I picked this book up thinking I would simply skim through it for the highlights. I had read great reviews and felt that it was worthy of a once-over. At 700 pages and having never been a Bill Simmons fan I was skeptical to how much I would enjoy it.

I was pleasantly surprised.

Simmons is the ultimate basketball fan and he writes, not as a sports reporter, but as someone who loves the game and has invested all of his life following it. Therefore, what emerges is not a sterile take on the game but a passionate take on the state of the game and the characters and events that have shaped it over the past 60 years. Simmons weaves in pop culture references and a deft sense of humor that keeps the book moving along.

Two things that stood out for me:

1)Simmons had the insight and acumen to include Sidney Moncrief among his top 75 players of all time. The fact that Moncrief, one of the best defenders and all around players of the 80s, is not in the Hall of Fame is an outright travesty. Anybody who disagrees with that obviously was not an NBA fan during that time.

2) Simmons places Scottie Pippen within the right context and in the top 25 of all time. Most notably, he makes the informed argument that Pippen’s lone prima donna moment (refusing to play when a final play was designed for Kukoc instead of him against the hated Knicks) should not negate all that he did right throughout the years. But don’t get me started on Kukoc.

The best part of this book is that Simmons made me want to be an NBA fan again.

I read this book in conjunction with a bookclub that I have begun at the Stillwater Public Library. Ian McEwan’s classic has been called by some to be one of the greatest ever written and it certainly lives up to that hype. Rich characters, a complex yet never convoluted storyline and a “twist” that leaves the reader emotionally conflicted combine to offer up a great read.

My only complaint is that I had seen the movie first. As a result, I was unable to truly and completely immerse myself in McEwan’s narrative. The movie stayed so faithful to the book that there were not any points of departure for me to follow the authors original vision. That was my loss and my mistake and no slight on the excellence of the work.

At the heart of this is a tremendous reflection on the need for atonement and redemption. Briony Tallis, as a precocious and imaginative 13 year old, witnesses a sexually charged exchange between her sister and her childhood friend. She is unable to fully understand what she has seen and incapable of placing it in the proper context. As a result, a string of events takes place that changes everyone’s lives forever.

What transpires is a beautiful work of fiction that deserves to be read.