Playing For Pizza

I don't read too much John Grisham. The lawyer in trouble genre to me is as old as Greg Brady getting caught smoking after school. Interesting for a moment, but what's next?

I read "The Firm" a thousand years before and it was okay. Chasing my daughter through Borders a few months ago I came across "Playing For Pizza" and read the back cover.

Third string quarterback costs his team a trip to the Super Bowl and now has no place to go except Italy. I didn't buy the paperback then, but after former Temple City offensive lineman Josh Ouellette recommended it to me, I picked up a copy in early February.

Grisham is a very good writer, he tells a great story, but I wasn't necessarily enthralled with the football side of things. His description of a player intercepting a passing and "running to the Promised Land" is old, stale, and revealing of a lack of effort on his part to get inside of football...His characterizing the tormenting sportswriter as fat, out of shape, balding, and disgusting...fits the stereotype but he should have invested a little more time reading columns like "Fanview" or some others to get the writing style down. Grisham's attempts to replicate a column are very poor.

All of that aside, he did make Italy (a place I have never wanted to visit before reading this book)sound very interesting. While he might not have spent much time acquainting himself with football, he certainly knows the culture, the wine, and the foods...

A good read.