Just installed 2.0RC2- outstanding! They actually managed to make it better!

Every so often, I decide to pick up a commercial, bestsellery type book. I am too hard on popular culture, I say to myself, it is probably really good. After all, millions of readers can’t be wrong, can they?

Oh, yeah they can.

The last time I picked up a formulaic potboiler, it was The DaVinci Code. I wanted to hate it, I really did. Unfortunately, I loved it, I couldn’t put it down, even though I feverishly turned every page while thinking This is a horribly written book… I can’t wait to see what happens next!

So, I had hoped for a similar result with The Book of Fate. It involves many of the same elements that will appear in Dan Brown’s next- high level intrigues, Masonic symbolism in Washington, etc. Meltzer writes some of my favorite comic books, so I figured what the hey?

The plot was plodding and tedious. The characters were people I neither liked nor loathed. The red herrings are obvious, and the resolution was predictable. The only real twist I didn’t see coming, was that I kept reading.

Can someone please explain to me why this is such a big deal? It allows you to all the same things Friendster or Tribe did- 4 years ago!

This is quite simply, the greatest sports biography ever written. It might also be the greatest basketball book ever, and it is possibly the best biography of Bill Bradley ever.

It is particularly interesting reading about Bradley’s college days- how he took Princeton to the Final Four, and scored 58 points in the consolation game, but also how the sharp mind and fierce persistence developed in his later career in the Senate.

You just have to read it.

This book is the story of a single tennis match- the semifinal match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner at the 1968 U.S. Open. Virtually every serve, every stroke, every cheer is detailed- and on that basis alone it would make for an excellent read as some of the greatest sportswriting ever.

McPhee, however, doesn’t stop there. He goes into the backgrounds of the players, their psyches, their styles. Graebner- white, well-off, and a Nixon supporter from Shaker Heights, Ohio describes Ashe’s go-for-broke, leave it all the court risky but athletic game as “liberal, Democratic tennis.” Ashe- African-American, from the South, not poor, but certainly not rich, and a keen observer of race relations as a black man in a white man’s game- in turn describes Graebner’s game as “Republican tennis”- steady, predictable, and very well disciplined.

I have not read many books about tennis, but I cannot imagine a finer one existing.

Because Stephanie thought I should read it. I have always liked Anne Lamott, and I want to write more, so I figured “have at it!”

This wonderful little book draws parallels between fishing, family, philosophy, and the best side dish for osso bucco. Very readable and even oddly moving.

Completely hysterical!!! PPV’d at a friend’s house more or less on a whim- and I laughed harder than I had in months. Potty humor and gratutitous nudity never fail to brighten my day… [sigh]