The Basketball Diaries And The Book Of Nods by Jim Carroll

The Basketball Diaries And The Book Of Nods Reviews

• 
  Margaret

  This was quite the eye-opening read of my youth--keep wishing for a female version but then again, maybe not.
• 
  Tom

  I loved the Jim Carroll Band album - Catholic Boy - and especially 'People Who Died', a rollcall of fallen junkies, hoodlums, and thrillseekers. Reading this book, I realised that these were all his friends - all people who died.
  
  He's still around : [
  http://www.catholicboy.com/]
  
  i re-read it recently, sparked by the street stories of the Ramones (and especially Dee Dee).
  
  The Basketball Diaries details his adventures from 1963, aged 13, playing basketball and getting into scrapes and getting into drugs and the wild life - real slices of New York street life, sharply told.
  
  The Book of Nods has worn less well - but the ambition to reach for the stars while lying in the gutter, to think you are Rimbaud when you sniff Carbona on the Staten Island Ferry, and to struggle to come off heroin before going back to High School all place him firmly in the midst of the Lower East Side nogoodniks who gave birth to punk rock.
• 
  Paul

  Don't be put off by the dodgy Di Caprio vehicle from a few years back...This book has to be one of the finest debut novels around from the last 50 years or so. Heavily autobiographical, The Basketball Diaries is written with verve and authenticity. It's a rough story of growing up in early 70s New York City, told beautifully.
• 
  Pamela Day

  Was just reminded of this book - it has been some years since I read it, but will be reading it again. Loved the rawness of Carroll' writing - the intensity and unvarnished emotion. Possibly a future version of Catcher in the Rye.
  
  Will let you know if I am still as enamored 20 years later...