Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 9/17/2007

9/17/2000:
Inge de Brujin of the Netherlands betters her own world record in the 100-meter butterfly, capturing her first of three gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. She'll win her other two specialties, the 50- and 100-meter freestyle races, later this week. The 27-year-old Dutch swimmer has broken and rebroken the world records in all three of these events a total of nine times so far this year.

Birthdays:
George Blanda b. 1927
Maureen Connolly b. 1934
Junior Bridgeman b. 1953
John Franco b. 1960
Rasheed Wallace b. 1974

LITERARY FICTION

“A deeply wise and sensual rumination on the hard secrets of love and family.”—Stewart O’Nan

“Ashley Warlick’s novel, Seek the Living, once more puts her in the first rank of American novelists.”—Pat Conroy

Ashley Warlick is celebrated for her lyrical prose and for plumbing the depths of the heart. Family ties are at the center of Seek the Living, in which a woman considers her relationships to her siblings and her husband in the wake of her mother’s death. Warlick’s writing contains a magnetic charge that compels readers ever deeper into her world. See if you don’t feel the pull.

SEEK THE LIVING, by Ashley Warlick (Houghton Miff lin, 2005)