Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King

I enjoyed this book, especially for its love of baseball. Its record of the season is detailed, meticulous, and loving. We follow the hopes and the fears of fans throughout the ups and downs of the season. The book really evoked the feeling of baseball for me; it made me want to be at the ballpark. Now I'm not a Red Sox fan, so I wasn't as invested in the team itself as I might be (in some senses, these guys are the enemies). Some of the circumstances of the book's production make for the most interesting reading. To start with: Scribner commissioned the book before the season started from King and O'Nan, both writers. They are mostly writing as well-informed fans. But at times they get press privileges, either as favors or related to the book. Overall it's a great piece of baseball history.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

This book, while not quite Dickensian, weaves a number of related plots together as it follows the baseball career of Henry Skrimshander at Westish College, a small school in the Midwest whose former claim to fame had been the lecture that Herman Melville once gave there. There's the story about baseball, of course, but the book also delves into a variety of friendships in the baseball penumbra and beyond, reaching all the way to the office of the college's president. I thought the characters drove the plot in convincing ways. There were a number of nice nods to literary history (most notably Fifth Business and A Prayer for Owen Meany).

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

I enjoyed this book, which is part memoir and part cultural history of the 1950s, immensely. There's a lot of Bryson's trademark humor, and while he doesn't shy away from the things we might critique about that decade today, his attitude is generally upbeat--you really feel his nostalgia for the era and his belief that he was growing up in the best time ever. The book gave me a new appreciation for Des Moines Iowa.