with permission. THE ART OF FIELDING: A LITERARY CRITICISM So the novel was mentioned here the […]
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Unlike the quartet which seems to fawn over The Art of Fielding in this Defector article, “The Art of Reading,” I maintain that the work of Chad Harbach was overrated. Yes, it got a lot of attention when it came out in 2011, primarily, I believe, because the first-timer author received such a huge advance. To […]
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I may have said it before, but I should have some sort of gimmick for repeat guests, akin to Saturday Night Live‘s fancy smoking jackets for five-time hosts. This marks my third Conversation with Kevin Baker (and there will be a fourth when his new book — the follow up to The New York Game […]
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There was something about Bill Littlefield’s voice when he read his poetry (or as he refers to it, doggerel) on NPR’s Only a Game that was so soothing, as opposed to those loud-mouthed shouters on various sports talk programs. I miss him. But to prove that the Bookshelf is timeless, I had him on recently […]
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Robert Coover, who wrote one of the most famous pieces of baseball fiction, passed away October 5 at the age of 92. Here’s his obituary from The New York Times. Of course, Coover many well-received novels over his lengthy career but the one that resonates most for readers of this blog would have to be […]
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is available on Amazon.com,
In a former life, I was the sports and features editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper, where I hosted an award-winning bog about Jews and Sports.
I did a profile piece on the legendary cartoonist Arnold Roth and he was very generous in immortalizing me in this caricature.
My article on Sandy Koufax in the 1965 World Series appears in
My article on the later biographies of Babe Ruth appears in
My article on the Mets’ 1969 postseason appears in
Profiles of several Jewish baseball figures appear in
