It has been quite a busy week! I finished the first book for this blog (yay!), finished two magazines last week, discovered the banker winter uniform (dark blue suit, white shirt, Carolina blue tie, brown leather shoes), started a book that I’m reviewing for my magazine, and went to a Christmas party. I hate to say it, but it may be a week or so before I’m able to start another fiction novel. For now, since I’m on a deadline to finish “Nothing Finer: North Carolina’s Sports History and the People Who Made It,” I’ll post periodic updates as a read it with interesting tidbits that I find along the way.

It’s not often that work collides with something I love doing in my free time, like reading. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it now that it’s happening. It’s like all my worlds are colliding. I love reading, but I don’t typically choose nonfiction. I love sports, but I’ve never been attached to reading about them in the form of a book. I have a feeling this will go slowly.

The book is separated into sections, sometimes by sport, but it also includes sections on colonial sports and prep sports. Each section is written by a well-known sportswriter, expect I found one glaring omission. Tommy Tomlinson isn’t included as a writer. If anyone is at all familiar with coverage of North Carolina sports, especially UNC, usually the first person that comes to mind is Tommy Tomlinson. He’s the one that broke the story about Dean Smith and his deteriorating mental health. He doesn’t just do sports recaps, but rather long-form, investigative journalism on the world of sports – and does a damn good job of it. So almost immediately I was a bit discouraged.

I did find out while reading the first chapter that a very popular sport among colonials in North Carolina was gander pulling (a goose is hung by its feet, and the first person to pull off its neck while riding on horseback ‘wins’). So there’s that.

Stay tuned.