Larry's Book Options for April

I just found out today that I will be hosting April's book club. I've put the following list together. They are all books I'd like to read, but basically I think you will find them all entertaining and readable. No clear winner. I'll talk about positives and negatives tomorrow. -- Larry

The Junction Boys: How Ten Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Championship Team – by Jim Dent – 304 pages

When Bear Bryant took over the Texas A&M football program in 1954, he inherited a team that had lost its last five games by a combined score of 133-41. That season more than 100 Aggie hopefuls arrived in the small town of Junction for the first practice of a now legendary training camp. Ten hellish days later, only 34 remained to form the 1954 team that would only win one game, but those survivors--and that's what they were--formed the nucleus of the squad that would go undefeated just two years later.

Freedom-- byJonathan Franzen –576 pages: but should be a fast read

Novel by the same author that wrote The Corrections. Amazon Best of the Month, August 2010. An author we should read at some point in our existence. This book or The Corrections and Franzen have made almost every book list.

Growing Up – by Russell Baker – 352 pages

Baker's first Pulitzer was for distinguished commentary for his New York Times "Observer" columns (1979) and the second one was for his autobiography, Growing Up (1982).
An Amazon Review -- Russell Baker deserves to be a national treasure on the basis of this book alone. It traces his youth in rural Virginia, from the death of his father when he was only five through his growing up years between the wars. The rest of the book is a paean to his mother, a strong-willed optimist who never accepted defeat as an alternative to success. Her unfailing faith in the talents of her young son were not misplaced. This is an iconic and magical piece of literature, a story of courage and love, of the bonds of family in spite of tension and disagreement. Wonderful both as a story and as a piece of writing

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything -- Christopher Hitchens – 307 pages

Amazon Review -- God is getting bad press lately. Sam Harris' The End of Faith(2005) and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (2006) have questioned the existence of any spiritual being and met with enormous success. Now, noted, often acerbic journalist Hitchens enters the fray. As his subtitle indicates, his premise is simple. Not only does religion poison everything, which he argues by explaining several ways in which religion is immoral, but the world would be better off without religion.