Life Is Like a Sailboat: Selected Writings on Life and Living from the Philadelphia Inquirer

by John Grogan

Book Overview

From John Grogan, author of the New York Times bestsellers Bad Dogs Have More Fun , Marley and Me , and The Long Way Home , comes a new collection of more than eighty newspaper articles from the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1593155395
• ISBN13: 9781593155391
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Vanguard Press
• Length: 236 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.7" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Like visting with an old friend

John Grogan may not be a well recognized name, but most people have heard of at least one well know, well received book, "Marley & Me", which went on to become a movie. //Life is Like A Sailboat// is a great way to familiarize yourself to a wide variety of some of Grogan's writings when he wrote a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer. I was delighted by this book. I enjoyed the wide variety of topics covered. And Grogan's wit and eloquence made these human interest stories tug at my heartstrings. Grogan covers every topic imaginable, which makes this a book that would appeal to most everyone. Each piece is a short story, so it's quite possible and easy to read several stories in a sitting. If you take to this book like I did, you will find yourself saying "just one more" before turning the light out to go to sleep. And some of the characters in these true life stories will stick with you. You may see yourself in some of the stories. Or you may know someone who has experienced some of the events, the tragedies, the successes, the celebrations that are covered in these stories. Grogan's writing style is engaging, and his words paint a vivid intricate world, even though the focus of most of these writings is on the average day, the average person, even a typical life.. in anything but typical or average fashion. Reviewed by Laura Friedkin

Great read!

I really liked John's style of writing in Marley & Me, so I thought I'd give this book a try. I liked it so much I gave it as a gift to my father. His insights, observations, and commentary on the world around us are dead-on, written in a light, often humorous style. If you can't relate, you're part of the problem in my opinion! A great read.

Life is Like a Sailboat is a Quick, Enjoyable Read

There is indeed a sailboat on the dust jacket of John Grogan's LIFE IS LIKE A SAILBOAT. But look closely, dear reader, and you will note that the sailboat, far from battling ocean waves, is floating placidly in a domestic bathtub. That sets former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Grogan firmly in his proper context. Grogan spent four years or so trolling the lanes and malls of suburban Philadelphia for newspaper columns. This book assembles 84 of them in no particular order. No dates of publication are provided, and there seems to be no overarching theme to unify them. They are just there, for the reader to sample at his leisure. This is a bag of journalistic potato chips, and it is indeed hard to resist the temptation to munch on "just one more" before returning to the real world. Grogan levels his lance at some easy targets: highway litterers, telemarketers, racist bigots, cigarette smoke, television ads, and gun violence. He also likes to let his readers write pieces for him by simply quoting what they have said on some life-and-death issue like the misbehavior of pet dogs. And he is always careful to identify which Philadelphia suburb is home to whomever he quotes. It is not, however, necessary to be familiar with the geography of Great Philly to enjoy these pieces. Their themes are common to suburbia from coast to coast; all the reader needs do is substitute the name of some similar town from his own area and the fit is pretty much perfect. Grogan is a graceful writer. He gets his points across crisply and effectively within the confines of the small newspaper space allotted to him (as he himself practiced that elusive art for 28 years, I know how difficult it can be. Wasn't it Pascal who once apologized to someone for having written such a long letter "because I did not have time to write you a short one"?). My personal favorite among those 84 potato chips is the one about the five-year-old in South Philadelphia who wrote a Christmas letter to Santa, addressed it to the North Pole and stuck on a few "Christmassy" stickers in lieu of a stamp --- only to have the letter returned after the holiday as undeliverable for insufficient postage. Grogan, dogged investigative reporter that he is, asked someone at the post office for an explanation. The official felt that no Scrooge-ish postal employee was at fault, blaming instead a machine that automatically fingered the unstamped missive and ordered it returned to sender. The youngster's mistake was putting a return address on his letter. That malevolent machine, Grogan is happy to report, has not shaken the youngster's faith in Santa. Grogan likes to visit odd but picturesque places, an old cemetery for example, and to seek out unusual characters who do interesting things like handcrafting furniture from undried wood. He touches glancingly on a few controversial topics, writing with sympathy, for example, about two gay men who want to marry. A couple of warm and fizzy columns are devoted to ran