Sooley, by John Grisham (Doubleday: Random House), is the top holds title of the week (4/25/21). LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for patrons waiting for this buzziest book.

John Grisham steps away from thrillers with a basketball novel. It follows Samuel “Sooley” Sooleymon who travels with his fellow South Sudanese basketball teammates to play exhibition games in the U.S. That journey is overshadowed by the civil war raging at home. Sooley is determined to save his family, and basketball seems to be the way.

READ-ALIKES

Beartown by Fredrik Backman (Atria)
Appeared on the April 2017 LibraryReads list

“Backman’s most complex novel to date takes place in the small, hockey-crazed village of Beartown. He deftly weaves together the stories of the players, the coaches, the parents, and the fans as Beartown’s hockey team chases its dream of winning a championship. Weighty themes are explored. How high a price is too high for success? How deadly is silence? Who can you trust with your secrets? How far will you compromise your beliefs in the name of friendship? There are no easy answers. A great book club choice.”—Janet Lockhart, Wake County Public Library, Cary, NC

Rules for Becoming a Legend by Timothy S. Lane (Viking)

Lane’s debut novel combines themes of hero worship, high school basketball, and unrealistic expectations placed on teenagers by adults trapped in small-town purgatory. Jimmy “Kamikaze” Kirkus, a hoop prodigy, picks up the stardom gauntlet his father Todd “Freight Train” Kirkus dropped two decades earlier. Blue-collar fans of Oregon’s Columbia City expect the team to win a state championship, but Jimmy self-destructs by purposely running full-tilt into the gym’s brick wall. News spreads in a small town like “lighter fluid on a barbeque,” and Jimmy is taunted for being crazy or soft. Flashbacks to Freight Train’s own self-destruction are intermixed with Jimmy’s present-day dilemmas on and off the court. VERDICT Hints of the film Hoosiers and Bernard Malamud’s classic novel The Natural mark this lengthy tale about emotional pain as the Kirkus family deals with tragedy and suppressed anger. Despite the name-dropping of current NBA stars, there’s a 1950s vibe to the basketball scenes that may be jarring to some readers, and the out-of-sequence time line disrupts the story’s flow. Yet readers will retain a certain curiosity about Lane’s flawed characters’ fate that makes the climactic scene riveting. For sports fiction fans.—Rollie Welch, Cleveland P.L. (Read-alike suggestion by LibraryReads Board, review from LJ)

Million Dollar Arm by J. B. Bernstein (Gallery)

Bernstein was a successful sports agent who grew weary of the cynicism that comes with the intimate dealings in professional sports. Influenced by the success—both on the court and through lucrative advertising contracts back home in China—of Yao Ming in the NBA, the author believed that this situation could be replicated when searching for pitching talent by exploring a country with a similar population. He chose India owing to its love of cricket and its number of young men. Surely, Bernstein reasoned, among all of these men there must be scores who had the raw ability to throw a baseball 90 mph? Here, Bernstein details how he went about conducting a talent search in the country. This is a classic fish-out-of-water story both concerning Bernstein's experience and that of the two young Indian boys he brings to the United States to train. The two young men had never heard of the game, so every weird idiosyncrasy of the minutia-obsessed sport had to be learned. This book will make longtime baseball enthusiasts reflect upon how truly strange the sport is. Further, watching the discovery of the game by these baseball neophytes will reinvigorate the reader’s own fervor for our national pastime. VERDICT Recommended for any baseball fans who have ever wished to relive what it was like to fall in love with their favorite sport all over again. Also, from an anthropological standpoint, it highlights nicely how people from entirely different cultures can benefit from interaction.—Brian Renvall, Mesalands Community Coll., Tucumcari, NM (Read-alike suggestion by LibraryReads Board, review from LJ)