Tuesday, June 2, 2015

TBR Tuesday - Review of "Blue Mondays"

I attended the last game in Montreal Expos history, when they played the New York Mets on the last day of the 2004 baseball season.  I have been interested in the team history for a long time, and last year, I found this short book for a decent price that I thought would be a gem.  I put off reading it as I got to other books provided by authors and decided to go back to this one for a TBR Tuesday post.  It didn't turn out to be as good as I hoped.  Here is my review of "Blue Mondays." 



Title/Author:
“Blue Mondays: The Long Goodbye of the Montreal Expos” by Jeff Stuart

Tags:
Baseball, history, Expos

Publish date:
November 10, 2010

Length:
134 pages

Rating: 
2 of 5 stars (disappointing)

Review:
While I waited a long time between purchasing this book and actually reading it, I should have waited or better yet, I should have looked for a different book on reading about the demise of the Montreal Expos. This fairly short book will not only take the reader game-by-game into the last season the franchise was in Montreal (2004), but also gives a brief history of the entire history of the team, including some pictures of the old Jarry Park.

For having been published for awhile, I found the book fraught with editing errors and a few factual ones as well, such as stating that Josh Beckett was the 2002 World Series MVP for the Florida Marlins (it was actually 2003, as the Marlins were not in the 2002 World Series).  Often scores of games would be stated without a hyphen (“54” instead of “5-4”) and whenever a monetary figure was stated, there was no dollar sign or the word “dollars” in the statement, just a numeral like “two million.”  These took away from the reading experience.

Also, the recap of the 2004 season itself was a disappointment to me.  I wanted to read about anecdotes, stories, how fans and players felt about the team leaving Canada, and other such writing.  Instead, it was mostly a recap of every game played written in a manner that is like the one or two paragraph game recaps printed in the morning newspaper.  That was certainly not the type of book I expected.

One positive, though, was the story of the last game ever played in Montreal (the longest story in the book) and also the recap of their final three games played in New York.  While those were the types of chapters I was hoping to read, they came far too late and there were far too few of them.

For all these reasons, I would recommend to readers that are looking for books on the Montreal Expos to search elsewhere.

Did I skim?
No

Pace of the book: 
Fortunately, this one was pretty quick.  Even though I wasn’t enjoying the book, I did want to read the entire book so I could give a complete review – and hopefully find a golden nugget or two along the way.  The last sections were okay and that is the closest to good reading I found..

Do I recommend? 
If readers want to learn about the Montreal Expos, both the entire team history and their final years, it is best to skip this book and look elsewhere

Book Format Read:
E-book (Nook)

Buying links:

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