BookEnds

• For the third year in a row, Edgar Allan Poe’s biggest fan has failed to materialize at his grave in Baltimore: “When he appears, the Toaster is typically shrouded in a long coat, his head covered with some kind of hat and a scarf that drapes across his face, the spotters say. He strides quickly along the cemetery’s narrow brick pathways, darting in and out of the low light and natural shadows.”

  

• A plethora of books for the Downton Abbey set.
• Bookish highlights of the year to come — among other things, major birthdays for Edith Wharton and Charles Dickens, new books by Hilary Mantel, Marilynne Robinson and Martin Amis, and a trio of classics adapted for the screen: “Anna Karenina”, “The Great Gatsby” and “On the Road”
• Poignant advice and “dearest love” from “Daddy” (F. Scott Fitzgerald) to his 11-year-old daughter.
• As a testament to the resilience of Afghan culture, a calligrapher has unveiled the world’s largest Qur’an, made with the skins of 21 goats.
• A posthumous collaboration between Scottish poet Robert Burns and…Michael Jackson?

Thanks, Monica and Dave, for inviting me to join the fray and kick start the book blog. Since you took me up on my suggestion to start off with Selena Robert’s book on Alex Rodriguez, I’m preparing to shoulder the blame should it somehow fail to be blog-worthy material. My hope was that, at the very least, the subject matter and writing will serve as lightening rods for other issues that matter to us as journalists and sports fans.

So I guess it’s only fitting that I begin my first post by explaining why I wanted to read this particular book in the first place. It has nothing to do with being either a Yankee or A-Rod fan. (Full disclosure: I grew up in Queen as an angst-ridden Mets fan.) My ears do, however, prick up at the scintillating gossip surrounding A-Rod. Like most people who thumb through the tabloids at the supermarket checkout line–Monica, can you tell I’m desperately in need of book club salvation?–I am curious to learn about the exact nature of A-Rod’s relationship with Madonna–did she brainwash him to the point where her videos put him in a trance? did the two really have Sabbath dinners together?

On that and any matters related to Kabbalah, I’m hoping this book settles the score once and for all.

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