Results for 'andrew forbes'

1. Andrew Forbes

The Utility of Boredom

“Sportswriter Roger Angell called baseball a way to defeat time. So grab a beer. Sit on a porch. Put your feet up. Listen to a ball game on the radio. Or read The Utility of Boredom cover to cover. As Andrew Forbes says, “Boredom is fertile.” Rest assured, The Utility of Boredom is far from boring. It’s a book to savour, like summer.”—Trout In Plaid “In all of these essays, Forbes’s writing is almost invisibly stunning, clear, with romantic flourishes equal to his subject matter. But what he’s really able to articulate is how a love of baseball is really about a love of, or at least an acceptance of, the fact that losing is part of the game.”—National Post “Taking his cues from Susan Sarandon’s character in Bull Durham, who worships at ‘the Church of Baseball,’ secular humanist Forbes finds something close to religion in everything from Jose Bautista’s bat flip to the Billy Ripken error card.”—Quill & Quire “The Utility of Boredom isn’t just for jocks. Forbes writes lovingly and philosophically about the culture of baseball.”—Electric City “Part memoir, part philosophical thought, and really smartly written.”—Ian Letourneau, CBC Radio Fredericton “Collections of short stories are usually a mixed bag at best — not this one — I loved each story and many of them will be loved by all baseball fans.”—The Guy Who Reviews Sports Books “Forbes’ new collection of essays … is a modern poetics of baseball.”—Largehearted Boy “Forbes’ style is casual, anecdotal, written with a wide knowledge and deep passion for the game yet readable on different levels, depending where you are on the baseball knowledge continuum. For neophyte me, it was all pleasure of discovery and details that will forever stick.”—Matilda Magtree “The Utility of Boredom by Canadian Andrew Forbes is a delightful collection of 25 baseball essays.”—Spitball Magazine “Baseball, like life, is getting flattened out these days, compressed to noisy highlight clips and shrill pontification. This book cures that flattening, reaching with grace and poetry past all the bludgeoning hot takes and arid statistical analyses to the kinds of absurd and beautiful details—a spectacular throw from deep right; a meandering spring training game; a foul grounder bounding up into the stands, right at you—that first made us all fall in love with the sport. If baseball, like heaven, is a mansion with many rooms, the essays in The Utility of Boredom are like a fat set of janitor’s keys unlocking the wide open marvels of the game.”–Josh Wilker, Cardboard Gods and Benchwarmer: A Sports-Obsessed Memoir of Fatherhood “Baseball is a welcome obsession of mine, a comfort. Reading Utility of Boredom by Andrew Forbes fed that obsession beautifully, warmly. It glows. He writes of baseball as sanctuary, baseball in both general terms and specifics—from the feeling of walking into a ballpark on a summer day to Vin Scully’s perfect description of a cloud. He invites us to get on our tiptoes and peek over the fence, smell the grass, hear the crack of the bat. He respects the slow-glory of the game, he loves the game, he’s really good at this, and I absolutely trust him with my baseball-heart.”—Leesa Cross-Smith, Every Kiss A War

1. Andrew Forbes
2. David Henley

The Haw

Second-hand

1. Andrew Forbes

Field Work

"Forbes has morphed into a version of Robert M. Pirsig, dissecting an approach to Zen and the Art of Baseballistic Maintenance, motoring and cycling through self-aware, authentic shares of all the small joys that get to the essence of spot-on observations and storytelling, making readers yearn for more."—The Drill "In the style of Roger Angell and Hanif Abdurraqib, Forbes offers a unique and nuanced view of America’s pastime."—The Seattle Times "Andrew Forbes hits a home run with his new book Field Work: On Baseball And Making A Living"―The Seaboard Review "Men at work. A capacious, capricious mind at keyboard play. The combination is dazzling and unpredictable."—Literary Review of Canada "Forbesʼs book strives for the sweet spot between realism and romanticism."—That Shakespearean Rag "Forbes’s writing is direct and daring and it never shies away from delivering hard truths about the history of the game he loves... [Field Work] provides a space where baseball fans can pause for a moment to contemplate how the complex infrastructure of the sport is always somehow welcomingly human."—The Ampersand Review "If Forbes hasn’t hit a home run with this enjoyable survey of baseball past and present, he’s certainly hit a clean triple."―The Winnipeg Free Press "As someone who likes to think about baseball from all manner of different angles, I found Field Work: On Baseball and Making a Living to be a compelling and energizing read. Not only does Andrew Forbes connect the present game to the history of labour relations, he reminds us that it all starts with grassroots baseball and regular fans, and that stats and balance sheets can only ever tell us part of the story."—Ben Nicholson-Smith, Sportsnet "Canada’s resident baseball philosopher has done it again, offering a typically charming collection of quirky essays tying America’s pastime to universal facets of life, love and—as the title suggests—work. To read this Andrew Forbes book is to lose oneself in a world of baseball mysticism grounded in the decidedly un-mystic world of hard (and sometimes not-so-hard) labour. Savor it in pieces or gobble it down all at once; either way, you’ll be glad you did."—Jason Turbow, author of They Bled Blue "What a mind Andrew Forbes has, and how lucky we are that he's given over so much of it to thinking about baseball—sifting through its bottomless history for bits of gold, diving with gusto down its quirkiest rabbit holes. He's a five-tool talent, and with Field Work he stakes his claim as baseball's most indispensable folklorist. This collection of essays is the purest expression yet of his love for the game and the men who played it for a living."—Devin Gordon, author of So Many Ways to Lose

1. Andrew Forbes

The Diapause

"Andrew Forbes’s exquisitely rendered prose makes The Diapause both realistic and futuristic, devastating even while it is oddly hopeful. Vast and intimate, the novel absorbs and grips. I cannot shake its central image: the strange little noodles, the mysterious worms who seem to be dancing in the moments before catastrophe."—Liz Harmer, author of Strange Loops “Lucid, intelligent, haunting, The Diapause deftly spans forty years and puts the climate crisis in focus as omnipresent reality. Andrew Forbes writes with considerable verve and tenderness on the heartbreaking ways humans fail each other and their environments. A remarkable read that sharpens our present moment, and asks what we will take into the future.”—Michelle Min Sterling, author of Camp Zero “Both a grim look at the dark side of survivalist psychosis and a heartbreaking love letter to the disappearing worlds around us. … The Diapause could be read as a cautionary tale were it not for the beauty that Forbes manages to coax from beneath the unstoppable depression his speculative landscape serves. That the possibilities of the future he creates seem so achievable makes it something of a somber journey—its loneliness perhaps misconstrued as a bad thing. In fact, it’s Gabe’s unavoidable solitude that fuels his vigor and which Forbes writes into mesmerizing, unforgettable prose.”—Foreword Reviews, starred review

1. Andrew Forbes

McCurdle's Arm

Andrew Forbes is the author of the short story collections Lands and Forests (2019), and What You Need (2015), which was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and named a finalist for the Trillium Book Prize. He is also the author of two collections of baseball writing, The Utility of Boredom and The Only Way is the Steady Way. His work has appeared in publications such as the Toronto Star, Canadian Notes and Queries, and Maisonneuve Magazine. Born in Ottawa, Forbes has lived in Atlantic Canada and rural eastern Ontario, and now resides in Peterborough, Ontario.

1. Andrew Forbes

The Only Way Is the Steady Way