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Title: Magic Time by W. P. Kinsella ISBN: 0-89658-575-1 Publisher: Voyageur Press Pub. Date: January, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.12 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Iowa , baseball, and love
Comment: Kinsella does it again! As in Shoeless Joe and Iowa Baseball Confederacy, he returns to the theme of Iowa, baseball, and true love. A solid triple, not quite the grand slam of previous novels, but fun. You know where it is going, and yet you enjoy the ride.
Mike Houle is a great college player who had a terrible senior year...and yet reports to Grand Mound, Iowa, for Cornbelt League. Or does he...............? If you love baseball, small towns, the feeling you have stepped back into a world of no pc's, cell phones, and terrorism, than this is for you....not a lot of brain power required, but a great escape!
Rating: 4
Summary: Is This Heaven? No, It's Iowa (and a pretty good book)
Comment: W.P. Kinsella, transplanted from Canada to Iowa, writes about two of his favorite topics in Magic Time: Iowa and baseball. As those are two of my more favorite subjects, I read Magic Time and came away a little less satisfied than I would have hoped to be. The story opens with the background/childhood of Mike Houle, hustling baseball player (in a good sense). The first few chapters are consumed with an oft-told story concerning baseball distances; if you haven't heard the story before, I won't spoil it for you except to say that it has been around and used in stories over the years. Mike goes on to make himself into a minor star in college but didn't quite have enough "talent" to be drafted into the minor leagues, to put it politely. His agent lands him a spot in the Cornbelt League in Iowa, with the Grand Mound team. The other teams in the league, spread out along U.S. 30 in eastern Iowa, also appear to draft players, give them day jobs and have plenty of time for the players to practice. Eventually, though, the secrets of the Cornbelt League are discovered: there's more sociology taking place here than league baseball games. While the book does have its moments of disjointedness and pleasure, I found the most enjoyable part of the book was in considering the notion of what the people of Grand Mound were trying to do, and what a baseball player would do in the same situation: stay or go? Accept what I was or prove everyone wrong? Having lived in a small town in eastern Iowa up the road aways from U.S. 30, and having loved living there, I think Mike was getting a heck of a deal - if he could appreciate it. But then, that's part of the fun of reading, placing ourselves in the character's position. Magic Time can certainly give you the opportunity to do that - and it does it pretty well.
Rating: 4
Summary: Baseball Fairy Tale
Comment: Mike Houle is a baseball player who, unaccountably choked in his senior year at LSU and is left undrafted by the major leagues. When his agent calls with a chance to play in semi-pro ball in Iowa, Mike agrees although he's never heard of the team or the league. At least, his agent assures him, the major league scouts will have a chance to see him play.
What Houle finds in Grand Mound Iowa comes as a complete surprise to him. Families take in ball players--especially families with young and attractive daughters. Is that normal? And Grand Mound, according to his sponsor, is one of the few towns in Iowa which is actually growing. The entire town shows up for the regular inter-squad matches held by the local semi-pro team and Houle, the pressure off, finds himself playing the best baseball of his life.
He may be playing great baseball but he isn't stupid. There's something going on in this town, and with this team, that just doesn't make sense.
Author W. P. Kinsella creates an ode to baseball as the solution to the world's problems. In a strange, fairy tale part of Iowa, baseball has become the savior of a town, and the town in turn has become the salvation to a number of players who had somehow lost touch with the love of the game. Kinsella's lyrical writing makes MAGIC TIME an intriguing and compelling read. Although the plot itself is somewhat slow moving (but then, people say the same thing about baseball), Houle's coming of age and his growing realization of the mystery of Grand Mound made me keep turning the pages.
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Title: Japanese Baseball and Other Stories by W. P. Kinsella ISBN: 1894345185 Publisher: Thistledown Pr Ltd Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Thrill of the Grass (Penguin Short Fiction) by W. P. Kinsella ISBN: 0140073868 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: April, 1985 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella ISBN: 0395957737 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Go the Distance: Baseball Stories by W. P. Kinsella ISBN: 0870743880 Publisher: Southern Methodist Univ Pr Pub. Date: June, 1995 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa: Stories by W. P. Kinsella ISBN: 0870743562 Publisher: Southern Methodist Univ Pr Pub. Date: October, 1993 List Price(USD): $8.89 |
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