Udhaya's Reviews

This is an NFL book for NFL junkies. This reads like the textual version of the best Football biographies of NFL Films by Steve Sabol. But the book’s heft and observant pace makes for a complete-access behind the scenes look at the machinations of the modern NFL world. Feinstein narrates the goings on off and on-field during 2004-05 as experienced by the Baltimore Ravens. The saga begins with Art Model’s inevitable move from Cleveland to Baltimore, the politics and business deals that brought it there and the narrative unspools from there. While his unfettered access through the new owner and coach Billick seems unrivaled and worthwhile in itself, the narrative certainly gets rolling with ease and dignity. Feinstein, while explicitly discussing coach’ feelings towards their peers, their players, and everyone involved in their world, the narrative never sinks to tabloid gossip or irrelevant sensationalism. Everybody comes off human, flawed yet with a decent core and sympathetic life ...

I learned about this novel, meant for Young Adults, from a list for best books of the year. Having never read a novel geared towards Young Adults, I whet my curiosity with this one. The premise is irresistible and fresh. The two central characters—Daniel, a Korean American teen and Natasha, an offspring of Jamaican immigrants in America—each set out to accomplish a very specific goal of varying complexities and consequences. Daniel dreams in poetry and teems with individuality and idealism as he sets out on an unpleasant errand to satisfy his conventional, disciplinarian parents. His against-the-grain ideals have taken a harsher turn in probability with his over-achieving brother returning home as a failure in his parents’ eyes. The stakes are higher for Daniel to not conform to filial obligations and wishes. Natasha, a proper teen with a penchant for pragmatism and Science, is bent on saving her family from deportation caused by a drunken episode by her troubled father. Beside her...