The First Day of the Rest of My Life

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

I promised a book review, and here it is.

So I finished reading "Why My Wife Thinks I'm An Idiot" by Mike Greenberg. For those of you who aren't familiar with the author, he's a SportsCenter anchor on ESPN, and co-host of a morning sports-talk radio show, "Mike and Mike in the Morning." This is a book of observations, reflections and essays about life and sports. Mostly about life; the book is about sports the same way "Everybody Loves Raymond" was about sports. (In other words, not very much.)

This is the third "celebrity" book I've read in the last few years (Drew Carey and Aisha Tyler penned the other two). This one is basically my type of read: light, funny, something I can get through in a day or two.

The book comes from a journal that he kept while undergoing therapy. (Quick aside: seems like all great works stem from mental illness. This book, Picasso's artwork, Nevermind... I only wonder what the guy who built the Taj Mahal was going through.) He wrote the journal during a time which his wife was pregnant with their first child, going through to the birth of their second.

After finishing the book, I came away with a few thoughts. First, he actually is a regular guy. Mainly due to the cussing. (The word "shit" appears twice in the first few sentences.) I'm not saying he's Andrew Dice Clay or anything, but the language definitely speaks to the fact that he's somewhat like me. (Not exactly like me, since I'm more of a "fuck" guy than a "shit" guy like him.) Second, he is pretty funny. Not an intellectual type like Aisha Tyler (there was only one word I had to look up in his book, as opposed to the 66 I came up with in Ms. Tyler's book), but still smart enough to get his point across. The talk about the stuff that comes out of kids was a bit much, but I suppose that's what I'll be talking about if/when I have kids. Third, the man is an admitted metrosexual. He sprinkles designer names throughout the book to keep up his street cred (or would it be avenue cred?).

But mostly the focus is on being a husband and a dad. It's a nice little read, maybe not the best thing I've read this year, but it's quite entertaining. I'd say pick this up secondhand.

Alright, literary time over...

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home