Philip Fibiger

I just finished reading the newest in Randy Wayne White’s series of mysteries about Doc Ford, the marine biologist, former spook, and occasional detective. They’re generally fun to read, drawing pretty heavily on the old Travis McGee books..but I have to say, he’s getting pretty formulaic. Ford’s shady background comes into play, he travels to a South American Country, and in the end, his love interest is killed off, leaving him hardened and alone. That seems to be how it plays out in most of the books. The first couple in the series (Sanibel Flats and Captiva in particular) were wonderful, but maybe White doesn’t have what it takes to keep a franchise fresh (like Robert Parker has managed to do with his Spenser novels).

Nick Hornby, author of Fever Pitch, the wonderful memoir of his life as an english football fan, in addition to the fabulous High Fidelity and About A Boy, wrote a piece in the New Yorker about this year’s World Cup. It’s an interesting essay about team spirit, rivalry, and soccer on the world stage, and is written with Hornby’s trademark wit.

I just now discovered Giving Good Weight, a wonderful essay by John McPhee that originally appeared in The New Yorker in 1978. McPhee is my favorite non-fiction writer, with an uncanny ability to write beautifully about nearly anything. His intense and varied curiosity shows through in his writing, with topics ranging from experimental aircraft to ecology and of course including his monumental, Pulitzer Prize winning treatise (written originally as 3 books over more than a decade) on the the geology of North America. Giving Good Weight is a perfect snapshot of a couple hours in New York City, and of the gentle collision of cultures that occured.