When In Doubt, Fire The Manager – Alvin Dark & John Underwood, 1980 ★★★

Winning on a Prayer

Most celebrity autobiographies follow a common format: here are the great things I did, here’s how and why I did them, and here’s how people misinterpreted me, especially the press.

Alvin Dark was different. When he put pen to paper at the end of a long and distinguished career, his mission was telling you just where he messed up.

The Cobra – Frederick Forsyth, 2010 ★

A Master on Auto-Pilot

A problem with writing great novels is that people expect you to continue writing them.

But what if you run out of ideas? What if you can’t make yourself care about your characters anymore? What if your idea of yarnspinning has gone from elaborate potboiler to Bang, you’re dead, now gimme my money!

Framed – Robert F. Kennedy, 2016 ★

Right Ta-Ta, Wrong Ho-Ho

It played at the time like some diabolical cup-and-ball trick. Everyone giving it more than a passing glance thought they had the answer, only to be surprised a quarter-century later when that answer was officially revealed as something else.

To quote John Candy in JFK: “You got the right ta-ta, but the wrong ho-ho.”

The Canterbury Tales – Translation by David Wright, c. 1387 ★★★★

Game Suspended on Account of Death

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is a lot of things; one it is less credited for is being the longest-suspended marquee competition in English literature.

A tavern owner announces a challenge to tell the finest story, “of best sentence and most solas,” as he puts it, whereupon seven-innings-worth of batters step up to the plate.

Generations have been able to judge the results for themselves, but Chaucer himself didn’t live long enough to declare a winner. In limbo, his characters wait.