They're Just Words

I logged my 700th book review on Goodreads. Goodreads is a website and app that allows you to create a digital library, find books that match your reading proclivities and rate and comment on the books you read. On the bottom right of my website (www.thewritemacke.com) my most recent reviews are listed.

The purpose, of course, of a book review is to give the unsuspecting reader some frank insights so that they won’t buy a dumb book and, well, to give the world the impression that the reviewer is well read.

On Goodreads books are judged on a one-to-five-star scale. If you buy a 1- or 2-star book, you’re a lame book buyer and out of touch with what makes a book good (on a really bad day I’m guilty of both). If you invest in what turns out to be a 5-star book, you’re a literary genius and proficient at finding needles in haystacks.

Probably thousands of book readers anticipate my every book review, a devotion that is, I should admit, rarely rewarded. I read fifty books in 2020 and unearthed a measly four 5-star books. This performance would embarrass me if not for the fact that I am one of the few humans to read any books at all.

What follows is a list of my 2020 5-star books, along with what I said about it. Here’s hoping that we all stumble upon a bunch of groovy books in 2021. Good reading.

The Last Don by Mario Puzo
A mob masterpiece … No one can touch Puzo in telling this kind of story; the book has dozens of characters you actually care about and the dialog and story arc are classic Puzo. Off the top of my head, I’ve read five of Puzo’s mafia-related novels, and if any writer on this earth deserves the title OG, it’s Puzo.

The Dynasty by Jeff Benedict
This is a book about the twenty-plus-year dynasty of the New England Patriots. So many great players, so many great games … a book like this I assume has a captive audience, that is, everyone who reads it loves the Patriots so they are prone to gush about the book as a reflex, but this book can stand on its own … the author tells a story for the ages; it’s a sports story that will never be duplicated and it is wonderfully told … having lived through this twenty-year dynastic window, you would think that the timeline would be familiar, redundant, yet even for a Patriots diehard, the behind-the-scenes descriptions are a revelation … a 500-page reminder of why all sports fans should love Tom Brady.

Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich by Mark Kriegel
It’s a five-star book because it’s a five-star story … I can’t say that I recall anything about the writing, a compliment, I believe, about the author’s efficiency and style … Sports fans need to remember Pistol Pete because he was a basketball genius who, like so many of the brightest stars, burned-out brilliantly fast, leaving a fleeting image unless we share him with our sons and daughters.

When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father’s War and What Remains by Ariana Neumann
Beautifully done Ariana … When Ariana’s father (a Czechoslovakian living in Venezuela) dies he leaves her a box of what amount to clues; using those clues she unlocks a fascinating story about her family during WWII … For me, the book starts out a little disjointed but it quickly hits its stride, becoming an almost impossible story about love and hate, tragedy and triumph, the divine and godlessness, courage and determination and destiny … In many ways, the author’s discoveries bring her a deeper relationship with and understanding of people she never met, than most of us have with people we see every day … Brilliant and dogged research and wonderful heartfelt writing; in a story unthinkably sad, you walk away feeling uplifted because the author receives an invaluable gift.

Photo on Best Running