Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 9/15/2007

9/15/1976:
Canada defeats Czechoslovakia, 5-4, in sudden-death overtime to win the inaugural Canada Cup hockey competition at the Forum in Montreal. A goal by Darryl Sittler at 11:33 of the extra session is the game winner after two earlier tallies by Guy Lafleur and Guy Lapointe for Team Canada are both disallowed. The rousing finale is the culmination of a six-team round-robin tournament that brought Canada, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Sweden, Finland and the United States into a non-Olympic tournament setting.

Birthdays:
Ashley Cooper b. 1936
Gaylord Perry b. 1938
Joel Quenneville b. 1958
Joe Morris b. 1960
Dan Marino b. 1961

EPICS

“So compulsively absorbing that reality disappears.”—The New York Times

“A virtuoso achievement...a staggeringly complex and tantalizingly layered tale.”—Chicago Sun-Times

“Few books, at most a dozen or two in a lifetime, affect us in this way.”—Philadelphia Inquirer

A roiling epic of shifting fortunes, complicated characters, and romantic landscapes, and set in the 19th century, The Quincunx is Dickens redux.

THE QUINCUNX, by Charles Palliser (Ballantine Books, 1990)