Kevin Guilfoile

I really wanted to like this book. It was recommended in some forum somewhere where supposedly smart people were discussing another book I really liked and someone suggested this was a good one in the same vein. It wasn't. Poor character development. Some of them don't ever have backstory. Some characters are introduced only to further a single plot point and then disregarded. Entire sub-plots are introduced and go nowhere. Too much emphasis on a twist ending that could be seen miles away. show more (Although admittedly the author sprinkled in so many clues that this, perhaps, was his intent.) It disappointed me, and I'm glad I'm done and can move on. That said, I'll give it as many stars as I have because the writing (the prose) itself wasn't bad. I've certainly read worse writing before and I suspect Guilfoile could turn out a good book if he abandoned cliches and gimmicks and focused more on his characters. show less

This book, a short one about the duration of long-term memory, centers on the relationship between the author and his father, a one-time executive at the Baseball Hall of Fame museum, also a late-stage Alzheimer’s patient.

There's a memorable story in chapter 5. It's a throw-away account of a practical joke that Jerry Ruess, who worked for the L.A. Dodgers, once played on Tommy Lasorda, the team’s general manager. Here’s what Ruess did. He took a game ball and wrote a message to Frank show more Pulli, the home plate umpire. The message said, “Frank -- Hope you’re enjoying the game, Tommy Lasorda.” Jerry gave the ball to the pitcher. The pitcher noticed the message on the ball and thought to himself, Strange that the team’s manager is sending messages to umpires on game balls. And then he threw the pitch anyway, which fouled into the stands.

After the game, the pitcher told Tommy Lasorda that he thought the message he’d sent Frank Pulli was pretty funny. Lasorda scratched his head. Later that night, Lasorda’s wife, Jo, asked him about the autographed ball. Now Lasorda was really confused. Jo said that the fan who caught the foul ball was amazed to find that the ball had already been signed by the general manager.
Even more amazing, the fan, whose name was Frank, was impressed that Lasorda had somehow singled him out of the crowd and inscribed the ball just for him.

We don’t know what happened to foul-ball-catching Frank of the ballpark stands, but I imagine that Moses himself can’t have felt much different on the day that a decorative shrubbery on Sinai burst into flame and called him by name, twice: Moses, Moses.

Wouldn’t it be funny if the real story about the bush on Sinai was that some desert denizen had meant to play a trick on one of his friends, some guy named Moses Abobay or something, but the wrong Moses had come along? And then that wrong Moses had gone and freed the Israelites from slavery, parted the Red Sea, and led them to the promised land. All because of a practical joke.

Blasphemy, you may say, but then I’ll tell you that the difference between the cosmic and comic is only a single sibilant -- the soft hiss of air leaking from a bicycle tire, molecules of air streaming single-file out of our skull’s inner-tube.

And then the tire goes flat and playtime is over. show less

Guilfoile (I defy you to spell that name after seeing it only once) is another The Morning News staffer with a novel out, and The Thousand is his second. If you haven't seen the videotrailer for the book, go find it now. Guilfoile counts to one thousand, number by number, but the video lasts only two minutes. It's fun to watch.

The Thousand has been described as The DaVinci Code for people who care about the material that goes into their head. Having read both, I can tell you that the show more Thousand is much, much better than TDaVC. Bonus: the antagonist isn't some masochistic, paperthin religionist. In fact, the Thousand's antagonists are a world-wide conspiracy of Pythagoreans who control the world with numbers. Interesting note: I read this book at the same time I listened to Michael Lewis's The Big Short, which is also about a group of oligarchic conspiracists, and I have to say that the experience left me feeling rather anxious for a few months. In a good way. show less

A good baseball yarn, intercutting contemplations of his father, a founder of the Baseball Hall of Fame now declining into dementia, with the story of Roberto Clemente's 3000th hit and the bat he used. Or was that the bat he used? Fact and memory blur, and it would be a shame to spoil the ending…