Customer Rating:  
Summary: A Great book about more than baseball
Comment: Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella is a riveting book, not just about baseball, but also about a journey to meet a dream. Ray Kinsella, the main character who is a farmer and baseball lover, goes out to collect people for his majestic field. I believe that this book is well written because of its first person narrative and descriptive writing. Although this book seems like something for a sports fan, but anybody who loves to read and be amused throughout a book, this is a perfect read. This book is a page turner and I truly believe that everybody who reads it will be pleased.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Kinsella gets it right
Comment: Baseball is something sacred, especially when shared between fathers and sons. And "Shoeless Joe" is centered around that very thing - a lost son searching for the ghost of his father, chasing dreams and hearing voices in his head.
And of course there is the romance of the game, something that could turn an otherwise normal cornfield in the middle of Iowa into a sacred gathering place for ghosts of the game's past.
And it's a love story between Ray and Annie as well.
It's a beautiful book, one that I've enjoyed many times. Before my dad died, we even made a detour to Iowa to see the cornfield they carved up for the movie "Field of Dreams."
There's a reason baseball inspires so much poetry, literature and art, and Kinsella is one of the best at capturing it. If you love the game and great storytelling, then this book is for you.
-- John Nemo, author of the baseball novel The King's Game
Customer Rating:
Summary: If you read it, a cliche wil vanish
Comment: Somewhere along the road the phrase 'if you build it, they will come' has come to signify a sort of brainless reassurance. In fact, the message of the book is that if you build something with a clarity of vision and purity of heart, there will be results worthy of your effort.
Reading this beautiful book about baseball (and make no mistake, it's really about baseball)will liberate you from the power of that cliche. It will also give you a haunting, beautiful model from which to build your own fields.
Lynn Hoffman, author of the novel bang BANG
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Book to Read When You Feel Magic Seeping From Your Life
Comment: Imagine listening to Peggy Lee singing "Is That All There Is" and feeling like you need to sleep for a week to escape the inane, predictable world. And then imagine youself feeling inspired by a short but magical novel that seems to say that just about anything is possible. If you're in the doldrums and tempted to become a cynic, read W. P. Kinsella's SHOELESS JOE. Peggy won't sound so convincing after you're finished.
Yes, of course, the plot is slightly different from the movie's, but not by much. A few scenes from the book are omitted for the sake of pacing, and Hollywood made J.D. Salinger into bestselling writer Terence Mann for legal reasons in case the recluse got his shorts all bunched up. But the storyline of FIELD OF DREAMS is quite faithful to the novel. So why read the book, you ask.
First, Kinsella's style is quite poetic. Although it becomes a bit saccharine in spots, it nevertheless has an easy feel to it. The paragraphs flow with a descriptive grace that is a bit magical in itself. There are some very long digressions, but even these are interesting as they slip nicely into Kinsella's tale of baseball as the saving grace of America--and one man in particular: Ray Kinsella.
The best reason to read this book, however, is to have the author's original words, as opposed to the resulting screenplay, sink into your soul so that you can feel the magic of the prose-poetry at a deeper level, where it can take root.
Kinsella manages to do two things in this novel: he speaks of the importance of the simple things in life: a farm, a pitcher of lemonade, a kiss, baseball. Simultaneously, he implies that there is a magic woven into the very fabric of reality, a magic that can happen to anyone. Paradoxically, it is this magic that ultimately makes the simple things accessible to us. Maybe that's why kids can have fun with rocks, sticks, and carboard boxes--kids who also believe in magic and baseball.
So "is that all there is"? No, Peggy. There is a mysterious world in the cornfields of Ray Kinsella's farm, a world that can touch our own if we allow ourselves to once again believe in dreams and possibilities.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Uncategorizable Sport or Inspritational?
Comment: Shoeless Joe is an inspirational novel about a baseball fanatic from a small town in Iowa. Ray Kinsella the main character, is a struggling farmer economically. One night Ray hears a voice while on his farm saying, "If you build it they will come". Ray the dreamer he is, decides to knock down his valuable crops and build a baseball field, in hope of bringing back his favorite player Shoeless Joe Jackson. So Ray follows the voices and goes on a long journey from Iowa to Boston to Minnesota in search of answers to finally find the answers to his dreams and his economic problems.
If you are a fan of dreaming and hope then this book is for you. This book is very similar to the movie, Field Of Dreams. However, in the novel W.P. Kinsella elaborates a lot more on the settings and it is a lot more enjoyable. If you are a fan of non-fiction I do not reccomond this novel. The events in this book are farfetched but really inspiring.
The theme in this book mistaken by most is not baseball. Kinsella brings up the idea of hope, father-son, and to not give up on your dreams.
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