Joe reviews things:

• I've read three baseball books since I've been in L.A., the ubiquitous Moneyball, the timely Autumn Glory, and the excellent Breaking the Slump.
  
• Moneyball is, of course, the story of the Oakland A's and baseball's sabermetric revolution. Many people have been writing about this book and for good reason--the story of how actual systematic research is starting to replace conventional wisdom as the tool for evaluating talent is a fascinating and important one to tell. At its heart, this book really says something about ongoing anti-intellectualism in our culture, and how we tend to overvalue "experience" as opposed to analysis and understanding. This is not the book to read if you are looking to learn about sabermetrics itself (I am, FWIW, statistically illiterate myself, but a big believer regardless); for that you should pick up anything ever written by Bill James. But Moneyball is a good read for baseball fans, and has something to say more generally about the culture of sports.
  
• Autumn Glory by Louis Masur is a chronology of the 1903 (i.e., first) World Series. To my mind it barely qualifies as a "history", because to my mind history analyzes rather than just trying to present the past. If you want an at-bat by at-bat account of the Series plus some well-worn stories thrown in for color, then this is the book for you. I was disappointed because Masur is a professional historian, but he writes the type of book that journalists and other non-pros tend to write when they dabble in history--long on facts, short on analysis or deeper meaning.
  
• Breaking the Slump is the most interesting baseball book I've read in a very long time. Unlike Masur, Charles Alexander is a historian who writes like a historian taking baseball as his canvas to paint a broader picture, rather than writing like a baseball fan dabbling in history. Alexander's book is about baseball and the Great Depression. What Alexander sets out to do is to write a social history of ballplayers--what was it like in the '30s to be a marginal player? a minor leaguer? a star? a Negro Leaguer? Alongside this story we do get the standard narratives--the Gas House Gang, the beginnings of night baseball, the rise of the DiMaggio-era Yankees--and interesting sidelights such as contemporary medical treatments for a sore arm (pulling teeth and tonsilectomies--I'm not making this up), the economics of player-managers, and reports of Lou Gehrig's annually increasing struggles with "lumbago". If you want a book that does an excellent job of contextualizing on-field developments (at a time when there were many interesting ones) with off-the-field events, this would be a great choice.
  
• I haven't seen many movies lately, but I did enjoy Lost In Translation. This is not a wacky Bill Murray comedy, and it's also not a film driven by a strong plot. But it's a good looking film, and its does a strong job of subtle things like setting tone and mood. Scarlett Johansson and Murray are an odd pairing of Americans emotionally dazed as they make their way through Tokyo, though at very different places in their lives. Some people will probably be bored by it, but I found it aesthetically interesting and a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.
  
• I also read Joan Didion's collection of essays After Henry. These essays are primarily from the '80s and deal with national politics as well as California and New York. I find Didion's takes on things continually interesting and often surprising, but inevitably stimulating and worth reading. These were no different. Particularly notable to me was her take on Los Angeles and New York, not in one particular essay but developed over several, about why Los Angeles works and New York doesn't. You may or may not agree her take, but it's a fascinating read.
  
• I just got a new introductory shipment of CDs in from Columbia House, because I'm like that boxer who just doesn't know when to retire or that Loveline caller who keeps going back to her beating, cheating boyfriend because she "loves him". But regardless, I have a new pile of CDs. I haven't listened to many of them yet but there are two definite winners so far--Elvis' No. 1s, and The Donnas' "Spend The Night", which I'd call just flat-out balls-out rock and roll if it weren't by a girl group, so that's not real accurate. But it does kick ass.
  
• Finally, a couple of weeks ago I re-read The Grapes of Wrath, in an effort to (a) assuage guilt for not reading it in grad school, (b) see if it made more sense to me than it did in 9th grade, and (c) incorporate the phrase "Goddamn Okies" in my vocabulary. Check, check, and check! Oh yeah, and it was also on The List, from which I still have to read 8 books to achieve my stated goal of 50. It didn't count as one of the eight since I'd already read it, but I hoped it would get me back in that mode. We shall see. As for Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath is a tough call for me: I can see its brilliance now, but I also have a problem with the basic underlying message--not politically, since I'm a flaming lefty and all, but with the notion that going back to the land and keeping the family together as opposed to going to the big anonymous city is a particularly good idea. Being a big believer in cosmopolitanism over, say, agrarianism, I can't get behind Steinbeck in that regard. But it remains a powerful social critique nonetheless.