New Book: Sweetness: The Enigmatic life of Walter Payton by Jeff Pearlman

A couple weeks ago, I finished reading Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs, and it was good.  It was essentially a collection of essays/stories recounting various events in Burroughs's life, which itself is interesting (gay alcoholic who was given away by his parents to his psychiatrist). Most of the stories are funny, and a couple times I laughed out loud on the train, which is a good sign.

I then read The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, which I hadn't read since high school.  I remember that it was one of the few books I had to read for school that I actually liked, although I apparently remembered little else about the book, other than the fact that Holden Caulfield hates phonies.  I didn't really remember the plot, how old Caulfield was, or any of the other characters.  After re-reading it, I was surprised about when it was published (1951) and written (throughout the '40s).  For some reason, the attitude of the book and the subject matter seemed like it would have been from the mid '50s at the very earliest, but I supposed that's one of the reasons the book is considered so groundbreaking (and was so controversial).  What's more interesting to me is who Caulfield was telling this story to.  I assume it was a psychiatrist, but it's unclear.  Anyway, it's a good (and relatively quick) read if you've never read it.

 

Now that I recently had my Walter Payton birthday, it's only fitting that I read his recently published biography, Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton by Jeff Pearlman.  If you grew up in the '80s in the Chicagoland area like me (well for part of the '80s at least), then Walter Payton was your hero.  In addition to being the single greatest all-around football player of all-time, he wasn't an asshole, he was always signing autographs, and he had a legendary work ethic.  Of course, the book was released with some controversy because it revealed that Payton, after retiring, had some brief problems with drugs.  From what I understand, that's a pretty small part of the book, and it would take a lot more than that to change my opinion about Payton.


Books read in 2011:
Life by Keith Richards
Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music by Ted Gioia
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Devil We Know: Dealing With the New Iranian Superpower by Robert Baer
Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and The Doors by John Densmore
The Butcher: Anatomy of a Mafia Psychopath by Philip Carlo
Runaway Dream: Born to Run and Bruce Springsteen's American Vision by Louis P. Masur
Clapton by Eric Clapton
Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman

My Billion Year Contract: Memoir of a Former Scientologist by Nancy Many

Snow Blind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade by Robert Sabbag
Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger