What have you been reading?

Marie, over at "A Cardboard Problem," mentioned that she just purchased and started to read Michael O'Keeffe and Terri Thompson's The Card.

Since I just finished it up last month I thought I'd look back at what baseball related books I've read in the last decade or so.

I'm currently reading Charles Euchner's The Last Nine Innings and have a small stack on the bedside stand just begging to be read. I'm also plugging through Bill Veeck's The Hustler's Handbook.

This list is in a rough chronological order, with the most recently read near the top.

• Neal Karlen's Slouching Towards Fargo
• Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo's Baseball Confidential
• Alan Ross's Echoes from the Ballpark
• Warren Jay Goldstein's Playing for Keeps: A History of Early Baseball
• Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo 's Baseball Hall of Shame 3
• Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo's The Baseball Hall of Shame 2
• Elden Auker's Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms: A Lifetime of Memories from Striking Out the Babe to Teeing It Up With the President
• Harry Caray's Holy Cow!
• Yogi Berra's The Yogi Book
• Lawrence S. Ritter's The Glory of their Times
• Pat Jordan's A False Spring
• Robert Obojski's Baseball's Strangest Moments
• Fastball Makov's (editor) Baseball Bafflers : Quizzes, Trivia, and Other Ballpark Challenges
• Jim Murray's Jim Murray, An Autobiography
• Troy Soos's Murder at Fenway Park
• George Will's Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball
• Troy Soos's Murder at Ebbetts Field
• A. Bartlett Giamatti's Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games
• Jim Bouton's Ball Four
• Daniel Paisner's The Ball
• Orel Hershiser's Between the Lines: Nine Principles to Live By
• Bob Uecker's Catcher In The Wry
• Ron Luciano and David Fisher's Strike Two
• Frank Deford's Casey on the Loose

Yes, some of those titles are throwaways, barely even to be considered as bathroom reading. And the Troy Soos books? Mysteries. Not even real stories. But a pleasant diversion.

The Orel Hershiser is the only book that I've read in one sitting. It was a birthday gift from my wife and I was in the mood to not put it down until I had finished reading it.

As far as just darn good writing and a joy to read I'd have to go with the Pat Jordan. It is a look at his time in the minors. There is a wonderful passage in which he describes a meal that the players eat while in the south. Brilliant prose.

For more reading ideas Ron Kaplan has a wonderful blog at Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf.

So, what have you been reading lately?