Showing posts with label sports; urban fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sports; urban fiction. Show all posts

Monday, September 1, 2014

Ball Don't Lie -- reviewed by Arinze Mgbenema




          Travis Richard nicknamed "Sticky" is an extremely skilled basketball player who has a great future in the profession, but until the age of 6 years old Sticky had lived with a troubled and drug addicted mother and no father. He and his mother were poor and had no money. His mother was a prostitute and had an abusive boyfriend for some time so Sticky experienced some shocking things most children under 6 do not experience. His mother ended up committing suicide and Sticky was forced to move to several foster homes and began to build up an awkward social attitude towards people. As Sticky gets older he gets interested in basketball and works to perfect his skill in it every day. His goal is to play for UCLA and go to the NBA to play for the Lakers. Sticky has also gone into life of crime. When he was robbing a store he met a female cashier named Ahn -thu and she becomes his girlfriend.
        Throughout the book Sticky goes through many stressful events basketball, his girlfriend, and struggled to keep away from trouble it's all hard for him. Sticky decided that the only things that were important in his life at the moment is basketball and his girlfriend's birthday. Sticky tries to buy his girlfriend a necklace for her birthday but learns that he does not have the money, so he decides to rob a man for his money at night but surprisingly the man had a gun and shoots Sticky in the hand, Sticky is found and taken to a hospital in the hospital sticky thinks about life while his girlfriend sits by him. While his hand heals he thinks about the dumb decision that he made that could've cost him basketball and/or life.

I enjoyed this book very much. It was an interesting and a very satisfying read. As I went deeper and deeper into the the book I truly didn't want to stop mostly because it was a book that at some points I can relate to. This is a true book for basketball players and people just trying to find a good book to read.  

Monday, October 25, 2010

Black and White -- a review by Daniel Hurtt


Black and White

By Paul Volponi

**** Stars

Black and White is a story based on two seniors that played football and basketball. There two names were Marcus who is also known as “Black” and Eddie who is known also as “White”. Eddie and Marcus attended school at Long Island City High School and have been best friends for a long time and they are almost like brothers. Marcus and Eddie were the most popular kids in school and they had a lot going for them in sports especially basketball. Marcus and Eddie both had big dreams of playing college ball together at a major division one basketball school like St Johns, Connecticut, and Michigan State. The ball was definitely in their corner until they thought that they needed some way to have things that they thought was important to them that the couldn’t afford. They started towards a road that they shouldn’t have went down and one night they made a terrible mistake that could possibly change the rest of their lives and maybe even cost them their life dream.

I thought the novel was great and very eye-catching. I liked the whole story line and how it tied in with something that is very likely to happen to teenagers in real life. It’s a very easy read and I would recommend this book for anyone who likes to read about sports stories. The only thing I didn’t like so much about it was the ending because I think the author should have told more about the boy’s lives after everything happened. Other than the ending I think it was a great novel and the author did a phenomenal job.