Sidecountry: Tales of Death and Life from the Back Roads of Sports

My husband read the reviews of this book and he wanted to read. He has to wait for Christmas for it’s a present.

Nice stories

Wow! Just wow! This may be the best book I’ve read this year. NYT, Pulitzer Prize winning writer John Branch’s collection of stories is an amazing read. This exceptional collection is loosely categorized as “sports” stories but really they are life stories. Branch is a gifted writer that has a way of bringing the reader to the heart of the story. I read the book cover to cover but it could easily be read episodically. GREAT READ!An aside to those rating it down because of editing … GET OVER YOURSELF! The editing “flaws” are merely the result of publishing the material as it appeared in the NYT. Way too nitpicky … haters gonna hate

John Branch is a sportswriter for the NYT but manages to delve beyond the dry facts of a feat and into the heart and soul of those involved. His writing covers a variety of competitions and the players, families , friends and fans who support them. These are their stories.

This should have been interesting. He is writing about incredibly exciting subjects. But it is so poorly written and repetitive (literally and copiously) that it is boring. I advise a hard pass on this one (and I generally love adventure non-fiction).

This book pulled me into the lives of people from all walks of life with amazing stories.

I thought this would read very differently than it did. It is a poorly edited paste job of the author's articles. Even when several articles dealt with the same topic or adventure, the separate articles are all pasted in sequence within a chapter such that there is very annoying repetition. It is kind of like a Discovery channel show where they repeat a lost of material after the commercial break. I also did not like something so simple as the table of contents which gives you not a clue what each chapter is going to cover. You can easily read this non-linearly, so a good TOC would have helped. I would not recommend it nor would I have bought it had I known how bad it was.

Some of the stories were good, but author tended to repeat himself often - which was rather annoying. If not for that - I would have given 4 stars

Random stories, some very good, some boring, most just...meh. Now I need to add another eleven words to meet the rules.