#wayne coffey

2018 Book #8: The Boys of Winter by Wayne Coffey

Like any red-blooded American, I’m obsessed with the Olympics. I searched and searched for a good book about a winter Olympic sport to read during commercial breaks :)

This is a detailed play by play of the semifinal game of the 1980 Olympics interjected with tons of biographical information on every single player, coach and manager on the American team and a few of the Russians too.

Heavy on the hockey stuff, obviously.  There’s not much help for the casual hockey fan that knows few of the rules (i.e., me), so I was left scratching my head at some of the finer details of the game.  It’s heavy on the personal details of all the people involved too, though.  For every one of them, we get to see how they started in hockey, how they got to be on the Olympic team, and what they’ve done in the years since.

A memoir. Written by a woman. About soccer. I’m surprised my local book store didn’t just automatically set it aside for me. This shit is my jam.

If you aren’t a fan of women’s soccer (and if you enjoy sports, you should check it out), you probably hadn’t heard of Carli Lloyd before last summer. She’s been playing for the US Women’s National Team since the early 2000s, but she stepped hard into the spotlight during the World Cup in Canada last year, when she scored three times in the final win over Japan, including a shot basically from mid-field.

Books I’ve Read in 2016

Number 28

Review roundup: The ‘Personal Edition’, June 2

The “personal edition.”

I had two reviews appear last week:

The Closer, by Mariano Rivera with Wayne Coffey on Bookreporter.com

The Cubs Quotient: How the Chicago Cubs Changed the World, by Scott Rowan in ForeWord Magazine.

Is thiks a conflict of interest?

Wayne Coffey, sports columnist for the New York Daily News, wrote this piece about Mariano Rivera, for whom he served as coauthor for the future Hall of Famer’s memoir, The Closer.

I’ve been a big admirer of Coffey’s work both as a journalist and author; he was quite generous with his time for a Bookshelf Conversation about his work on R. A. Dickeys memoir, Wherever I Wind Up. But is this kosher?