The Thrill of the Grass Book

I was about to be all cute here and use baseball terms to describe my experiences with Kinsella and his work, but I'm sleepy so I will just say that this one was another dud for me. The only story in this collection that had any real entertainment value for me was the title story, The Thrill Of The Grass, which was the final selection in the book.

The narrator and some other baseball fans have a little adventure during the summer of 1981 when the professional players were out on strike and no one was around their local Big League stadium. This story had a nifty idea in it and plenty of poetic images.

I didn't think I was expecting anything other than good stories when I opened this book, but I think now that I am indulging in the cardinal sin of expecting a certain something from an author who is not trying to offer that certain something all of the time.

I first read Kinsella's Shoeless Joe, and the second of his books for me was Dance Me Outside. Both of these titles were stunning, and I suppose I just automatically expected the rest of his work to be the same caliber. The Fencepost Chronicles did not meet that high bar, and neither does this book, at least not for me. Others may feel about these stories the way I felt about the ones in Dance Me Outside, who knows.

I just know that we are all allowed our opinions and reactions to the books we read, and mine in this case was a very loud 'Strike two'!