A Sharply hit Double: On "Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies".

Kluwe plays in the NFL (hopefully he gets another shot soon), but I am going to use a baseball metaphor.

This book came to me with two strikes against it.  Strike one is that the name of the book is “Beautifully Unique Sparkelponies,”  and strike two was the anti-jock bias that I seem to have.

Here’s where I should say that Kluwe hits it out of the park, but I’m not going to go that far.  It’s more like a sharply hit double in the gap.

This book is mostly essays about politics and football and life.  Reading it, I had trouble getting into it.  I fillow Kluwe on a well-known micro-blogging site, and I like his voice in those small bursts.  It has some issues scaling up, and early on, I wanted to abandon the book.  There are places the essays are over-writen and there is a whole essay about the process of writing –which is important for a writer to think about, but maybe needs to be put in a drawer until the Paris Review comes to interview you.  There’s also a later essay where one-ply toilet paper serves as a vehicle for an extended metaphor.

So I was ready to put it aside, but I did.  It may be juvenile, but Kluwe is also really smart.  I don’t say that just because he has the same politics I do or reads the same authors I read, but it builds in the book to a point where you can’t deny this guy’s smarts –  no matter what biases you bring to the reading.  There’s a short piece on punting that captures that important but ignored part of the game in a way that makes you rethink the punter’s craft.  Over the course of the book, it feels like he finds his voice.  That or I just became accustomed to his unique style and cadences.  I think that if I wrote a book, it would be a lot like “Sparkleponies.”  I hope it would be.   

Nothing to fear but your god: Reading "Man's Search for Meaning"

Within the covers of this book is a very moving, powerful story about survival and creating a reason to go on even when the worst is facing you.  That there were any survivors from the camps shows the resilience of the human soul.  That part is very, very good.  You should read it and be prepared to feel conflicted about your fellow man, who is capable of such highs and lows.

Also in the pages of the edition I have are two addendums.  One is an introduction to Logotherapy, a therapeutic method that Frankl was instrumental in developing.  Another is a “Case for tragic optimism”.   I don’t know what to make of these so much.  The narrative that is the core of the book is only 99 pages.  The other two sections feel like filler, and I don’t think they aided my understanding of the narrative any better.  I’m most concerned about the Logotherapy section.  It seems to have been highly influenced by Frankl’s life experiences, but I don’t know how useful it is.  The section was written in 1980, over thirty years ago now, and I worry that what was written then has perhaps been superseded by subsequent research and work.  The problem here is that I have no background in the discipline, so I can’t know. 

Basically, stop at this sentence: “The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more – except his God.”  Then  you will be just fine.

American Savage: Horrible people will not like this one

Dan Savage is noted for the founding of the "It Gets Better" project, a series of viral web videos that sought to show that teenage problems were not a life-long issue, and that life does in fact improve.  He is also a columnist for independent newspapers, helping people with issues about what goes where and with who.

Here, he brings his distinctive voice to a set of essays, that if you're a left-leaning, sex-positive person who has had issues with the established church, you will enjoy them very much.  If you're a horrible person, you will not like these very much, but horrible people are not in Savage's demographic.  So, all not horrible people, grab your copy today!