What I'm Reading Now

THE BEST AMERICAN SPORTS WRITING 2015, edited by Wright Thompson.

The book fell open to "Precious Memories."

Although I'd read Tommy Tomlinson's beautiful tribute to Coach Dean Smith when it was first published and shared from the ESPN magazine, reading it today caught me off guard. 





"Here is the special cruelty of it: the connector has become disconnected. The man who held the family together has broken off and drifted away. He is a ghost in clothes, dimmed by a disease that has no cure."


I also love what Thompson says in his introduction to this year's volume, about writing.
Writers can't hear this enough.

I'm often wondering if I'll write a good story again, or wondering how I've written some good ones in the past, and over and over I find my way out of the darkness by reading a story I love, one that inspires me to be better and makes me afraid that I'll fail.

This book is full of not only good sports essays. 
These pieces are just plain good.