{"id":1366,"date":"2018-12-31T16:53:51","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:53:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1366"},"modified":"2018-12-31T16:53:51","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:53:51","slug":"lone-star-book-reviews-52","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1366","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/span><\/p>\n

Joe Holley<\/span> writes the \u201cNative Texan\u201d column for the Houston Chronicle.<\/span> A native Texan himself, he received degrees from Abilene Christian University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. He is a former editor of the Texas Observer<\/span> and a regular contributor to Texas Monthly and the Columbia Journalism Review.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Holley is a former editorial page editor and columnist for newspapers in San Antonio and San Diego and a staff writer for The Washington Post.<\/span> He joined the Houston Chronicle in 2009.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/span>7.1.18<\/span><\/p>\n

TEXAS SPORTS<\/p>\n

Joe Holley<\/span><\/p>\n

Hurricane Season: The Unforgettable Story of the 2017 Houston Astros and the Resilience of A City<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Hachette Books<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-0316485241, 272 pages (also available as paperback and ebook), $27.00<\/p>\n

May 1, 2018<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Chris Manno<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking for a baseball collectible <\/span>enshrining the 2018 World Champion Houston Astros and their hurricane-battered host city, then Joe Holley\u2019s<\/span> Hurricane Season: The Unforgettable Story of the 2017 Houston Astros and the Resilience of A City<\/span> is it. If you\u2019re looking for a focused historical sports narrative, this may be more problematic to read.<\/p>\n

The story loops forward and backward and changes narrative modes like a frenetic Robin Williams anecdote: it\u2019s robust, very colorful, entertaining, but exhausting in the end. Ultimately, the reader has a hard time deciding what this book is, because Holley himself seems confused as to what it should be.<\/p>\n

Like most baseball game commentary, Holley tends to be overly verbose here. That is consistent with the book\u2019s sixteen-word title but tiring for the reader. He opens with compelling if paradoxical (am I reading a radio broadcast transcript?) play-by-play that is laden with the foibles of baseball sportscasting, including over-embellished narration (maybe it is a radio broadcast of the game) like \u201cthe first pitch Keuchel threw to Taylor was as juicy as a ribeye at Wolfgang Puck\u2019s Cut restaurant on Wilshire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, we sidestep to a stark foretaste of Jim Crane\u2019s lifelong, relentlessly hard-working ethos (his mother sent him a handwritten bill for the spending money she gave him in college), his rise in the business world, and finally, the precipice of a baseball franchise purchase. Flash back a hundred years to the settling of mosquito, malaria and wildcatter-infested Houston. Leap forward to the NASA-esque outcome predictive computer labs with a side order of Moneyball<\/span> movie outtakes. Toss in some personal narrative covering what the author\u2019s wife told him during a previous hurricane, and where his adult kids flew in from for a family gathering. You get the picture: ladies and gentlemen, we have a wild ballgame on our hands\u2014at least in the broadcast booth.<\/p>\n

The story line weaving the Astros players\u2019 personal lives, homes, families and their stake in the beleaguered city\u2019s post-hurricane recovery perfectly frames the backdrop for their sincere efforts to help their desperate hometown with an astonishing triumph in the World Series. But more important, a reader might conclude, the big hearts that powered their big bats to an unlikely World Series victory also underwrote their street-level labor shoulder to shoulder with their fellow Houstonians fighting survival and recovery in the muck and wreckage of an epic natural disaster.<\/p>\n

Hurricane Season<\/span> is a mixed bag for the reader. The facts, the play-by-play, the background, and the player close up biographical sketches are thorough, intriguing, and, though more magazine-ish than literary, compelling. Equally gut-wrenching is the visceral hurricane narrative and Houstonian\u2019s struggle to surmount an epic disaster, aided by a sincere group of talented yet unlikely world champions who showed a genuine humanism atypical in the high-dollar world of professional sports.<\/p>\n

Houstonians will love the story, Astros fans will cherish the book, and sports fans might enjoy the narrative. For everyone else, this is a decent if somewhat laborious read.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lone Star Book Reviews of Texas books appear weekly at LoneStarLiterary.com ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joe Holley writes the \u201cNative Texan\u201d column for the Houston Chronicle. A native Texan himself, he received degrees from Abilene Christian University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. He is a former editor of the Texas Observer and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}