An awesome book, whether you are a sports lover or not!!!!

books:


	• My Losing Season Pat Conroy The Dial Press, 2003 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 57 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

The making of a writer

Although the largest section of this book is entitled "The Making of a Point Guard," the book's subject is actually the making of a writer. As far back as he can remember, Conroy wanted to play basketball, and for almost that long, he wanted to be a novelist. Both callings, he tells us, are fraught with difficulty, require long apprenticeships, and are borne out of intensely hard work and forged in a crucible of pain. Conroy's best novels emerge from the facts of his life -- the abusive family in which he grew up and the formative experience of his college years at the Citadel. Rather than fictionalizing, in this book Conroy tries to explain who he is and how he got that way.

"It is time itself I am trying to retrieve," Conroy writes on page 137. "I long to pin it down in the surreal hyacinth-light of both memory and dream that now have faded where once they were three-dimensional and rich. ... It was the year I woke up to the dream of my own life. As I walked across the parade ground during the first week, I began the long, terrifying process of turning myself into the southern writer my mother had told me I would be since I was five years old." This passage is typical of Conroy at his best -- the anguish over the passing of time, the emotional pain, the southern sense of destiny, even the (literally) flowery language.

Just as Conroy frequently despairs that he will never be a truly great point guard, he often says he will never be a writer on the level of Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and the other southern novelists whose work he has breathed in. All he can do is the best that he is capable of, just the way this young man of limited basketball talents performed for the Citadel in 1966-67.

The novelist is like the point guard in another way as well, Conroy writes. The novelist "needs a strong ego, a sense of arrogance, complete knowledge of tempo, and control of the court." The novelist must thumb his nose at academics and critics the way a basketball player ignores jeers from spectators or trash talk from opponents. "The point guard knows that the world is fraught with pitfalls and dangers, and so does the novelist." And the novelist must "create the world" around him, just as the point guard leads the charge and creates the play.

This is not a basketball book but one that uses sports as a metaphor in a totally fresh manner.

for more information click here

An awesome book, whether you are a sports lover or not!!!!

I come from a big sports family. My dad played high school sports, I played high school sports, my sister did too and now she is playing college basketball. This book does talk a lot about basketball but Pat Conroy learns life lessons while playing the game he so deeply loves. There are many themes that my dad wanted me to look at while reading this book, they are: the parent-child relationship between Pat and his father, the impact of military school-the good and the bad, the regret the author has for his lack of courage and self-confidence, how personal character was built because of hardship, failure and success, what it means to be part of a team, the honor of pushing yourself beyond what you think you can tolerate, what it takes to perservere during long stretches of failure, discouragement, and loss, the value of friendship, teamwork, encouragment,loyalty,and love, and enjoying the experiences of the present and taking advantage of present opportunities. These are just a few themes with many more in the book. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll get angry with how Pat was treated at home and at the Citadel, but you'll be glad you read it. I didn't want to put it down. It's one of the best books I've read in a long time and I read a lot of books. I laughed, I cried, and I did get very angry sometimes. At times I wished I was in the book so that I could fight back the times that Pat did not. Read this book, you will love it.
Ginny

for more information click here

A special book, not just for sports lovers

I have never played basketball. But Conroy let me see the beauty of well-played sport, to almost feel the special thrill of coordinated athletic movement, while sitting still.
He portrayed decent, loyal and loving people in a way that is touching. He put the reader into the story. This is the mark of a good book, and a good writer.
By comparison The Great Santini came across as embarrassingly trite and smarmy, but that's for another review...

My Losing Season Review

You are more than just a reader of Pat Conroy's book "My Losing Season," but a spectator of Conroy's life, mainly his basketball career at the Citadel. Conroy goes beyond mere statistics and recalling of events, but relives each basketball game using specific jargon to the sport to allow the reader to experience each game with Conroy. He captures every defining moment of the game-more than just the score and the high scorers. He goes through each game play by play, recalling each player on his team as well as each star player on the opposing team.
Conroy also encapsulates each character so they play more than just a role in Conroy's life. He creates his coach Mel Thompson as more than just a pitiless coach, but an enigma. To Conroy and his teammates, Thompson is an obscure, cruel coach, but Conroy gives an outside look. Around people unrelated to his team, Thompson is seen smiling and laughing. If caught laughing on the Citadel team around Thompson, the best that could happen was a brutal verbal attack, the worst, you're kicked off the team. Conroy's talent to observe, remember, and recreate made his book a success.
Conroy intertwined his development as a point guard with the development of trust and love between his teammates, his growth as a writer, and his father's brutality to show how enduring pain and sheer determination can lead to success. Basketball was Conroy's outlet for all his suffering, and he creates a memoir that appeals to more than just sports fans. Conroy develops himself as a character in "My Losing Season" modestly. His ability to find hope while suffering the plebe system at the Citadel, withstanding a perplexing, heartless coach, and suffering the brutality of his father, lets Conroy achieve a character to admire. A character someone would want to read a whole book about and be inspired by his resolution of these demons.

for more information click here

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

hot

not?

What's your opinion?

Write a review and share your thoughts!

recommendations

Great Nonfiction Books (heavy on the travel and biography)
books about boys (for bernie and arhankgus)
Adult Books that Appeal to Teenage Readers
Characteristics of "Real" Men
2003 Alex Awards

search for books
my losing season, losing, season

Impressum / about us