ah, that's better

[maribou]

Deadline, by Chris Crutcher
I swear Crutcher could find a way to make a telephone book interesting. The football-playing protagonist of this particular novel explains,

As Coach says, you can measure your love of the game by what you bring off the field with you. If you come off the field at the final gun with nothing, that's perfect love. It doesn't mean I can't make mistakes, but they'll never be because I'm tired and they'll never be because I'm not thinking. My mistakes will come from excess.

and I think that's what makes me love Crutcher's work so much. No matter what he writes, he puts everything into the book, every time, and you can taste that, you know? Yeah.
(91/300)

Comments

[kerrymae.livejournal.com]

The man is good.

[maribou]

He, Sherman Alexie, and Bruce Brooks are like my holy trinity of funny, heartbreaking YA authors who aren't dead. If it turns out that Bruce Brooks is secretly from Idaho/North-Eastern Washington, my head may 'splode.

[kerrymae.livejournal.com]

Did you read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian? I haven't gotten around to it, but everyone that I know who read it loved it.

[maribou]

I have not read it yet. Nor have I read Flight or Indian Killer - Alexie is, I think, one of those authors I hoard because what if I am having a Day When Everything Looks Lame and I Don't Want to Read Anything. (Other such authors include Madeleine L'Engle and Bruce Brooks.)

But I have heard only good things about it.

(I read several of Alexie's earlier works, and Lone Ranger & Tonto is firmly YA in my head.)