Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 8/20/2011

When asked how he addressed his control problems in 2004, White Sox closer Bill Koch replied: "I just pretend the catcher's mitt is Mark Buehrle's face. They look about the same."

Birthdays:
Sihugo Green b. 1933
Graig Nettles b. 1944
Mark Langston b. 1960
Duffy Waldorf b. 1962
Todd Helton b. 1973

Packers Fact:
The "T.J." in offensive lineman T.J. Lang's name stands for Thomas John.

“A man must take the fat with the lean.”

—CHARLES DICKENS, English novelist

ON WELL, AS LONG AS
THEY’RE PEELED . . .

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AS ADVERTISED
Shurfresh
Whole Peeled Baby
$1.69

supermarket sign

DEAD POETS SOCIETY

Jean-Claude Izzo left us some marvelous novels, among them the Marseilles Trilogy. The series, as black as noir can be, features Fabio Montale. In Solea he’s retired and surprisingly open to love, but wouldn’t you know, the Mafia machine gets him again—through his loyalty to a former lover. Whether it’s because we know this was the last book or because Izzo himself had a sense of fate moving in, Solea is tighter, leaner, and more elegiac than the others, but they’re all good, with a wonderfully colorful setting.

THE MARSEILLES TRILOGY, by Jean-Claude Izzo, translated from the French by Howard Curtis (Europa Editions)