Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 7/16/2007

Addressing modern challenges to the age-old bromide that Abner Doubleday invented baseball on a cow pasture in Cooperstown, New York, noted historian John Thorn commented: "Abner Doubleday, Santa Claus and Dracula are equally mythic figures."

Birthdays:
Joey Giardello b. 1930
Margaret Smith Court b. 1942
Miguel Indurain b. 1964
Claude Lemieux b. 1965
Barry Sanders b. 1968

QUIRKY FICTION

Glen Duncan is an ambitious writer who sets up premises that are not easy to pull off. In I, Lucifer (Grove Press, 2003), he let Satan defend himself, and in this novel, he has a dead man narrate as he hovers above his own casket. Luckily, Duncan’s talent equals his ambition, making Death of an Ordinary Man the most insightful, witty, moving beyond-the-grave novel since Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. An enduring, powerful exploration of life, love, and family.

DEATH OF AN ORDINARY MAN, by Glen Duncan (Grove Press, 2005)