Open Ice Contest Winners

A final bit of house keeping to end the year of 2008.

The winners of the Wiley/Hockey Book Reviews.com Open Ice giveaway are:

Finnegan Forrester-Webb of Toronto, ON

Cornelius Hardenburgh of Somerville, MA

Gregg Drinnan of Kamloops, BC

Mike Pinzuti of New York, NY

Doug Norris of Denver, CO

Congratulations!

Win 1 of 5 Copies of Open Ice for Christmas!

In honour of being named the top hockey book of 2008, publisher HB Fenn is giving away 5 copies of Jack Falla's Open Ice: Reflections and Confessions of a Hockey Lifer.

This contest is open exclusively to the readers of HockeyBookReviews.com. All you have to do email me with the subject line "Open Ice."

That's it! It's the easiest contest ever. I will draw the lucky 5 winners and announce it on Christmas Day!

Best of luck, and have a very Merry Christmas!

Canada Reads Hockey 2009

Canada Reads has announced its list of books and panelists for the upcoming competition in 2009.

Canada Reads is a CBC radio annual contest where they determine one book each year that every Canadian supposedly will enjoy.

In 2008, a hockey book, of sorts, won. Paul Quarrington's King Leary, defended in the competition by hockey writer/musician Dave Bidini, is a novel about a legendary retired ice hockey player living in a nursing home. The novel replays his life in flash backs as he journeys to Toronto to record a ginger ale commercial.

Past winners include Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill, A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews, Rockbound by Frank Parker Day, The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe, Next Episode by Jean-Louis Major, In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Odaatje.

Quarrington's book was the first hockey book ever nominated in 7 years of this competition. No hockey books were nominated for the 2009 competition. Instead, we will find a winner from one of The Book Of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards, The Outlander by Gil Adamson, The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant by Michel Tremblay, translated by Sheila Fischman and Fruit by Brian Francis.

These are all undoubtedly worthy, but none have anything to do with hockey. And that's why you are, and that's why I am here.

So here are some suggestions of the top hockey books for future editions of the wildly popular Canada Reads competitions:

The Game by Ken Dryden.
From Amazon.ca: An enduring classic, Ken Dryden's The Game has lost none of its luster since its original publication in 1983, and remains the one book every hockey fan must know. he Game is funny, acutely observed, and full of insight into human nature and the importance of sport in today's society. Dryden's portraits of his teammates are precise and unforgettable. Catching the balance between banter and seriousness, Dryden describes Scotty Bowman's pep talks; Serge Savard motivating teammates; the river skater Lafleur, in uniform hours early, reappearing and startling everyone into focus with a whack of his stick on the table; Larry Robinson sensing the wrong atmosphere before a game against a weak opponent and resetting the stakes with the unanswerable remark, "Gotta play it--might as well win it." The Game remains the classic insider's account of Canada's national sport.

Our Life With The Rocket by Roch Carrier
From Amazon.ca: Quebec fans revered him: They followed his accomplishments with tenacity; they taped pictures of Richard and his family to their kitchen walls, to their shop windows and to their store cash registers; and they memorized his statistics, his history and the names of his children. His season suspension in March 1955, after an on-ice brawl, ignited the infamous Richard Riots in Montreal, riots that some Canadian historians have suggested were a noisy precursor to Quebec's Quiet Revolution. In this lyrical and beautifully wrought narrative, Carrier evokes the thrill of watching or listening to the Rocket and his teammates play, the joy and agony of the Canadiens' rivalry with the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the struggle of daily life that formed the backdrop for Maurice Richard's spectacular accomplishments. Our Life with the Rocket also follows the history of a young boy, Roch himself, whose youthful worship of Richard was tempered by politics and personal life and evolved into an entirely different sort of appreciation for an extraordinary man.

Open Ice: Reflections and Confessions of a Hockey Lifer by the late Jack Falla.
From HockeyBookReviews.com: Open Ice is a collection of heartwarming and witty essays about hockey. The brilliance of the book is the author's effortless ability to make each individual essay flow from one into another. He accomplishes this using highly personal and reflective look back at hockey and of life. Each essay is part of the author's personal journey. Through his collection of hockey essays Falla is very open in engaging the reader in his struggles and dislike of aging.

What other books do you think deserve mention?

Interview With The Author: The Late Jack Falla of Open Ice and Home Ice

I have to admit this is a tough one.

Back in September I reviewed Jack Falla's excellent new book titled Open Ice: Reflections and Confessions of a Hockey Lifer. The next day, he contacted me to offer me his thanks.

I must admit to being ecstatic. One of the greatest hockey writers ever not only read my review, but he liked it and enough to go out of his way to tell me so.

Then I got courageous and asked him if I could interview him about the book. I fully expected him to brush me off at least at that moment. After all, he's an incredibly busy guy and he could be conducting interviews with so many more beneficial sources than my little little website.

Without hesitation Falla enthusiastically accepted the offer to be interviewed by me. I would contact him a day later with my questions, and he would clear time from his schedule to make sure the interview had center stage.

I'm not sure if I was more incredulous of what just happened or down right nervous about what was going to happen. After all, here I am, a complete amateur, interviewing a writing legend, veteran journalist and a 20 year University professor of journalism. I definitely was out of my league.

Jack Falla not only obliged me but made me feel like a million bucks in doing so. He gave me the rare feeling that maybe, just maybe, my hockey writing was going to get me somewhere yet. He was truly an amazing and humble man.

Three days later Jack Falla died of heart failure. I could not believe it.

It has been about a month now, and I'm hoping I'm airing this interview in good taste. The interview was intended to promote his new book, but as far as I'm concerned this interview is now my way of saying thank you to him.

---

I recently had the unreal experience of interviewing Jack Falla about his new book Open Ice: Reflections and Confessions of a Hockey Lifer.

Falla is hockey writing and reporting legend, and a professor of journalism at Boston University. Talk about intimidating. I'm a complete amateur interviewing the master. I was actually afraid to ask Falla if he would allow me to interview him, for fear of disturbing him from his busy schedule.

But Falla was more than happy to oblige me in my request. What follows is the interview about his new book, Open Ice, available in bookstores everywhere.

HBR - In 2001 you wrote the critically acclaimed Home Ice: Reflections on Backyard Rinks and Frozen Ponds. Your new book, Open Ice, follows in the same manor, only you call it a companion book rather than sequel, which is apt. Did you have any concerns about trying to follow up the great success of Home Ice?

Jack Falla - Yes. I was concerned -- rightly, I think -- that I'd said almost all of what I had to say about my backyard rink and the way it connects me to the people I love. I thought I had more to say but that I had to get off of my rink and onto the road to say it. Once I started writing OPEN ICE I stopped thinking off HOME ICE as a kind of competitor. They're different books and yet each is about using the game as a lens through which to examine other facets of life.

HBR - In compiling the collection of essays for Open Ice, you brilliantly weave the book together through the recurring theme of dealing with getting older. Was this by design or something you discovered as you went along?

Jack Falla - It wasn't by design. Indeed, I didn't even know it was happening -- or the degree to which it happened -- until I was reading the page proofs. Sometimes we go to the writing desk and are surprised by what happens there. OPEN ICE was one of those times. It was also on the page proofs that I realized how much of the book is about my wife Barbara.

HBR - The book opens with you paying your respects to the great Rocket Richard. He transcended the game in Canada and especially in Quebec. How important was he to the game down in the United States?

Jack Falla - I'm afraid the Rocket didn't enjoy a high or well known niche in the mid-20th Century pantheon of US sports heroes. People outside of NHL cities knew the name but that was about all. It was Bobby Orr who took the game coast to coast in the USA and Wayne Gretzky who took it global -- or at least hemispherical. I hope my essay on Richard helps to acquaint today's hockey fans with the Rocket's iconic importance.

HBR - In another chapter you reminisce about the day back in the mid-60s where you got up the nerve to ask Alex Delvecchio if you could put on the goalie pads and practice for the Detroit Red Wings. What did you learn that day and how important was that day in your life?

Jack Falla - I learned I could push through the wall of fear, something I still have to do four times a week at Boston University where I teach two classes. I suffer from stage fright or some sort of social anxiety. But the fear is OK as long as you can harness it. Fear feeds performance -- Most players, every goalie, and some writers know that.

HBR - You devote a chapter to great old arenas of the Original Six days. What was your favorite old barn, and why?

Jack Falla - I'm one of the diminishing number of people who saw all six buildings. Now, sadly, no one else can ever see them because so many are gone. I'm a Bruins fan so the Boston Garden will always be special to me.

HBR - You devote entire chapters the long ago lost lives of Georges Vezina and Hobey Baker. What drew you to these two great hockey personalities?

Jack Falla - A chance connection with a young man in Chicoutimi (Vezina's hometown) who tended Vezina's grave and had such reverence for Georges' memory drew me to the grave site and, from there, to the Hall of Fame archives to learn what I could about one of the least known members of the Hall of Fame Similarly, a friend offered to get me into the archives of St. Paul's School, Concord, NH. - where Hobey Baker went to school and learned to play hockey. I couldn't pass up the offer. And yet Hobey was hard to capture in words. Even now he seems to dangle tauntingly out of reach.

HBR - Is the modern game as good as the days of the Original Six? Or as good as Wayne Gretzky's 1980s when you covered hockey for Sports Illustrated?

Jack Falla - The modern players and teams are better coached, conditioned and trained. Players today are bigger, stronger, faster, better equipped, better protected and just plain superior to the players of the 50s and 60s when I first started watching the NHL.

But there was a romance to old game that I don't think exists today. There were only six teams, players were recognizable, some rivalries were fierce. I PREFER the game of my youth. But I'm the first to say today's game is better.

HBR - You openly admit that while in Italy you were more preoccupied with your hockey pool than with the Sistine Chapel. Is the Sistine Chapel that bad, or is hockey just that good?

Jack Falla - That's why I gave up fantasy hockey. One shouldn't be sitting in the Sistine Chapel and thinking only about trading the then slumping Alexander Frolov's ex-Commie butt. A brief fling with fantasy hockey distracted me from the art of the game just as it had distracted me from the priceless art in the Sistine.

HBR - Open Ice concludes with a chapter about your back yard rink, which is also the entire topic of Home Ice. Are you still planning on putting the backyard rink in this winter?

Jack Falla - No. Twenty five years is enough. That said, I should point out that the Grandchildren's Lobby -- an unscrupulous and well funded political action group -- is putting on tremendous pressure as summer turns to fall. Grandpa Jack is holding firm -- but not as firm as I was two months ago. Grandchildren are hard to resist.

HBR - Name your favorite hockey book(s) not written by Jack Falla.

Jack Falla - Ken Dryden's The Game makes all else a fight for 2nd place... I enjoyed Eric Duhatschek's King of Russia, Roch Carrier's The Hockey Sweater...Brian Kennedy's Growing Up Hockey...David Bidini's Tropic of Hockey and almost anything by Roy MacGregor.

HBR - You teach sports journalism at Boston University. Do you have any famous graduates?

Jack Falla - Fluto Shinzawa is the Boston Globe's Bruins beat writer. Lisa Altobelli's work appears occasionally in Sports Illustrated...A. K. Clemons' work can be found in ESPN the Magazine and ESPN.com...New York Daily News Yankees beat writer Mark Fiensand is a friend and former student.

HBR - How are your Boston Bruins going to do this season?

Jack Falla - The only honest answer is -- it's unknowable. But I think they may take one small step back before they surge forward. Much depends on Patrice Bergeron's return from a season-ending concussion.

HBR - Are you working on a new hockey book?

Jack Falla - Yes, I'm working on another novel, this one dealing with an NHL team owner, the rise of a Euro Super League, and various sub-themes most of which have to do with love, money and hockey

Jack Falla's new book Open Ice: Reflections and Confessions of a Hockey Lifer is now available on book store shelves everywhere. Also check out my complete book review of Open Ice.

Jack Falla Dies At Age 62

Just days after the release of the much acclaimed book Open Ice, writer/educator Jack Falla died suddenly. He was just 62.

The Boston Globe has a touching remembrance, including the above photo. The Hockey News says it was heart failure.

Mark Feinsand, a former student of Falla's who know covers the New York Yankees for the New York Daily News, remembers his mentor at Blogging The Bombers.

This is a surreal moment for me. Just the other day I completed an interview with Falla (yet to be published). I remember thinking to myself that I'm a complete amateur interviewing the best in the business and the mentor for so many other sports journalists. He treated with me great class and respect, regardless of who I was.

Open Ice by Jack Falla

Though you are never supposed to judge a book this way, the first thing that really jumps out about the late Jack Falla's Open Ice: Reflections and Confessions of a Hockey Lifer is the beautiful color. No hockey fan can resist the nostalgic cover of vast, smooth ice disturbed only by the skate marks of a young hockey player. The ice is a brilliant blue, seemingly endless as it matches the cloudless winter sky.

| Also See: Interview With The Late Jack Falla |

The cover is enough to warrant at least picking up the book off the store shelf and flipping through a few pages. After reading just a few passages it is quickly apparent that the true beauty of this book is the author's natural gift of literary genius.

Jack Falla covered the National Hockey League for Sports Illustrated in the 1980s before become a professor of sports journalism at his Alma mater, Boston University. He has also found time to author six hockey books, most notably the highly acclaimed Home Ice: Reflections on Backyard Rinks and Frozen Ponds.

Falla returns to the successful formula of collecting essays and personal memories in Open Ice: Reflections and Confessions of a Hockey Lifer. Falla refers to the book, again published by Wiley, not as Home Ice's sequel but it's companion volume.

Buy at | Amazon.ca- chapters.indigo.ca - Amazon.com|

Open Ice is a collection of heartwarming and witty essays about hockey. The brilliance of the book is the author's effortless ability to make each individual essay flow from one into another. He accomplishes this using highly personal and reflective look back at hockey and of life.

Each essay is part of the author's personal journey. Through his collection of hockey essays Falla is very open in engaging the reader in his struggles and dislike of aging.

The book captures the reader early with the opening chapter about the death of Rocket Richard, the perfect launching point for the author's reflections on getting older. He deals with this like so many others by trying to recapture a bit of his youth by skating on Ottawa's Rideau Canal and by taking his grandson to his first Boston Bruins' game. He reminisces about the good old days of the Original Six and of a chance encounter with Alex Delvecchio and of course of back yard rinks. Along the way we learn a lot about Falla, Richard, Delvecchio, Jean Beliveau, Georges Vezina and Hobey Baker, amongst others.

Everyone's favorite chapter will likely be "Short Shifting in Fantasy Land," where the author declares his unhealthy addiction to his hockey pool, as he hilariously finds himself contemplating his fantasy hockey team while sitting in the Sistine Chapel!

But the most important thing we learn about is life. Through Falla's journey we learn that the key to learning about life and about ourselves is "not by looking back but by looking within."

This is a fantastic book folks! I highly recommend it.

Buy The Book - Amazon - Chapters

2008 Hockey Book Preview: Open Ice by Jack Falla

The book: Open Ice: Reflections and Confessions of a Hockey Lifer, Hardcover, 256 pages
The Author: Jack Falla
The Publisher: Wiley
Release Date: August 29th, 2008
Pre-order: Amazon - Chapters

Book Description
From one of the sports world's most celebrated hockey writers--a companion volume to his heartwarming Home Ice.

Second only to family, the game of hockey is the tribe to which sportswriter Jack Falla passionately belongs. If Home Ice let readers in on the role hockey played in his early life, Open Ice takes them on a trip beyond his backyard rink to a reunion of the six living members of the five-Cups-in-a-row Montreal Canadiens of 1956-60; his chat with the legendary Alex Delvecchio; the "rink rats" of Boston, fans who played hockey at all hours of the night; and a memorable Bruins game with his grandson. A collection of essays that touches on hockey's greats, like "Rocket" Richard and the mysterious Hobey Baker, as well as the game's enduring nostalgic power, Open Ice is a treat for hockey lovers everywhere.

About The Author
Jack Falla is the author of five books, most notably Home Ice, a collection of essays and memoirs that the New York Times’ Robert Lipsyte called “literary hot chocolate that will warm your heart.”

Jack covered the National Hockey League for Sports Illustrated in the 1980s. During that time he combined with SI photographer Heinz Kluetmeier to produce the book Sports Illustrated Hockey.

Joe's Note
I'm going to tell you a dirty little secret. I have never read anything by Jack Falla before. Which amazes me, because he very well might be the best literary writer in all of hockey. I'm very
much looking forward to Open Ice.