Bingo Books


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Bingo Books sorted by Average customer review: high to low .

Bingo
The Ideal SugarDaddy's Guidebook: An Old Man's Vision of Heaven
Published in Paperback by Outskirts Press (2007-10-05)
Author: Bingo Martin
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delightful self-help book
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-02-24
This easy to read self-help guide is a witty and charming read. This book is a must have for any man over 40 who still loves women.

Bingo
Really Truly Bingo
Published in Hardcover by Candlewick (2008-05-27)
Author:
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A delightful storybook about summer fun.
Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2008-07-11
Theodor Seuss Geisel Beginning Reader award-winning author Laura McGee Kvasnosky presents Really Truly Bingo, a children's picturebook about a young girl's friendship with Bingo the talking dog. Making the most of summer, they run and jump through a water sprinkler spray, slide in the mud, and craft a daisy chain. The girl's mother is not amused by the muddy mess, but on Bingo's advice the girl offers the daisy chain as a gift, saving the day! A delightful storybook about summer fun.

Bingo
Sing And Read: B-i-n-g-o! (Sing and Read Storybook (Book & CD))
Published in Paperback by Scholastic (2005-02-01)
Author:
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Bingo
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-07-01
Every child, at one time or another, has heard the song, Bingo. It is a traditional song that teaches rhythm and rhyme. The CD and book are excellent and well worth the cost.

Bingo
The Steady Clockwork Rise and Fall of Time: Poems 1990-2000
Published in Kindle Edition by NewParadigmPress.com (2008-07-10)
Author: Jack Preston King
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I Love How Jock Preston King Sees the World
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-10-04
In fact, I love every word this guy writes. I have his short story book Missing Time and Other Stories: Thirteen Sidereal Crossings, his wonderful "spiritual autobiography" Autobiography of an Earthling: One Man's Spiritual Journey To Embracing His Humanity, and now this poetry collection, and I can't stop reading and re-reading them all over and over again. Every time I do, I find something new. King has the most remarkable talent for putting words to things we all sense but that we can never seem to find our own words for, those nebulous and numinous deep human feelings that make living precious and powerful and ultimately worthwhile. Not every poem in this collection is a Pulitzer prize winner, but the great ones are so great that they make you forgive the "forgettables" and wish this book was a lot longer.

Bingo
Superphonic Bingo
Published in Paperback by Pro Lingua Associates (2006-10-01)
Author: Maryanna Phillips Koehring
List price: $21.00
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Teacher's helper - ESL, EFL, homeschooling...
Helpful Votes: 3 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2007-11-26
This well-designed resource book is terrific to have on hand for anyone trying to help students or children over the hump from letter recognition to reading. It nicely circumvents the frustration of being faced with sentences to read and builds confidence that they CAN do it. The games are set up in a logical progression of difficulty, and for each game there is a full list for the teacher (and for pre-teaching), a set of photocopiable ready-made cards for the students, and some cards with blanks for additional writing practice. One thing I particularly appreciate is the mixing in of some names and words beginning with capital letters. Capitals are often a signal to panic when trying to read a passage, but here they are simply put out there in the non-threatening form of the bingo game, and English learners can relax and get used to them naturally. Highly recommended as a "break" for students - and break for the teacher.

Bingo
Wild animals I have known, and 200 drawings: Being the personal histories of Lobo, Silverspot, Raggylug, Bingo, and Springfield fox, the pacing mustang, Wully, and Redruff
Published in Unknown Binding by Peregrine Smith (1977)
Author: Ernest Thompson Seton
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Wild Thing!
Helpful Votes: 3 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2000-01-09
Seton's unique gift brings us inside the minds and feelings of the wild creatures who share our continent. His groundbreaking empathy and insight foreshadowed the animal rights movement. A refreshing look into real life.

Bingo
The Inimitable Jeeves (Unabridged)
Published in Audio Download by audible.com ()
Author: P. G. Wodehouse
List price: $56.27
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Classic Jeeves & Wooster
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-08-24
This is the first collection of short stories with Bertie Wooster and Jeeves. The stories are loosely linked with fun references in later stories to earlier events; for example, to the time Bertie had a bedroom full of cats leading to a looney doctor thinking him crazy.
I love it. A must for any Jeeves fan.

Funny and frivolous
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-03-20
This funny volume by English comic writer P. G. Wodehouse is really a series of loosely connected short stories. Most of them (though not all) deals with dim witted bachelor Bertie Wooster, with the help of his inimitable and intelligent butler Jeeves, trying to help his friend Bingo Little, who can't fail to fall in love with the first woman in his sight. Bingo fears that if his uncle doesn't like the current woman he is wooing, he will cut the rent he depends on for living. By the time Bertie and Jeeves has the problem kind of sorted out, Bingo has lose interest in the woman. The other stories deal with Bertie trying to get himself out of his own problems, and with his aunt Agatha, who is always looking for a woman to marry him. Very funny sort of frivolous comedy.

A whole lot of fun! 4.5 Stars
Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2007-07-12
I can't recall reading a more consistently comical book in my whole life. I wasn't sure at the start if I was going to enjoy this. For one thing, what do most of us have in common with the idle rich of 1920's England? These blokes spend most of their days carefree and content, engaging in such benign activities as hanging out at the local bar all day and gambling on everything from the ponies to what was dubbed "the great Sermon Handicap". The latter is essentially a bet about which of the parsons in the area (there are about a dozen total) end up performing the longest sermon on Sunday. What a life huh?

Bertie Wooster, our main protagonist, is a couple of IQ points above being labeled a true simpleton. He is however, despite all of his shortcomings, an extremely likeable chap all the same. Bertie would be lost in this world if it weren't for his valet, his right-hand man - Mr. Jeeves. Although Jeeves may be a man of few words, there is no doubt of his wisdom every time he does open his mouth to speak. He consistently saves the day, and keeps Bertie's chaotic life from becoming an absolute catastrophe. The refined, conservative Jeeves also does his best in preventing Bertie from dressing like a total nerd (their constant battles over Bertie's eccentric style of clothing is priceless!). On top of that, Bertie's best friend Bingo keeps falling in love with every female he sees with a pulse (which of course calls for Jeeves assistance as well). And lastly, to add even more flavor to this already colorful crew is Bertie's Aunt Agatha. This rich, pretentious, highfalutin' dame is something else to say the least. She reminds me a bit of a more refined Hyacinth Bucket from that classic British sitcom "Keeping up Appearances". Bottom line, the whole bloody bunch is absolutely hilarious!

There is nothing in this light-hearted book that is going to broaden your intellect and make you any more enlightened or wiser. However, if you are looking to have some fun, not have to think too hard, and also want to laugh, than this book is ideal for you. I am greatly looking forward to reading quite a bit more of these Jeeves & Wooster books. If they are anything like this one, I am going to be one happy man (there are thirteen more!). It took me a while, but I am glad I finally got around to reading Wodehouse. The chap definitely had a unique sense of humor and I enjoy his facile, sunny style of writing.

I give it a solid 4.5 stars. A whole lot of fun!

The Best of the Best
Helpful Votes: 3 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2008-02-10
The Twenties produced several notable works of fiction, and right there in with the best of them is this, the most delightful of all the Jeeves and Wooster entries.

Composed of a running series of short stories originally published in the Strand and Cosmopolitan magazines, "The Initimable Jeeves" achieves its distinction through the remarkable quality level of the stories combined with the full blossoming of two of the more notable and best-loved characters in all of fiction, Bertie Wooster and Jeeves. They would be paired again many times, but here they are given probably the best pure story material they would ever enjoy.

This was one of the most popular books of the twenties; first published in 1923, in a decade and a half it sold over 3 million copies. To put that figure in perspective, "Gone With the Wind" , the best-seller to end all best-sellers, needed a full decade to surpass 3 million in sales. (Though admittedly Margaret Mitchell's tome came at a much steeper price!)

If you like Wodehouse you'll love "The Inimitable Jeeves".

Fans of the Hugh Laurie Television series will discover more episodes were adapted from this book than any two of the rest!

What ho!
Helpful Votes: 3 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2007-05-19
Although "The Inimitable Jeeves" is not the first appearance of the famous double act, Jeeves and Wooster, it is the first book to be 'completely' dedicated to them. It was first published in 1923, and was originally known in America as, simply, "Jeeves".

The book is set in the 1920s England and features Wodehouse's best known creations : Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves. Bertie is the book's wealthy, good-natured and rather dim narrator. He's a member of the "idle rich" and, rather than having to work for a living, lives off an allowance provided by his uncle. He spends much of his time in the bar-room of the Drones Club, is fond of the occasional wager and has an appalling dress sense. Luckily, Bertie has Jeeves to look after him. Without Jeeves, Bertie's life would be a mess : he makes an excellent hangover cure, his bets usually win and he's intelligent enough to rescue Bertie from nearly any situation. He disapproves of Bertie's more garish items of clothing, and will - occasionally - take it upon himself to deal with the offending item.

All of the short stories are connected and most of them involve Bertie's friend Bingo Little, who is always falling in love - occasionally while still 'officially' in love with another. It's Bingo who most consistently drops Bertie into trouble : Bingo's schemes generally aim for an increase in his allowance from his Uncle, with the intention of marrying his latest girlfriend. Generally, Bingo's intended is a girl his uncle wouldn't approve of - so he ropes Bertie and Jeeves into helping him out. There are also appearances for Bertie's troublesome cousins, Claude and Eustace, a devious bookmaker called Steggles and Bertie's fearsome Aunt Agatha. Bertie is held in very low esteem by Agatha, but she is determined that Bertie should marry - Bertie's opinion, as far as she is concerned, is irrelevant.

A very easy and enjoyable read.

Bingo
Bingo
Published in Mass Market Paperback by Bantam (1989-09-01)
Author: Rita Mae Brown
List price: $6.50
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I'd take Nickel over a Dime any day
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-02-18
If you were as enamored with the childhood antics of Nickel Smith as I was in Six of One, you will also welcome her adulthood antics in Bingo. Although Dr. Brown introduces new vibrant characters, none of them seem to reach the complexity and sheer genius of Celeste Chalfonte, Ramelle or the beloved Cora. However, the fact that I miss these characters, might prove that Dr. Brown has succeeded in stimulating within her readers a nostalgia for those who have died and for time past. Brown Brilliantly captures how time can change people and places alike in the most subtle ways. Good read.

Also a tale of a woman's love for newspapering
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2002-05-11
First off, I loved Bingo and have re-read it many times. Many of my general thoughts are already well said in other reviews, so I want to add an offbeat one. Bingo also tells a story about a woman's love for her career, newspapering, and how that career is endangered by the sale of "her" paper to a big company. Brown nails that part of the story -- her descriptions of how it feels when the "big guy" arrives on the doorstep of the little paper are dead on. I lived through that same situation, with less happy results, and Nickel's reactions ring very true. In this era of mergers and buyouts, that's another reason to read Bingo. Share the book with a friend or three.

Three cheers for Runnymeade!
Helpful Votes: 17 out of 17 total.
Review Date: 2002-01-11
Those crazy Hunsenmeir sisters are back, and this time, it's personal.... Julia and Louise, after 80+ years of sibling rivalry, still don't have it right. And when Ed Tutwieler Walters saunters into Friday night bingo, the fireworks are on autopilot. Vying for the attentions of the town's newest bachelor, Julia and Louise pull out all the stops. And often at hilarious consequences....

Told through the perspective of Julia's adopted daughter, Nickel, readers are treated to small town life in all its glory. Gossip, disputes, affairs, friendships and, yes, even pesky family troubles, run amok in Runnymeade, Maryland, and Rita Mae Brown uses every ounce of her literary talent to create this unforgettable story. I was very impressed by what I read, and despite all their cat-fighting, Julia and Louise are two women I'd love to have lunch with!

I read the first book in the Hunsenmeir series, Six of One, a couple years ago, and I truly enjoyed Bingo so much more. Funnier and more wisecracking, Bingo will have readers yearning for weekly bingo dates in the Catholic Church basement, socializing at the town square, and the chance to take your pets with you everywhere you go, even to the doctor's office during your annual check-up. Wonderfully endearing. Can't wait for Loose Lips.

A Real Can't-Put-It-Down, Laugh-Out-Loud Romp
Helpful Votes: 3 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2002-04-14
Nicole "Nickle" Smith's life is more than slightly schizoid: she lives in Runnymead, a small town that straddles the Mason-Dixon line, with all the cultural division that implies; her life is dominated by her elderly adoptive mother Julia "Juts" and Juts' equally neurotic sister Louise "Wheeze;" the tiny newspaper she loves and works for is about to be sold out from under her; and she is a self-avowed lesbian having an affair with her best friend's... husband? Needless to say, the situation is ripe for comedy--particularly when St. Rose of Lima's weekly bingo game, at which most of the townfolk meet without fail, begins a move toward a big-pot game known as "Blackout" and Juts and Wheeze, both in their eighties, begin to compete over the same man.

BINGO is not one of Rita Mae Brown's most literary efforts--it is too loosely structured for that--but it is surely one of her most beloved novels, effectively juggling eccentric characters and ridiculous situations with Brown's own take on modern morality. A particular joy are the supporting characters, which are presented with tremendous appeal: Mr. Pierre, the town's effeminate hairdresser; the massively overweight Verna BonTon and her endless family; the feuding law enforcement officers; the yuppie cub reporter--all presented with considerable aplomb and charm and sharpness. Everything adds up to one of the most hilarious things you'll ever read, a real can't-put-it-down, laugh-out-loud book that will have you sitting up half the night trying to silence your hoots lest you wake the neighbors. The setting, characters, and one-liners are extremely memorable, funny, and remarkably honest, and this is one you'll return again and again. I know I have! Recommended.

Watch out for the cannonballs.
Helpful Votes: 3 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2002-01-09
Runnymede, MD has to be the oddest town ever created in fiction. Full of well-intentioned nuts such as the feuding town sheriffs and the protagonist's mother and aunt--Juts Smith and Wheezie Trumbull--Bingo picks up where the equally implausible _Six of One_ left off. This time, the story is from the POV of Nickel Smith, the adopted daughter of eighty-something iconoclast Juts. Nickel watches as the town newspaper battles corporate takeover and her mother and aunt battle one another over, well, everything, particularly the available octogenarian Ed Walters.

At times, it's hard to believe that the town could be so crazy--there's no way Nickel's pets could be unconditionally welcomed wherever she goes--but if you stop and think about the desperate actions a small town will take to shake itself up, then perhaps there really is something believable about local yokels who fire a Civil War-era cannon in an attempt to separate two brawlers, and who obstruct justice to pull Aunt Wheezie's fat out of the legal fire. Who knows.

Despite the frequent necessity to suspend disbelief, I laughed out loud several times and felt good whenever I dipped into _Bingo_. Rita Mae Brown obviously has fond memories of her past, and that reverence is clear and convincing in this semi-autobiographical look at Runnymede. If only my hometown had a cannon.

Bingo
Bingo Night at the Fire Hall: Rediscovering Life in an American Village
Published in Hardcover by Harcourt (1997-09-15)
Author: Barbara Holland
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Charming author in a strange new world
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-10-12
When she was in her early 60's author Barbara Holland moved from Philadelphia to Loudon County in Northern Virginia, to a small house in the Blue Ridge Mountains some 60 miles outside of Washington D.C. It might as well have been a different planet. In Bingo Night at the Fire Hall Holland describes the world she came almost by accident to inhabit, a place somehow "unreachably far beyond the headlines and the evening news." Her house on the mountain overlooks a fertile valley in which the same families have farmed for generations. As she describes it, the people there live (or lived, at least, in the 1990s, when she was writing this book) in a sort of time capsule, a Mayberry-like idyll of 4-H clubs and church picnics. It's a place where nobody locks their doors (locking them would seem unneighborly), where people are defined not by their resumés but by their family ties.

Holland approaches her subject from a number of different angles, with chapters on the area's extensive role in the Civil War, for example, and on the weather and wildlife:

"I was pleased and excited to have a bear, until I followed the tracks to the lower porch and considered the remains of the trash bags. Among the strewn litter of crushed cans and coffee grounds the bear, like a psychotic burglar, had defecated copiously."

But what makes the book stand out is her description of the ethos of this place, where families' lives are intertwined over generations and where one is surrounded by one's family:

"On any given day a person in the supermarket could come across his or her entire extended family, one by one, aisle by aisle, pausing to exchange fragments of news among the canned goods. This would horrify city folk, whose relatives tend to get on their nerves, but we're a low-strung lot around here and our satisfaction with our birthplace spreads to include our kin -- or perhaps we consider them one and the same."

It would horrify me, certainly. But Holland writes about this way of life so well that one not only understands it, one almost pines for it:

"Relatives are more useful here than in the city or suburb. They have tools you can borrow. They're someone to call, in a taxiless world, when you need a ride. Someone to leave the kids with or go hunting with; someone to help get your firewood in or your boat painted. Someone to carry your coffin. From cradle to grave, my neighbors here swing in a hammock of family ties and nobody leaves except for the churchyard. Even the few who fled to Florida get carried home in the end."

The book makes clear how much modern lifestyles differ from the way of life that was natural to so many generations before us: small communities of neighbors living off the land, interdependent, clustered around a handful of public buildings--the bank and post office and general store. Nowadays, Holland writes, people don't need towns. They need highways between their work places and their living spaces, with places to shop in between.

At the same time that Holland is celebrating life in her valley, however, she is also recording its demise. The land that fed armies on both sides during the Civil War is yielding--increasingly, inexorably--to strip malls and housing projects. The fertility of the soil doesn't matter if you're only interested in paving it over. One can see through Holland's eyes how this influx of rootless Others is an affront to the land.

Holland, of course, is herself an immigrant, but unlike the housing developers who are carving the valley into subdivisions, she did not efface her surroundings; she adapted to them. Being an outsider also made her a keen observer of the world around her, which we can only be thankful for. I enjoyed Holland's book enormously. It is charmingly written and wise. I'll be seeking out more from her.

-- Debra Hamel

Ruminations from the rural/suburban interface
Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2007-05-29
During the 1700s and 1800s, as the burgeoning population of the White Man, backed by his relatively sophisticated farming methods and industrial capacity, slowly encroached upon and suffocated the Native American cultures, there must have been those writers who bemoaned the passing of the Noble Savage and his way of life. Here, in BINGO NIGHT AT THE FIRE HALL, Barbara Holland, at the interface of vanishing rural, small-farm America and metastasizing, mall-happy suburbia, performs the same function.

The place is northern Virginia, less than an hour's drive west of Dulles International. Barbara places herself in a mountain cabin inherited from her mother near the village of Pikestown, a short distance from North Hill, at a gap in the Appalachians. After determined inspection of a Rand McNally, I can state with some degree of certainty that these are fictional place names. I suspect her point of view to emanate from somewhere in the Front Royal-Chester Gap-Sperryville arc. The time is the mid-1990s, and Holland herself is perhaps in her 60s.

Those readers who enjoyed Endangered Pleasures: In Defense of Naps, Bacon, Martinis, Profanity, and Other Indulgences and Wasn't the Grass Greener?: Thirty-three Reasons Why Life Isn't as Good as It Used to Be are acquainted with the author's style, which is similar to that of the curmudgeonly Andy Rooney, but without the mean streak. But while the other two volumes deal with specifics, BINGO NIGHT AT THE FIRE HALL concerns itself with a way of life, a more nebulous concept, that otherwise gets lost in the mundane details of everyday living. This life, represented by family farms, local general stores, town meetings, bingo nights, a deeply felt Civil War heritage, local fund-raisers, school Christmas pageants, clean-cut and drug-free adolescents, and an environment where everyone knows everybody else, is giving way to the impersonal, stressed-out, multicultural, politically correct, acquisitive, self-centered and insidiously spreading suburbia created by the maturing post-war Baby Boomers and their spawn. And Barbara, a former big city dweller herself, observes this transition creeping over the ridgeline into her own back yard, and hints at a loss of deeper, traditional values.

This book is unlikely to appeal to the young or middle aged, but to those older who are simply getting old and marginalized. This fact doesn't invalidate Barbara's observations, but rather makes them irrelevant to the newest generations, who will, in time, have their own turn at disenchantment.

Great Writing Ability, However This Holland Book Has Some Problems
Helpful Votes: 1 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2006-07-11
After reading Barbara Holland's "When All the World Was Young", which I absolutely adored, I immediately had to order another of her books. I must say I was not nearly as enamored of this story. I will say I still think she is a gifted writer. Many of her descriptions are a joy to read. However, I had a couple of problems with this story. First, there actually is little story here. In a few places, the long description of the dedication of the new post office comes to mind, it became so mind-numbingly boring that I skipped ahead a few pages. Second, I became a little confused and frankly less than sympathtic to the main character, Barbara. If she so hates the winters in the mountain, why does she stay there? It's obvious she is miserable much of the year. Also, why live in a rural area where "everyone knows you business" and privacy is, in fact, harder to come by than in the big city, if you are a loner at heart (which she obviously is.) Where are her children? Grown now, but why does she never see them, so it seems, and practically never even mentions them. Finally, I found her criticism of the families in the new subdivisions to be a bit cruel. When I read "When All the World Was Young", I found it to be a delightful journey back to the 1950's, the same time I grew up. But in reading "Bingo Night", which takes place in contemporary times, I began to feel that Ms Holland, in fact, would be happier living in the past. As people grow older, some of us adapt to change better than others. Ms Holland's obvious discontent with modern life in American today suggests that she does not adapt well to change. I so loved the other book! I wish she would give fiction a try, she is such an amazing writer, but I'll not read any more of her nonfiction stories.

A continuous page turning story
Helpful Votes: 2 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2004-04-25
I am not much of a reader. As usual I was fumbling through the book store on one of those boring family vacations and fell into this book. I could not seem to put it down. This book was very well written and I plan to read all of Barbara Hollands books she is a very creative writer and I would recommend any of her books ( even though I have only read this one ) to anyone.

A Local's Review of "Bingo Night"
Helpful Votes: 3 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2002-02-19
Barbara Holland writes about her experiences in moving out to "rural" Loudoun County and about the effect of the encroaching development on the country lifestyle.

I grew up and worked on a farm in western Loudoun. As one of the "locals", I enjoyed her account of the old way of life and it was fun to read about places and people I knew--it brought back a lot of memories. I also enjoyed (and shared) her obvious distaste for the suburbanites who have invaded and taken over Loudoun. That being said, I found her book overly simplistic and highly embellished.Despite her apparent love for the "locals", she understands them only on the most rudimentary level, which is why her analyses are often simplistic.

Readers should be aware that the book is half fiction and half fact. The "Mountain" where she lives is not nearly as inaccessible and remote as she portrays it. Her towns of "Pikesville" and "North Hill" are actually literary conglomerations of several real towns. In addition, Ms. Holland moved to Loudoun in the 1990's. By that point, the County had already been under transition from rural country to suburban life for almost 10 years. Many of the old-timers and old families had long since moved on or passed away. Which is perhaps why she felt the need to embellish the story. However, it was still fun to read about my High School and to recognize the few people and families that she names. All in all it was an enjoyable read. Potential readers should just be aware that it is a work of fiction, with its setting in reality.

Bingo
The Official bingo games manual
Published in Unknown Binding by Greene Co (1992)
Author: Richard M Greene
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Average review score:

Thoroughly researched, though long-winded and poorly edited!
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-06-05
Mr. Watterson has presented us with a volume that is unique among sports books - a comprehensive history of college football and its relationship to college life and American society. I recommend it for two reasons:

1. It is incredibly well researched; Watterson has spent years digging through college and university archives around the country. He has amassed a mountain of valuable information about the progression and development of the college game that is not available elsewhere.

2. Despite being an academic, the author writes in a style that is easily readable. In my experience, it is rare to find a scholarly book that is also comprehensible to a lay audience.

Though it has many positives, there are two major flaws that drive me to distraction.

1. Watterson insists on repeating himself, sometimes making the same point in the very next paragraph or on subsequent pages. At times, I found myself wondering whether I had mistakenly lost track of my place in the book and was reading a page that I had already covered. The author's tendency to rehash previously made points slows the reader's progression and makes each chapter significantly longer than it needs to be.

2. The index is woefully incomplete. For example, references to Glenn "Pop" Warner are listed on three pages - 137, 146 and 172 - but more information about him appears on page 180. Likewise, Richard "Von" Gammon is referenced in the index on pages 36-38, but he also appears on page 47 (misspelled as Richard Gammen). There are many such instances in the index.

Nevertheless, this book is very valuable for the many nuggets of insight and history that bubble to the surface. The information contained in this volume is found nowhere else, and far outweighs the drawbacks in writing and editing.

Should be a mandatory read for all college faculty -
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2003-01-06
This a dry read and takes some effort as it is essentially an academic tome that is concerned with the evolution of modern college football from a political, policy, and business standpoint. But it is quite thorough and hits the nail on the head. The final pages discuss how the game can be saved .... since reform is not an option. This is the weakest part of the book, but understandably so since it would take the wisdom of Solomon to fix this problem. I have always felt that a return to one platoon football makes a lot of sense regarding costs (less insurance, travel and equipment, scholarship dollars).

The editing in the book leaves something to be desired. There are a number of typos - and a few sentences that make contradictory statements. The author is not a well versed student of the game since there are several technical mistakes which indicate some deficiencies in research. Some of these are listed below as examples.

(1) Identifying Brian Bosworth as an Oklahoma lineman when he was a linebacker,
(2) Claiming All American status for 4 years (1982-1985)for a very average SMU running back,
(3) Confusing the major Western Athletic Conference (WAC) with the minor Rocky Mountain Conference,
(4) When describing the 1943 game between the College of the Pacific (COP) and USC attributing Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) membership to COP which was in fact an independent school during the 40's and never was a member of the PCC or its later version, the Pac 10.

That said I highly recommend the book for anyone interested in the history of college football.

Bravo! (Pity about the editing though)
Helpful Votes: 3 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2003-02-26
This enlightening book covers the history of college football from an interesting and neglected point of view. That is to say, it contains none of the usual lionisation of players and coaches, and no re-working of big games we're all familiar with. Rather, Watterson examines (and questions) the place of the game in American society and its role on campus. The book establishes quite clearly that the over-emphasis placed on gridiron is hardly a recent phenomenon or even (as I foolishly suspected) down to the evils of television - that schools have been fielding ineligible players, fiddling grades, and operating slush funds from the days of Walter Camp. Watterson details the various movements which have attempted to reform the game and how it is run, and explains lucidly why virtually all of them failed. A seemingly insatiable desire for victory and glory to the alma mater has resulted in a gradual yet steady erosion of the original purpose of sport on campus, to the point where today a college President can express a desire to "build a university the football team can be proud of" without a trace of irony.

The book's only real fault lies in some woeful editing, which results in a few stories being re-told, and several paragraphs being repeated almost word-for-word many pages later (not to mention some grammatical howlers which don't strike me as being the author's fault). I found myself able to to overlook this, though, and can unreservedly recommend it. It may not be one which the more avid Sooner, Fighting Irish, Crimson Tide, or Buckeye-backer will gravitate toward, but those who enjoy big-time football and yet abhor how tainted it has all become will find it difficult to put down.

An Outstanding and Important Work
Helpful Votes: 5 out of 5 total.
Review Date: 2001-01-05
College Football is an outstanding and important work. It is a true history--not a greatest teams and greatest players-type of celebratory writing--and falls under the rubric of sport history. Sport history, which is a subcategory of social history, relates sports to broader themes in society, and John Sayle Watterson in this regard does a terrific job in relating the history of football to the issue of collegiate life as a whole, and even to society as a whole (particularly where the colleges had to fight the pro game for the public's entertainment dollar).

College Football is published by a university press (Johns Hopkins), but it is marketed as a trade book. Thus, the misleading subtitle "History-Spectacle-Controversy," as there is not much spectacle in this book. But there is plenty of controversy, relating to violence, subsidies, and cheating scandals throughout the sport's history and the mostly failed attempts by the college football establishment to reform the sport.

Watterson's work is actually a more narrow history of the governance of college football, rather a broad history of the sport (Johns Hopkins surely did not want to put the word "governance" in the title). As such, however, College Football is the best overview of the subject ever written, primarily because the author takes the story from the beginning up to the present day.

I have some minor carping: there is an excessive number of typos and errors in this book for a university press book.

Perfect.. but not for the beginners
Helpful Votes: 6 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 2001-02-02
A useful book for everyone who has a long-lasting interest and knowledge on the College Football, but it can be a little bit dazy and hard-to-understand for the beginners. College Football by Watterson is an analytical book which also solves the past-time football's problems according to the periods national crisis' and situations with huge acknowledgements. If you already have a good knowledge on College Football, then you will find a lot of interesting things in this book; if you have no or a little knowledge, then I will suggest you to read easier books to prepare yourself for this book. I really liked reading and learned a lot from this book though.


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