Ford Reviews

The football is only one part of the plot in this book. The main plot of the book is how the family struggles to deal with changes in their lives. It's a good story with good, believable characters. An enjoyable read. Something to let you escape to small town America, and see life through the eyes of an American family. Pick it up and give it a try.

"The Story of Ford's Theater and the Death of Lincoln" really does focus on the assassination of the President has more photographs of Ford's Theater than it does specific history on the actual theater. Zachary Kent's narrative begins with the mortally wounded Lincoln being carried from Ford's Theater across the street to William Petersen's boardinghouse and then goes back in time to cover Lincoln's election and the Civil War, setting up what happened in the first two weeks of April 1865. Kent, who has been studying the Presidents and collecting items about America's leaders since he was a child, covers the assassination attempt in its entirety, from the plotting of the conspirators, to the assassination attempts on Lincoln and other leaders of the government, the death watch on the President, and the final fate of the conspirators. Warning: while there are contemporary photographs of Ford's Theater and the Petersen House, along with reproductions of broadsides and artwork of these events, there is also a photograph of the four conspirators hanging on the gallows. I have to question whether that particular photo was necessary to include in a book published by Children's Press for upper elementary students, especially since the book already has photographs of each of the conspirators and there are several photos of the four condemned on the gallows before the traps were released. This book is part of the "Cornerstones of Freedom" series, which covers events in American History from the Mayflower Compact to Apollo 11.

I wish I had read this book years ago. For those who want to be able to effectively deal with the challenges of working in an organization, this book can be a great overview. While it is almost an advertisement for the firm which the authors own which helps troubled firms, it can also serve -- if read and studied very carefully -- as a great way to develop one's own approach to office politics, and the myriad complexities of trying to fit in and advance within a big, competitive business work group. Book repeats things but also mentions that thoughts need to be repeated and repeated to be correctly and fully learned.

Tin Lizzie is a wonderful children's book that tells the story of the life of one 1909 Model T Ford, from New to Used to Junk to New again. The story is told simply, with an abundance of fanciful, yet factual, illustrations to delight the eye and ignite the imagination. In the telling, the reader (or listener) learns about the way life once was, and how it has changed over the years. As an antique car restorer, I find it to be an excellent book to share with my nieces and nephews so they might appreciate and understand what Uncle David sees in these old things he's always fixing. I even find some adults enjoy it!

Call them Kodak Moments: a child playing in the sand, a fishing boat returning with the day's catch, a stunning field of wildflowers, a lighthouse framed against a stormy sky, an
unforgettable sunset over Cape Cod bay. Such beauty is the reason people return year after year to ol' Cape Cod. For those who can't make it back --- or for those who simply
want a stunning reminder of life by the sea --- there's Dan Ford's "Treasured Moments On Cape Cod & the Islands." Each photo is opposite a lined page, making this a most picture-perfect journal or guest book.

I first read Ford's book and was fascinated by his argument. I found his utilization of Thomistic metaphysics convincing and inspiring as he negotiated a middle course between the traditional Church teaching and the performance theories of those such as Peter Singer. However, despite my clinging belief that Ford's metaphysical analysis is sound. I have encountered enough critiques of his embryological analysis to call his overall conclusions into question. I think this book is still a thought-provoking read for those interested in tackling the subject of the origin of the human person. However, Ford's metaphysical analysis is only as good as the science to which he applies it. Caution is warranted.

Required reading for anyone interested in Church teaching on sexuality and gender. Rather than the usual re-interpretation of Holy Tradition according to an agenda of feminist liberation or sexual revolution, in Ford's book the Church speaks for herself. Contemporary secular interpretation of the Fathers, even in its passionate concern for avoiding sexism, is hopelessly biased. Just as with Scripture, Patristic teaching must be approached according to its original contexts: ecclesiastical (not sociological), Middle Eastern (not Western or European), of Antiquity (not of the Information or Industrial Age), and according to a respective context linguistically (as opposed to "chronocentrically," as the feminists and popular-culture apologists tend to see things). The only "agenda" of the Church is the sanctification and salvation of her faithful; Ford demonstrates, simply by addressing these indigenous, authentic contexts for St. John Chrysostom's writing, that her teaching on sexuality and gender are correctly understood only from this perspective.

Independence Day is the story of a long (oh, so very, very long) Fourth of July weekend for middle-aged real estate agent Frank Bascombe. Over the weekend he maybe makes some slight changes, turning his life in a new direction (possibly).

I'm not a middle-aged guy, but I've had some revelations in my own young life, so I get what Ford is saying. Frank is mired in the "Existence Period" where he pretty much just tries not to let things bother him, just keep everything even keel. On this holiday weekend, Frank and his son Paul, who's been getting in trouble for shoplifting, vandalism, so on, are going to the Basketball and Baseball Halls of Fame. At first glance, I thought the book would revolve around the travels of father and son, but this is not the case. Instead, for a good two hundred pages or so we readers are mired in the dull life of Frank Bascombe as he tries to sell a house to middle-aged former hippies who have yet to discover the comfortably numb bliss of the Existence Period. And there's Frank checking out his hot dog and root beer stand outside town, trying to collect rent from his deadbeat tennants, and having overly philosophical talks with his girlfriend, whom Frank really can't commit to because it would upset the delicate balance in his mundane life.

When the father and son jamboree finally does get underway, I almost wished it hadn't, because Paul is a very weird kid. He reminded me of a couple cousins of mine, which is not a good thing. After Frank tries to bond with his son at the Basketball Hall of Fame and on the way to Cooperstown (without lots of success) Paul is mercifully hit in the eye when he stands directly in the path of a batting cage pitching machine and has to go to the hospital. Inexplicibly, Frank's half-brother takes him to the hospital why Paul is choppered there. The half-brother appears from nowhere and his sudden appearance seemed a little too convenient for me.

Anyway, after Paul's injury, Frank begins to realize that maybe he should try to get out of the Existence Period and commit to his girlfriend, have a better relationship with his ex-wife and kids, so on. The book grinds to a halt before it's really clear what exactly Frank is going to do, which left me wondering, "I read all this way for what?" A book so long and plodding, I wanted some kind of conclusion, something to make me feel it was worthwhile, and I don't think I got that.

My biggest complaint is that some of the characters didn't seem real to me. Paul (and his sister) are so weird, the girlfriend is too cerebral, and the ex-wife was flat. Maybe I just don't know enough people...

However, this is a fairly good book. The story, as slow as it is, is engrossing and the writing is almost top-notch. I'd recommend giving it a look, especially if you're a middle-aged man in an Existence Period of your own.

Richard Ford has created in Frank Bascome the most interesting, insightful & thought provoking character in American literature since Holden Caufield. Over the course of a Fourth of July weekend, Mr. Ford takes us on a journey that moves from the current day to flashbacks in the life of Frank Bascome. He is a real estate agent in a southern New Jersey town and one of his current clients is a couple who are looking for the ideal home. When Frank thinks he has found the right home, they have reservations. Frank never seems to be able to meet the couple's pie-in-the-sky expectations and that is central theme to the book. No matter how hard we try, we never seem to meet of own expectations in life. Frank has had a failed marriage, a failed career as a sportswriter and has entered what he calls an "existance period" in his life. He yearns for the days gone by when as he says "pride still mattered". Mr. Ford's perspectives on life in general are razor sharp and he balances the deepness of the story with the right amount of humor so the book doesn't become too heavy-handed. I recommend this book as highly as any book out there. If you liked "Catcher In The Rye", check this one out. You will not be disappointed.

I read this book first in spanish, in Chile. I really enjoyed the story and the sense of humor. No doubt about it, one of the best writers today.

When describing The Hitchhiker books to friends, I say that you can pick up any one, open it to a random page, start reading, and get as much from story as you would if you read the entire series start to finish. Now, this is either a sign of Douglas Adams' sheer brilliance, or a sign of his well executed, serial lampoonery. I choose the latter for "Mostly Harmless" and for the rest of the Hitchhiker series in general. After all, brilliant is as brilliant ends.

No doubt, the Hitchhiker books are perhaps the most entertaining sci-fi comedy I've ever read. Moreover, at one happy moment ("So Long and Thanks for the Fish") the story rises above episodic, laugh-out-loud comedy, and becomes a tale that one can take a human interest in. Of course, whatever humanity developed there is squished to smithereens in "Mostly Harmless", and that is no surprise. The careful reader should have noted that if there is a single prominent theme in Adams' writing, it is that the human viewpoint is irrelevant, simply a few blips on the probability axis, mostly harmless and dispensable enough to be eradicated from all possibility by single-minded space slugs and zero-minded alien astrologers. But perhaps the most disappointing parts of "Mostly Harmless" are the shallow and painful exchages between Arthur and Random. Therein was much potential for Adams to let us again dare to care about Arthur, above and beyond him being the biggest loser in the universe. Maybe if Arthur had strapped Random and Trillian to a Perfectly Normal Beast and sent them off without alimony or child support, things would have been a lot more interesting. Oh well.

Mr. Adams, God rest his soul, was a self proclaimed "radical atheist", so perhaps the lackadaisy nihilism of "Mostly Harmless" , and the Hitchhiker series as a whole, was his answer to the ultimate question. Regardless, the irony is that "Mostly Harmless" is mostly harmful to Adams' magnum opus, which, I think most will agree, is an otherwise uniquely entertaining sci-fi experience this side of the Milky Way.

*WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS!!*

I loved all of the books,thought the ending to mostly harmless certainly hurt (when I read books, I imagine them to be alive. In addition, I seem to have developed some sort of curse that makes certain that each and every favourite character I ever decide on will die by the end of the book/series/whatever. So Ford dying in the end certainly didn't help my opinion of this book).

A lot of people have brought up questions regarding continuity and loopholes with regards to the ending, and I think that this was intentional - My GUESS, is the Douglas Adams purposely ended the book the way he did to be finished and done with it, but to also give people who couldn't deal with the death a simple way out of having to.

I cannot deal with the death ( ;) ) so I am pretending in my mind that Ford and the others simply hitch-hiked their way out of the situation, and continued on their way, while sorting out Fenchurch, Zaphod, Trillian/Tricia, and Random along the way, and, everyone did indeed live happily ever after.

It could happen.

What do you get when you combine interstellar space travel, romance, action, mindless astronauts, parallel universes, religion, and sandwiches all into the same book? Why, you get Mostly Harmless, the fifth book in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams.
Mostly Harmless takes you through the life of Arthur Dent, a man whose house and world have been demolished by the Vogons, a race of evil space aliens that evolution has literally given up on. After losing the love of his life, Fenchurch (she literally vanishes into thin air), he begins to search for a new planet to reside upon... Adams also brings back old favorites from the previous books in Ford Prefect and of course, the aptly named Hitchhiker's Guide itself.
Mostly Harmless is an great finale for an excellent series. Adams does a good job in tying up the story line while still adding his randomness and humor to the novel. If you love a good science fiction story, or just a good humorous read, Mostly Harmless and the rest of the Hitchhiker's Guide series is definitely something you'll enjoy.

Frank, the narrator of The Sportswriter, frequently alludes to his contentment with his lot and yet his story is all about his apprehensive disconnection with anything that could be potentially meaningful to him. Frank is adrift in life, presumably from the loss of a child and subsequent failed marriage, yet he is only half-willing to admit this to himself. He is ambiguous about the chronic bouts of "dreaminess" he has suffered in the past and will not tolerate the notion that the events in his life are of any consequence to his current situation or whether those events have any affect on his happiness. We get the sense that Frank is undergoing a crisis but doesn't realize it or does realize it but is unwilling to face up to it.

The themes of emptiness and disconnection are frequent in Richard Ford's short fiction and I have admired his handling of them. In the stories I have read, Ford does not dwell on sadness or tragedy but on the painful reality of life and the inevitable disconnect people feel. Mother-son estrangement and the missing father are often part of the subject matter in Ford's writing and both appear in this novel. In The Sportswriter we learn Frank's mother was distant but otherwise irreproachable and that the father died when Frank was still a boy. Frank was sent to boarding school at an early age and had little contact with his mother thereafter. She died when Frank was in college. Although Frank has no complaints about his childhood and considers it normal (and not the least remarkable, he stridently insists) we can't help but feel that this is the underlying drama of his life and the reason for his failures as a family man.

In addition to sports writing Frank is a failed literary writer - although he did publish a successful book of short stories after college before becoming a sportswriter - and this makes him wary of making dramatic analogies to his life and cynical about the "lies of literature". He is distinctly insouciant and introspective at the same time, which could be expected from a real-writer-turned-sportswriter ("real" being Frank's word). This dichotomy is the basis for the novel, and what we get is life filtered though the eyes of a sportswriter along with the expected observations and words of wisdom. The great irony of this book for me is that in Frank's narrative he is often unconsciously railing against the very things he claims to value. Frank is generally disapproving of cynicism yet his views and observations are often quite cynical; he is unquestionably a good father yet being a father was not reason to fight to save his marriage; he is always reminding us how content he is and yet the whole novel seems to be about his discontent; he is a straight-talking Everyman who is smarter than everyone by not being smarter than anyone; he sees life in simple terms, not unlike a good sports metaphor, but is quite literary and expressive; he wants love and meaning but is cynical about all the potential manifestations of a meaning in life.

Structurally the novel centers on Frank's love life and two relationships in particular, both of which I found very unconvincing. The first is with his ex-wife (designated "X", for some reason) and is heartbreaking in that Frank and she seem to still be in love and the things Frank did, or neglected to do, to prevent the divorce are inexplicable and highly implausible. For instance, while still married and after the death of one of their three children, Frank assuages his grief by embarking, with tacit wifely approval, on a two-year-18-partner womanizing spree - yet this is NOT the cause of the divorce! The cause of the divorce is an innocuous correspondence X uncovers which Frank could have easily explained but chose not to. The other relationship is between Frank and Vicki. Vicki is a Texan with no patience for deep thinking who speaks in short, canned southern expressions. Frank and Vicki seem to have nothing in common other than being single and attractive, yet they both readily entertain the notion they love each other and could spend their lives together in a happy marriage. What is painfully obvious to the reader, but for some reason not the narrator, is that this relationship is phony and a farce and doomed to fail, exactly as it does.

What this novel amounts to for me is a mass of contradictions, some probably intentional on Ford's part but others clearly not. I cannot give Ford credit for writing a clever novel that lets the reader see faults in the narrator that the narrator cannot see for himself. The faults of the novel cannot be to its credit and still be faults at the same time. Frank is too smart to be unaware of his shortcomings and in the gaping wholes in his worldview. If, and this is quite possible, we are really getting Richard Ford's worldview vetted though his Everyman Frank the sportswriter, then I am very disappointed because I have really enjoyed Ford's short stories and had much higher expectations of him than what is presented here.

In contrast to some of his earlier work, this is the novel that Ford found the voice that he went on to perfect in Independence Day. However, because I had first read that award winning work, I found the Sportswriter ultimately less satisfying. The weaknesses of the story are the unresolved quality to some of the events-these are due to the style of following Bascombe's thoughts over a few days of time. However it is a style that is engaging, and inevitably, I couldn't stop reading.

The characters are well defined, some much too vividly, others with a mere gesture so as to appeal to the imagination (His descriptions of his children while he casually observes them, for instance). Often we are left with underlying questions about character motivation, and merely skim the surface of a life lived. To his credit though, it is often understood implicitly what Bascombe's motives are.

Whether or not one is a sports fan (it is not required), the story appeals on its observations regarding attitudes toward trying to live the good life. As with most good literature, this makes the reading worthwhile. The story does feel true to life, albeit one that the reader might get drawn into reluctantly. Ford as Bascombe regularly spins out a yarn of self-deprecating humor, heavy with cynicism. At the beginning, I found the effect frustrating. Several pages later, however, the tangential thread is clarified as part of the grand design, and, as Bascombe works through the thicket, the cynicism is transformed. By the end the reader has become Bascombe's coeval, rooting every turn toward hope.

Richard Ford writes about a very real phenomenon in modern life: the overweening lonliness and alienation that many within modern society feel. Frank Bascombe is a divorced man, and this is a very male book. What makes the book succsessful is that you have these feelings of alienation set against a backdrop of traditional sleepy happy New Jersey: a symbol of steady family values and community. Indeed, the novel itself constitutes and explores the tricky inner dialogue of Frank Bascombe. This is a man who uses language evocatively and subtly in his mind, but speaks in public like he's so "good-ole boy" he could be a Republican speech-writer . He too contributes the external facade of small town USA within Haddam...but like his homosexual friend who commits suicide, Frank is hiding a real lack of meaning and belonging. This book ses Frank looking for the answers (at a roadside palmist) and at the same time declaring that he doesn't need any. I especially enjoyed his relationship with X, his ex-wife. The fact that he declares himself to accepting of his divorce yet in his thoughts never allows himself to use her name is but one example of the hidden Frank Bascombe with his unacknowldeged feelings.

Oh...but there's no plot, so if you want escapism..look elsewhere.