January 7, 2008 -- Monday afternoon

Reading The Miracle of Castel di Sangro, by Joe McGinniss, former political critic who, after the 94 World Cup, fell in love with soccer (or, as the rest of the world calls it--football) and dedicated his life to writing about the sport. This book is about a tiny Italian town that no one has ever heard of before--unknown but with a really good football team.

His own favorite teams--Manchester United and, as he's from LA, LA Galaxy.

His favorite book--The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. He feels like it's sort of a grown up approach to books he liked when he was a kid by C.S. Lewis and Roald Dahl, authors who write about faith and what makes people do things.

A book he read recently that he couldn't put down was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, by Mark Haddon. He had never before felt so connected to something he'd never experienced before. The narrator, a fifteen-year-old autistic boy, is easy to relate to.

If he were to write his own book it'd be a comedic thriller, something along the lines of Colin Bateman, an Irish writer with a dry wit who writes about murders and espionage.