Oh Boy! Grisham!

For Christmas, I was given a copy of John Grisham's Playing for Pizza. It's about a down-and-out NFL player who takes a job as a professional quarterback for a largely amateur team in Parma, Italy. I'm about half way through the book and I'm really loving it.

Nope, it doesn't have some deep, redeeming spiritual subtext for me to recommend (at least, not that I've read so far). But it is a fun novel, and it's from one of my favorite authors. Grisham's "lawyer" books are still the best (I'm looking forward to reading the latest, The Appeal, sometime soon), but his non-legal stuff is also terrific. Skipping Christmas is a classic despite Hollywood's ruining the story with a lousy movie. I just like Grisham's phrasing -- he's very engaging to read -- as well as his plot twists.

Besides, it's refreshing just to get out of my own routines and setting for a while by getting lost in a good novel. The only downside to Playing for Pizza is that I now have this craving to hop on a plane and visit Italy for a while...