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Prepare yourself for some off-the-cuff book talk as I tackle another middle grade book chapter by chapter.
So, Chapter 4 of Maniac McGee is not what I was hoping for. Things are weird.
We get into another mythic presentation of Geoffrey McGee's coolness, his craziness, his something.
He intercepts a football being thrown by one of the varsity, I'm assuming the varsity quarterback, too, a varsity...
I don't know. I don't know football anymore. I forgot all the rules. I forgot all the rules.
I mostly played defense. I was a tight end at one point.
A catcher? A runner? I don't know what they're called. I'm so sorry. Anyway, it's okay. I don't care.
So, yeah, he catches a ball, he intercepts this ball, and he does it all while he's holding a book, except for he...
So he catches it one-handed, which is pretty good, and then he kicks the ball, and it perfectly spirals more perfectly than the quarterback had ever thrown the ball.
And everybody watched this, and they all realized at the end after they compared their notes, because of course they took notes,
and they compared them that he did it all except for the punting of the ball with holding the book in one hand and holding the ball in the other.
So he caught it one-handed, he ran with it one-handed, which that's not a big deal.
I mean, they teach you to do it two-handed. You're supposed to tuck it in so that somebody can't come along and rake the ball out of your hand.
But all the guys, all the good guys that were on the JV and the varsity teams that I played on, or just the one team that I played on, whatever.
All the guys, all the good players, they were good runners and good catchers and all that stuff.
They would still hold the ball one-handed, and from the bench, warming the bench, I would look at them and see,
come on guys, just put your other hand over there and run with it like this so that you don't lose the ball.
And that's not what they did for the most part. Some guys did it, but I think it was like one guy who did it perfectly every time, and everybody else was real lackadaisical about it.
So the fact that he ran with the ball one-handed is not a big deal. It's very normal. It's very commonplace for people to do that.
The fact that he caught the ball is pretty good. I thought Spinelli was going to say something like the thing that everybody thought or compared or looked at or talked about afterwards
was that he was standing 100 feet away when the quarterback threw the ball, and then somehow he got there and caught it and whatever.
That's not where it went. It was like one-handed.
So the catching one-handed is impressive. The running one-handed is not. And then the perfect spiral on his kick of the ball, his punt of the ball, I think is what he used in the chapter.
He chose to use in the chapter, used. That's good. That's nice that he can do that. Definitely shows athleticism in the young man.
But I didn't really connect this chapter. Again, observe. This is a chapter where I'm very unsatisfied.
The language is again flowery. The style is again kind of off the rails in my opinion, and definitely not my taste.
And McGee, Geoffrey, is not interacting with any characters directly. He's having no conversation. He's having no dialogue. He's having no relationship with anybody.
He's just doing a thing or a feat or a stunt or a trick or a gimmick or whatever.
And I kind of looked at the next couple chapters, and the next one is like six or seven minutes long, I think.
No, it's ten minutes long. And then the one after that is like another two minute.
And I'm almost wondering if we're going to get these legendary interludes where Smedley gives us some other anecdote of Geoffrey McGee doing something amazing or remarkable.
And that's what helps build him into the legend of maniac McGee. And I got to be honest, that's not interesting to me.
I mean, I'm honestly thinking like with any of the boys I played football with. I started playing football in school in fifth grade maybe.
We're doing flag football, right? And I did Pop Warner, which is tackle football with the city or whatever.
And then I went a bunch of the guys that I went in middle school with, I ended up going to high school with two and we had played flag football together there.
And we continued to play tackle football at the high school level.
And like just trying to think back, like would those guys have been impressed with this description of him doing this?
Like I don't think so. I think it's not a big deal. And also, like I just think the writing style would have been very foreign to us at the time.
We were in a private school, a small private school. It's a higher curriculum. I've been in public school and private school.
And I can tell you that for sure every private school I've been to has been better than every public school I've ever been to, like by a long shot.
And so is the curriculum. The kids are so awful, but they're just awful in their own different special ways.
But yeah, it's interesting because I just it's not working on me.
I want to see if the pattern holds. I'll at least check out the next chapter.
But after that, if it's another interlude chapter, I think I'm just going to drop it. I can't do this anymore.
I'm going to force myself to read this book, to listen to this book. Yeah, there's a mismatch in the style.
Like this just isn't for me. And I think there's no shame in dropping books.
There's no shame in dropping books. And we'll see. I'm really trying, but I'm also really struggling.
Honestly, I finished listening to this chapter and I thought, I'm trying. I'm trying and maybe this just isn't the book for me.
It was 99 seconds of my life I'll never get back. And it was 99 seconds that didn't really move me. Didn't really move the story forward either.
Yeah, it's like it's. Yeah, I don't want to say anything else. I don't want to be overly critical.
I don't want to be mean. I want to be snarky. That's not my goal.
I'm just expressing my struggles in trying to get through this book.
And yeah, I just I think this is again, this is a book I would have hated as a kid, I think, or would not have been into.
I liked The Giver. I read that in like fourth grade or something.
They read Chronicles and Arneated Me, the first one, in like second grade. And I love that. It's amazing.
I'm trying to think of other books that were read to me in school or that I read and that I liked.
I loved Animal Farm. I read that in like fifth or sixth grade. It's an amazing book.
I loved 1984. I read that in high school, sophomore year. This isn't anything like 1984 though.
I'm just trying to think. What other books did I read in school?
What else did they force me to read? And how did I feel about it? Hated Tuck Everlasting.
You can check out my Fortress Fiction and Tuck Everlasting to see if my thoughts change or not.
The answer may surprise you. But anyway, I'm going on too long and I don't want to do that to you.
So anyway, thank you for listening.
I hope you enjoyed that. Please remember to like, share, subscribe.
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Until next time, keep reading, be well, and do good things.
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