What I’ve Learned So Far

How do I know this? Well, besides my own high esteem for Moneyball and now The Blind Side, I have my wife’s opinion of the latter.

Some things you should know about my wife’s reading habits:

• She reads waaaay more books than I do. After all, I’m just a pro writer and history Ph.D. student, but she’s a book junkie.
• She reads fiction almost to the exclusion of nonfiction, and she’s especially prolific with her reading of science fiction and mysteries.
• Because she reads so much, so fast, she’s often running out of things to read. (When I hear her snap a book shut after she’s finished it, I frequently make a big “sluuuurp!” sound. Sometimes she makes this sound pre-emptively.)
• I often suggest books I own to her, because I tend to have a few hunded lying around; her typical response is “But the books you read are crap.” She is not, repeat not, a fan of books on history, foreign policy, energy policy, or — and let me make this perfectly clear — sports.

So that gives you some context.

Two nights ago she was once again in a nothing-to-read predicament, and I handed her The Blind Side. I think she was more willing to read it because she had heard me laugh out loud at parts of it — parts which I had then read to her. Anyway, she accepted it from me for want of anything better (i.e. fictional) to read.

Yesterday morning she complained to me that the book kept her up too late — she was reading it until 1 a.m. Last night she was sitting next to me on the couch and laughing out loud at intervals, which prompted her to share the parts of the book she found so funny.

The short version: If Michael Lewis can get my wife to react like this to a sports book, it’s proof positive that he’s writer of awesome bad-assery.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 at 11:52 am and is filed under Books.