Ben Hogan's Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals for Golf

This is actually the second time reading Ben Hogan's Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, having read it once before after receiving it as a gift from my father. As an avid golfer, he thought it might provide some tips to improve my game, which is mostly miserable.

I picked the book up again due to a golf outting I have coming up at the end of this week.Typically, this is not the sort of thing for which I would actively or readily volunteer. However, it is part of a wedding weekend and I chose to focus on my golf game so as not to be an embarrassment. The book actually proved to be rather useful. My performance at the driving range has increased significantly in the past week I have been reading the book. The tips are practical, useful, and well-illustrated. It goes to show you can read your way to a better golf game.

Ben Hogan's Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf

No Depression: An Introduction to Alternative Country Music. Whatever That Is.

No Depression: An Introduction to Alternative Country Music. Whatever That Is., is a book edited by Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock, two of the founding members of the No Depression magazine. For those who are unaware, the magazine (now only available on the web) has been part of the alternative country scene since the mid 90's. It takes its name from a song by the Carter Family and Uncle Tupelo, in effect, tracing the history of this hard-to-pin-down sub genre.

The book is comprised of select articles that have appeared in the magazine (though mostly in the 90s as the book was published in 1998). The article read as part biographies and part press kits/releases. They shed some insight into the various artists that make up this genre and serve to introduce the readers to bands/artists of which they might be previously unaware.

Articles feature such bands as: Waylon Jennings, Billy Joe Shaver, Wilco, Son Volt, the Old 97's, the Bottle Rockets, the Jayhawks, Whiskeytown, Golden Smog, and more. It is definitely an interesting collection.

No Depression: An introduction to alternative country music. Whatever that is.

The Sherlockian

I just finished The Sherlockian by Graham Moore. While I did not know what to expect, it turned out to be a really great book. As someone who has been a fan of the Sherlock Holmes canon for several years, I thought this was a well-written mystery.

The is not a novel about Sherlock Holmes per say. It is instead about two stories, both that are closely related to the great detective. One of the stories centers on Arthur Conan Doyle, the celebrated author of Sherlock Holmes, as he works to solve a case of murders in London with his friend, Bram Stoker. The other story centers on Harold White, a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, a group that is obsessed with Sherlock Holmes and contributes scholarly articles to its members. Harold is working on another mystery in an attempt to solve the mystery of who killed Alex Cale, another member of the Irregulars, who was long in pursuit of Conan Doyle's missing diary.

The book proved to be very good and both stories were intriguing with well-developed compelling characters.

The Sherlockian