WWW.WEDNESDAY

WWW. WEDNESDAY asks three questions to prompt you to speak bookishly. To participate, and to see how other book lovers responded, click here. 

1. What are you currently reading? The Book of Joe by Joe Maddon and Tom Verducci. Joe Maddon is the manager who guided the Cubs to their first World Series Championship in 108 years. Before that, he took Tampa Bay from worst-to-first. Yet he never once played major league baseball. How did he build this Hall of Fame resume, how has earned the respect of multi-million dollar superstars, without ever having taken the field as an MLB player?

Because he is a true original, a creative thinker, a voracious reader who applies what he learned from Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway to winning games. He may not have been a great ballplayer, but he's a great lover of baseball and he's done every job in the game -- minor league player, scout, hitting coach. He was 62 years old when he finally hoisted the World Series trophy. His journey delights and inspires me.

 

I began this book Tuesday, which was the first day AL and NL division play offs. I am thinking of baseball, baseball, baseball, and this is the perfect book for me right now.

2. What did you recently finish reading? The Rooster Bar by John Grisham. Four third year law school students -- Todd, Gordon, Mark and Zola -- finally get it: All their super-expensive education will get them is a pile of debt. They were lured to a for-profit diploma mill that churned out graduates unprepared to even pass the bar, much less get a fabulous job at a prestigious law firm.

Tragedy strikes and despair mingles with their disillusionment. They decide to become hustlers themselves. They drop out of school to hide from their student loans and begin practicing law under assumed names. They hustle clients from traffic court and give them completely adequate representation, in exchange for cash, by day. By night, they take turns tending bar at The Rooster Bar. They are nowhere near as clever as they think they are and soon the authorities are looking for them -- everyone from the police to the FBI.

This is the first Grisham I've read in a while and for a time, I enjoyed it. It was kind of fun to watch these ordinary kids go rogue and become outlaws. Then it got too complex for this simple reader. Too many aliases! Too many double crosses and criss crosses! Also, while I understood the law students and their motivations, the only one I really liked was Zola.

 

3. What will read next? I don't know.