Grantland Quarterly, Vol. 2 by Bill Simmons

Grantland Quarterly, Vol. 2 Reviews

• 
  Jon Thompson

  I miss Grantland, very much.
• 
  Ricky Carrigan

  This is a phenomenal collection of sports reporting, with some interesting pop culture writing sprinkled in. Each piece is pretty great, and though it's from 2012 none of these feel significantly dated. My favorites are probably the pieces on the 2011 NBA lockout (though full disclosure I am concurrently reading Simmons' 700 page masterpiece The Book of Basketball so right now I'm definitely biased towards the NBA), but there is also an excellent piece on Eddie Murphy (written by Simmons) as well. My only criticism; give me more pieces written by women. Out of the possible 39 pieces in this collection only 4 are written by women (an unfortunate and forgettable piece on the Kardashians, another on long distance running, a slightly less forgettable piece on American Horror Story, and one very insightful piece on American Tennis), but more is needed. There's also a short-story at the end that you can totally skip, it's not altogether bad but it is a little heavy-handed, and mostly unnecessary.
• 
  Joel

  I rarely read the site, but I figured there had to be enough decent writing on the site to fill a collection like this over a few months. It's a shame two masturbatory Bill Simmons pieces take up a sizeable chunk of this book. The first is an almost unbearable journey through an imaginary NBA lockout league draft, while the second gives an opinion on every movie in Eddie Murphy's career.
  
  There's some good stuff though, like the two longer boxing stories, Gladwell's piece about the Nets, and the Penn State scandal through the eyes of someone who grew up there. I'll probably go back and read issue 1 now.
  
  I still wish The Classical would come out with a collection like this.
• 
  Kyle

  I love getting this anthology of the best Grantland articles each quarter. There's always some good articles that I missed when they appeared online (the Hagler/Sugar Ray oral history, Brian Phillip's profile of David Stern, and Klosterman's look at the Oasis brothers) and I love reading the good stuff again (Simmons' look at Eddie Murphy's career). Not as cool of a cover design as the first anthology but the Iceman poster was a neat idea. I also really enjoyed the short story at the end.
• 
  Oliver Bateman

  A dreary reminder of how slight and of-the-moment even the best blog coverage can be (Jonathan Abrams' long, well-researched pieces and Wesley Morris' fashion/movie criticism constitute the only "gr8" stuff that appears on GL, alas). Also, some of these "best ofs" are simply lists. Are you kidding me? The same criticisms apply to volume 3. Dan Jenkins-era SI this ain't, although I do enjoy it when GL reprints and annotates classic sportswriting.
• 
  Mike Smith

  I liked this better than the first quarterly. The selections felt like more interesting and more timeless pieces. It felt less like finally catching up on newspaper columns. I especially enjoyed the Eddie Murphy retrospective. It was nicely matched up with a look at the hagler-Leonard fight.
• 
  Cameron

  I love Grantland. It's everything I want to write, sports and pop culture, with an emphasis on fantastic writing over all else. Vol. 2 had some great stuff, although I liked Vol. 1 a bit more.
• 
  David

  e first one waqs much better, but the footnotes for the Eddie Murphy and NBA Players Lockout League are priceless
• 
  Randall

  Too much pop culture nonsense. Not enough strong sports-oriented stuff. Very disappointing product, but, then again, it was always a vanity project. I just hoped for better.
• 
  Herbie

  A attractive volume and a fairly interesting read, but the quality of the essays is decidedly mixed, and there are glaring copy editing mistakes throughout.
• 
  Paul Debraski

  
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