Wait Till Next Year [Book Review]

November 11, 2017

Wait Until Next Year!!!

This nostalgic and family-centered memoir is loads of fun for baseball fans (especially Dodgers, Yankees, or Giants fans)! (Might even be a great Christmas gift!)

From loyal baseball fans, the refrain “Wait Until Next Year!” can often be heard after suffering a disappointing loss. In fact, it was after the Dodgers’ loss in Game 7 of the recent World Series that a fan vehemently shouted these exact words captured by a reporter’s microphone and camera. At that time, I was reminded of Goodwin’s Wait Till Next Year that had been on my TBR list for some time and which had been declared one of my husband’s favorite reads last year. In honor of the recent, well-played, and highly spirited 2017 World Series, I decided it’s timely to read and review this popular memoir.

Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Genre/categories: Nonfiction, biography, memoir, baseball, nostalgia

Summary:

Doris Kearns Goodwin writes an endearing memoir of growing up in the late 40s and 50s as family, baseball, neighborhood, and church provided the secure and stable foundation for her life. Memorably, her Long Island neighborhood was divided between Dodgers, Giants, and Yankees fans. Through baseball she learned how to tell a great narrative and to keep hope alive, from her mom she grew to appreciate the joy of reading, and from her father she experienced the joys and disappointments of baseball. During the Dodgers’ scrappy early years, Doris and her father were ardent and loyal fans and they lived out the slogan “wait until next year” over and over again.

“It was that October [of the’49 World Series] that I first understood the pain, bravado, and prayer woven into the simple slogan that served Dodgers fans as a recurring anthem: ‘Wait till next year.’ ” ~Doris Kearns Goodwin

In Wait Till Next Year, Doris tells of meeting baseball heroes, of nail-biting games, of having to confess at Confession that she wished the other team’s players would be injured so Dodgers could win, of the exciting World Series win in 1955, and of her sorrow as the Dodgers left Brooklyn in 1957. She was so devastated by the loss of her team that she avoided baseball for years after the Dodgers left, and when she was convinced as a young adult to attend a Red Sox game, she transferred her loyalties, started keeping score again, and passed on her love of the game to her son. In addition to the loss of the Dodgers, she also tells of the loss of her mother at an early age.

Amazon Rating (November): 4.5 Stars.

My Thoughts:

Doris Kearns Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize winning author, a role model for women, and well-known and respected for her presidential biographies.

Wait Till Next Year is more than a great memoir; it’s a nostalgic, tender, humorous, and kind-hearted reflection on family and suburban living, current events, and social issues in the late 40s, 50s, and 60s. She describes a time when baseball was the national pastime, when parents didn’t worry about their children playing outside until dark, when children knew all the local shopkeepers, and ran in and out of their friends’ homes throughout the long summer days. She bonded with her father by learning to keep score in an official score book and then recounting the game for him (like an announcer) when he arrived home from work. Kearns Goodwin enjoyed a special relationship with her father and this helped form her interests, abilities, and skills as a historian and story-teller. In addition, as a youngster with spunk and an activist spirit, she devised a plan for her entire neighborhood to seek shelter in case of a bomb during the Cold War, and she wrote a heartfelt letter to President Eisenhower during the Little Rock Nine desegregation crisis.

Kearns Goodwin was encouraged to discover that her hope in the next game and the next season (wait till next year) could be applied to life in general and this idea helped her gain hope after the devastating loss of her mother.

Thoughts From the Hubs:

My husband thoroughly enjoyed Kearns Goodwin’s memoir because he loves history and because he spent his early years in New York and some of his fondest memories are listening to baseball games on the radio and attending a few games with his grandfather. Although he’s an ardent baseball fan, he wants readers to know that if you’re not a die-hard baseball fan or the mere mention of baseball’s greatest players are less than thrilling, you can still enjoy this memoir because it’s about so much more than baseball. My husband suggests that for Kearns Goodwin, her memoir describes the excitement of an era where family life is centered around parents and small town communities and the pursuit of the American Dream, including corner store business opportunities for entrepreneurs, first time home ownership, and later, the purchase of a television. Children strongly identified with their parents’ opportunities and pleasures and were brought into an adult world via sports, not so much for children to pursue their own opportunities but for them to appreciate and imitate character traits and to identify with the opportunities of others. Her father quietly used love of the game, the discipline of record keeping, loyalty to the team, and attention to detail to shape her character. Loyalty was a virtue alongside the American Dream…loyalty to family and friends and teams. Her early life was local and very much centered in the town and neighborhood in which she lived. Her self concept and self-worth were tied into her role in the family, her Catholic religion, and her team.

“I was a Catholic, a resident of Southard Avenue, a Dodgers fan,
a Rockville Centre girl.” ~Doris Kearns Goodwin

My husband’s rating: 5 Stars.

Recommended. I enthusiastically and highly recommend Wait Till Next Year for readers who love reading about a curious, enthusiastic, highly spirited, and thoughtful girl, for those who appreciate the retelling of history from a personal perspective, for baseball fans, and for those who love a well-written memoir.

My Rating: 4 Stars

Wait Til Next Year Information Here

Meet the Author, Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin won the Pulitzer Prize in history for No Ordinary Time, which was a bestseller in hardcover and trade paper. She is also the author of Wait Till Next Year, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. She lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband, Richard Goodwin. More information here: http://www.doriskearnsgoodwin.com/

QOTD:

Have you read Wait Till Next Year? I’d love to hear your reflections.

Happy Reading Bookworms!

“Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.”
~Rainer Maria Rilke

“I love the world of words, where life and literature connect.”
~Denise J Hughes

“Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad ones.”
~Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“I read because books are a form of transportation, of teaching, and of connection! Books take us to places we’ve never been, they teach us about our world, and they help us to understand human experience.”
~Madeleine Riley, Top Shelf Text

Extras:

Readers might be interested to know that two books I have reviewed on the blog were recently listed in the ‘top 20 books for far in 2017’ according to Amazon editors.

Ginny Moon (review)

Beartown (review)

In other news, will you be seeing Murder on the Orient Express this weekend?! Have you read the book?

Book Information Here.

Movie Trailer Here.

Edited to add a link to the DVD now available.

Last, Wonder is soon to be released! (November 17) I can’t wait!

Wonder

Review Here.

Movie Trailer Here.

***Edited to add a link to the DVD now available.

Looking Ahead!

Gah! I indicated last week that I had planned to read The Other Alcott….it’s still on my TBR and planned for a future review. In my reading life, I operate better from Inspiration than Demand. I do indicate all my current reads on Goodreads if you want to see what I’ve listed there. This is all to say that next week remains undecided. Except that on Tuesday I’m working on a special blog post titled “Top Ten Books I hope My Grandchildren Read.” (You might glean some ideas for children’s or young adult’s gifts!)

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