Customer Reviews

Bump and Run

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I took me 3 months to get thru this boring book.I thought would have some exciting stuff. Just some dumb stories about how some kid got his dads football team and some dumb BS stories with some underworld king. Hated it... A S

I just finished Mike Lupica's book, Bump and Run and I can honestly say it is one of the funniest, sassiest books I have read in a long time. This guy can write in a way that you can hear the voices of the characters. Being a woman I particularly enjoyed the toughness and fiestiness of the female characters. It was the kind of book that demanded you read it in its entirety as soon as possible, the pacing was great. It was hilarious and at the same time you couldn't help but feel you were getting the inside view of the NFL..all I can say is when is his next book coming out??

This novel was advertised as being funny but most of its humor is more stupid than funny. The basic idea of a LasVegas casino geter becoming an NFLowner had promise but Lupica just goes over the top in his satire. Good satire requiresat least some nuance as well as a degree of moral seriousness and Lupica displays none of this in the novel which was full of cariacatures but no characters. I will continue to read his nonfiction but I doubt I will ready any more of his novels.

I tend to listen to what Imus reads since he is a fairly intelligient guy, opinionated, arrogant and probably a pain to work with, but intelligient guy. I like the banter on the show between Lupicka and the staff. So, I ran out and ordered this book from Amazon. Frankly, I was disappointed. Reads OK but gets tedious. The Author uses all this slang and introduces all these characters with bizarre names. Nothing really to hang your hat on except confusion. Also, the juicy fun parts are like those late nite movies in hotels, just a tease and a pain if you know what I mean. Anyway, I'd read it if the library were closed and I became poor overnite not allowing me access to Amazon. Beyond that, I'll stick with nonfiction, least you learn something.

To it's credit, "Bump & Run" is a light novel that readers will finish very quickly, if at all. There are a handful of descriptive gags that may/may not get a chuckle, but I found nothing that was laugh out loud hilarious.

The main problem with "Bump & Run" is that there really isn't much of a story to be had. Jack Molloy inherits the New York Hawks; much to the chagrin of his stepmother, his two younger siblings, the Hawks management staff, the team, the coaches and the rest of the NFL.

What follows is a thin story about whether or not Jack actually wants the team, and whether or not he can convince the other league owner's to vote for his ownership approval.

The Hawk players are intended to be reflections of the "superstar jocks" of today's NFL. They really come off as poorly developed louts. The team would have done well without any of them on the active roster. There's a very shallow relationship between Jack and a waitress from the club the players hang out at, but very little effort was put into that portion of the story as well.

"Bump & Run" has a television pilot quality to it and will be a hit or miss book with readers. You'll either love it or hate it. All of the characters: be they team members, girlfriends, sportscasters, owners, etc. are all painted with the biggest stereotypical brush in the box.

You might want to let this one stay on the shelf and tune in to the real NFL for the true characters in the sport.

It's pretty clear what happened here: Lupica read Jenkins, thought it was great stuff, and decided he could do the same thing. The similarities are legion, right down to the endless stream of nicknames like "White Trash", "ATM", "Second Story", etc. And to include a scene such as the one in which the Italian place-kicker reverts to his soccer roots and heads a pass into the end zone makes one wonder exactly where Lupica intended his book to fall on the humor scale: Satire? Farce? Who knows? This book is equivalent to the so-called "teen" movies in its sophistication level.

I have two of Lupica's books, acquired after seeing him touted on the Don Imlus show. This one I got through the other one I had to quit. His writing style bothers me in that his character development, plot and story line are mediocre to poor. ...

This is unquestionably the most hilarious sports related novel I have ever read. I tried, but was unsuccessful in putting this book down....a gut wrenching laugh out loud story.

Bump and Run gives the reader a back stage pass to the inner sanctum of an NFL franchise. Lupica takes us for an incredible ride through team ownership and provides us with a fascinating glimpse at many of today's hair raising issues....you will shudder.

Don't miss this "must read"....it is fabulous!

The characters in this book apparently live in a world with which most of the readers could not identify. The heroes are Los Vegas sleaze operators. The bums are anyone associated with a religious faith or phony enough to attend chapel services. The continual, tedious street language - it seems in almost every other sentence is tiring.

Is this really the pervading moral tone in professional football today? I don't believe that every individual involved could be so totally, spiritually bankrupt that they would universally contribute to the ugly morass as portrayed in the book.

If I were the author and had to write about this life for most of the fall season I would opt for a dish washing job.

I tried to finish the book but realized half way through that I did not care about any of the characters. They would all deserve each other and only remind us that these kinds of people in the end would be so effective in creating their own hell.

Or I could be out of touch. Perhaps the author knows his audience and this kind of story sells - just like all the bad movies about violent, hateful, unlovely characters who kill, scream, crash, burn and bore the viewer all in one seating.

Unfortunately reading this book would take longer.

In Bump & Run, author Mike Lupica, out of the NY Daily News, tries real hard at being Dan Jenkins but, like everyone else, has come up just shy of the first down marker.

Sometime, you gotta play hurt, and other times, you should stay in the trainer's room.