Flinch Books

This was a really interesting book written by one of the more successful college coaches in recent memory. He takes you from his humble beginnings in Pennsylvania to his triumphs in the Rose Bowl. I found it particularly interesting because I got to see his perspective on a number of football games I had attended. Well written, it was an easy and enoyable read.

I like reading coach's books. If you're reading a coach's autobiography you can be sure that he was successful. Reading stories about successful people won't make you successful in itself, but you certainly can learn a lot from them.

Some coach's stories, like Mack Brown's "One Heartbeat II" are smarmy, folksy stories about the coach's life philosophy containing stories about overcoming adversity or getting a team to come together to experience that championship season.

A lot of coach's stories wind up in those business-motivational books, but I don't typically read those. Normally the messages they're delivering gets thinned out to the point that they become a manager's catch phrase. Executives buy them, then put them on the bookshelf in their office. Makes them look well-read. I've worked with a lot of executives. I usually make the point of pulling a book or two off out of their library and open it. 90% of them make that cracking sound a hardcover book makes the first time you open it. But I digress.

Coach's stories tend to fall prey to a fair amount of sugar-coating. Not so with "Don't Flinch - Barry Alvarez: The Autobiography". The book starts (after forewards by Lou Holtz and author James Patterson) with Wisconsin's 2006 Capital One Bowl against Auburn. Going into the game, no one gave Wisconsin a chance to win. Alvarez starts by talking about how he would have rather played Alabama. Alvarez played for Nebraska when Alabama beat the Cornhuskers in the 1966 Orange Bowl, 39-28, and relates how Paul "Bear" Bryant arrogantly humiliated the Huskers later at an awards banquet. Alvarez makes it clear that this isn't how he's spent his career. Beating people is one thing. Rubbing their noses in it is another thing entirely, and something that Alvarez doesn't condone. He then goes on to talk about how he handled his underdog status and coached Wisconsin to a win.

That initial story sets the tone for the book. Author Mike Lucas takes us through Alvarez' life, using his Western Pennsylvania background to set the stage for Barry's brand of football - conservative, hard-nosed, and physical. Alvarez played college football at Nebraska under legendary coach Bob Devaney. His first head coaching position was in Lexington, Nebraska where he chose to move instead of taking a job with the FBI. He later moved to Mason City, Iowa in a head coaching position. After being successful there, he went to the University of Iowa as an assistant under Hayden Fry. Later he joined Lou Holtz' staff at Notre Dame, serving as the defensive coordinator on the 1988 Fighting Irish National Championship team.

Along the journey you're treated to the reasons as to why he was successful in each position, and what he learned from the people around him, particularly coaches. All the while his goal remains clear - to be a head college football coach. There are times he strikes you as incredibly stubborn and/or arrogant but completely capable of listening to other people giving good advice.

He notes that during the 1990 1-10 season, there were times at which he would close his office doors and curl up on his couch in a fetal position. He had gotten so used to winning that his body ached from losing. There aren't a whole lot of big-name coaches that would admit that so freely in their autobiography. His wife Cindy plays a prominent role in the book making it clear, supporting him through rough times and sometimes bringing him back down to earth. As his coaching career is nearing it's end Alvarez makes an honest assessment of himself and concludes that it's time to move on, becoming Wisconsin's athletic director.

I liked Barry Alvarez before I read his story. Now I like him even more. The line "Don't Flinch" remains a constant theme throughout the book as Alvarez points out how to respond when the game (football or life) is on the line. Certainly Wisconsin fans should be interested in this book, but I'd recommend Barry's autobiography to anyone who's interested in reading those water-down business motivational books as well. The stories are much more interesting and just as insightful. On top of that, you'd probably finish this book. How many of those motivational books have you finished?

A great read and refreshing to know that hard work, focus and the love and respect of family is still the formula for success.

Barry Alvarez grew up in a hard scrabble Western Pa town and learned life's lessons early. It also shows that while it may not have been an easy road, it can be done. This book contains many stories and messages for any young man thinking of taking the road of football beyond high-shcool. More so it holds a story of one mans philosophy of hard nose, stick to it, don't give up mentality as a kid coming up from nothing to make it in big time college football.

Barry Alvarez came from little but had a lot instilled in him by his family, his friends and his coaches as he came up the ladder from Pee Wee Football to College player and then to coaching. Those coaches and family/friends instilled in him that you can do whatever your heart desires if you work hard enough and don't fear sticking to your guns.

Great read for any football fanatic.

My husband wanted this book for Christmas so I got it for him. He says it is one of the best books he has ever read. He is a diehard college football fan--but not necessarily a Wisconsin fan.

Here the unnamed narrator writes compulsively to Ra, perhaps the Egyptian sun god, perhaps a teenaged penpal, telling him (her? For "Ra" is sometimes a spectre of a girlfriend, a coy mistress, a Mom) of his days, complaining of his life in a white suburb in a carpeted basement and living with his parents. He speaks of his missing twin, Jesse Garon, a phantom self that won't let him go--"Jesse Garon" was the name of Vernon and Gladys Presley's second son, stillborn in the same birth as Elvis--and in such passages a note of genuine melancholia and acedia enters the rhythms of the life unfolding. Otherwise it's a boy's world of discontent and horny fantasy and the belief that the whole world revolves around one's ups and downs. "I can't jack offwithout history peering in."

In the second half of the book, as in life, our boy's circle of acquaintance grows larger, and he experiments branching out with letters to others. Godardian maxims, so beautiful when Godard first coined them, undergo the angst and strain of being pulled to pieces by a born deconstructor, and guns enter the picture. We get the image of a Swedish boys transplanted to the USA at an early age, a teen perhaps, and made to live in a house of his own imagination. No more hands across the water, "You've got a handgun, I've got a hand to shake." At an unnamed academy he is surprised to encounter lessons in writing divorced from specific social contexts, to avoid using the word "napalm" in a poem, for example. "Say `knife' instead. A knife will always mean the same thing." Goransson's achievement here is to collapse, successfully, the bildungsroman into the "Paris Spleen"-esque sort of prose poem that is the bedrock of today's mainstream poetry industry, and to both genres he applies the two fingered salute, while managing to strike all kinds of emotional, narratological, and sexual sparks. Me likey!

Feisty stalwart Starcherone Books has given Johannes Goransson's book the luxury treatment, and it is handsome almost beyond its means. The back jacket copy is a little misleading however. "Each sentence," it says, "is like being stabbed by a beautiful murderer." I did not feel that. "Each entry [is like] crossing the border into some new language." That's a little bit more reasonable.

Nevertheless the book has its startling passages and a general air of anything goes, which made me enjoy the rollicking ride. If occasionally DEAR RA sports the jaded air of having been written by one who has seen too many Sofia Coppola films, it reminds us of why we liked her in the first place--her fresh eye on the sweet and cheap wares life sells us.

Another great book from the pen of Sheri Dew! Highly recommended to all who love her works!

This was one quick read for me, simply because I could not put it down. I had previously read Heartbreaker by Ferrigno & thought it was great, so I picked this up only to find it even better! Ferrigno is definitely going on my FAVORITES list & I plan to read all of his that I can get my hands on. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED if you love a stunning & clever thriller that does not let up until the final page!

"Flinch" is a fast-paced mystery detailing a cat and mouse game between a low-rent journalist and his brother, a high priced plastic surgeon who the journalist suspects of being a serial killer. The title refers to the relatively innocent sado-masochistic games of their adolescence, magnified in the present to deadly proportions.

Ferrigno writes in an updated noir style, using crisp dialogue, oversized villains, and the sleazy/glitzy settings in Orange County, California. Although writer Jimmy Gage has the requisite cynicism and a balance of fair play and tough defiance, he's not strictly out of the Sam Spade mode either: His sense of moral outrage is a bit askew, and he doesn't always use the best of judgment. Additionally, the novel contains some very graphic violence, more gruesome than the traditional style.

The novel moves briskly, unimpeded by the several minor characters and related subplots. Other than a romance with Detective Jane Holt that develops a little too quickly, the plot twists are both plausible and genuinely surprising. Ferrigno captures the outrages and pretenses of Southern California without stereotyping. Much better than his more famous "The Horse Latitudes," Ferrigno has written a brisk and believable story that grabs your attention from the first page.

"Flinch" is a fast-paced mystery detailing a cat and mouse game between a low-rent journalist and his brother, a high priced plastic surgeon who the journalist suspects of being a serial killer. The title refers to the relatively innocent sado-masochistic games of their adolescence, magnified in the present to deadly proportions.

Ferrigno writes in an updated noir style, using crisp dialogue, oversized villains, and the sleazy/glitzy settings in Orange County, California. Although writer Jimmy Gage has the requisite cynicism and a balance of fair play and tough defiance, he's not strictly out of the Sam Spade mode either: His sense of moral outrage is a bit askew, and he doesn't always use the best of judgment. Additionally, the novel contains some very graphic violence, more gruesome than the traditional style.

The novel moves briskly, unimpeded by the several minor characters and related subplots. Other than a romance with Detective Jane Holt that develops a little too quickly, the plot twists are both plausible and genuinely surprising. Ferrigno captures the outrages and pretenses of Southern California without stereotyping. Much better than his more famous "The Horse Latitudes," Ferrigno has written a brisk and believable story that grabs your attention from the first page.

This book beats the hell out of Heartbreaker. I was so unimpressed with Heartbreaker that it took me several months to go around to Flinch. I'm not sure what happened to Ferrigno, but this book was so much better. Our hero, JImmy Gage, is great. Tough, tender hearted, and has great friends (who make great characters). Was a perfect story? No. The ending was a bit too neat, but I laughed, I cared and I look forward to the next one.

There are hundreds if not thousand of thrillers out there about serial killers. Anyone familiar with the genre has probably seen it all, which makes the challenge greater for the really good authors. Fortunately, Robert Ferrigno lives up to the challenge with Flinch.

Jimmy Gage is a top-notch tabloid reporter back in town after a year abroad. Before he left, he received a letter from the Eggman, who purported to be a serial killer. After investigation, it appears the Eggman is only a hoax, and by the time of Jimmy's return, the crimes remain unsolved. By accident, however, Jimmy stumbles upon evidence that the Eggman might be his brother, a sibling he has had a rather strained relationship over the years (not made any better since the brother married Jimmy's ex-girlfriend).

This might make for a rather routine novel, but at times, the Eggman story is merely incidental as Jimmy copes with the other characters in his life including a loan shark, her dim-witted bodyguard, a crippled but still deadly fence/drug-dealer and his lethal assistant. Like an Elmore Leonard novel, the characters and how they interact is as important as the plot. And also like Leonard, there is a dark humor that amuses but does not diminish the suspense.

If Ferrigno has a fault as a writer, it is only that he sometimes takes a while to produce a new novel. Other than that, Ferrigno is consistenly great, and this book continues his string of quality work.