Weekend picks for book lovers

What should you read this weekend? Paste BN's picks for book lovers include the posthumous memoir by ESPN's Stuart Scott, and a scary horror novel about twins.

Every Day I Fight by Stuart Scott with Larry Platt; foreword by Robin Roberts; Blue Rider Press, 320 pp.; non-fiction

You're not always looking for a final score when wading through highlights of a game on ESPN's SportsCenter. Maybe you want to know the details behind the outcome. Or maybe you just like to hear the anchors narrate the highlights because they're each so idiosyncratically good at what they do.

Stuart Scott, who died on Jan. 4 at age 49 after a protracted battle with cancer, was one of the very best storytellers working for the flagship sports broadcast.

Scott mounted upon each highlight montage a crisp percussive delivery with verbal riffs steeped in the freewheeling streetwise eclecticism of Hip-Hop Nation: "Call him butter, 'cause he's on a roll!" "He's as cool as the other side of the pillow!" "And the Lawd says you got to riiiiiise up!"

Reading Every Day I Fight, Scott's posthumous memoir, is almost like listening to him speak to you in his familiar baritone, albeit more intimately.

Paste BN says ***½ out of four. Scott "makes you enjoy the ride, even at its rougher points."

The Damned by Andrew Pyper; Simon & Schuster, 304 pp.; fiction

In this horror novel, a young man who died and "returned" is haunted by his twin sister, who didn't make it back from the afterlife.

Paste BN says ***½. Well-written … chill-inducing."

Mosquitoland by David Arnold; Viking, 352 pp.; fiction

After her parents' divorce, 16-year-old Mim Malone sets out on a 947-mile road trip to Cleveland to visit her sick mother.

Paste BN says ****. "Mosquitoland stings in all the right places, which is why it will no doubt be many teenagers' new favorite book and win over the crustiest old-timer, too."

It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War by Lynsey Addario; Penguin Press;, 368; non-fiction

Memoir by a photojournalist, reported from the dangerous front lines of Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur, the Congo and Libya.

Paste BN says ***½. Addario's "story is compelling, and the action is relentless."

The Martini Shot by George Pelecanos; Little, Brown, 293 pp.; fiction

A collection of short crime fiction, including the fine "The Confidential Informant," about a man too gentle and shambling for criminal life.

Paste BN says ***½. Pelecanos is "always readable."

Contributing reviewers: Gene Seymour, Brian Truitt, Matt Damsker, Charles Finch