[Boomer]

I have a real thing for Carl Hiaasen.

When his books hit, I throw all caution to the wind. To hell with the library's hold list. I don't do hold where Carl is concerned. I rush to the bookstore where I grab the brand new hardback, even before it reaches the bestseller list. I fling a piece of my retirement money at the clerk and I run home, as fast as I can, clutching Carl to my heaving bosom. And once I am back home, I just vant to be alone until I have read every word.

The new one is here. The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return To A Ruinous Sport.

It's Hiaasen on golf. He gave the game up for 32 years. He's back.

If you are having an affair of any kind (love, love-hate, just plain hate) with the game of golf, this book will make you laugh out loud. That's what I have been doing.

I have been a fan of Hiaasen's fiction for years. Stormy Weather is the first one I read and it's still my favorite. It's about a Florida hurricane. That's the book where I first met Skink, the wonderfully insane, sweet savage ex-governor of Florida.

But back to the new one. It is nonfiction. And I have to do a disclaimer here. Hiaasen gets a little political, for a page or two, here and there. :yikes: Just close your eyes for that part if you need to.

And he talks about TV. Yes, indeed he does. Remember the book is about golf. Hiaasen is awful at the game, so he says. So about TV, he writes...Only briefly do I try to imagine what it would be like to spend my final days on earth among 100,000 aging but feisty golf fanatics. Where in Dante's elaborate infrastructure of Hell would such a place fit?...

Hiaasen goes on to write...The Villages is surely the place to be if your dream is to drop dead in your FootJoys...

It seems that those commercials on the Golf Channel gave Hiaasen the same impression that they gave so many of us who are not good at golf or who do not golf at all.

If you want to read what else he says about TV, but you don't want to buy the book and the library list is long already, you could go to the bookstore and just read page 24 and the top of page 25.

So there's my review. Such as it is.

I know that I have, here on TOTV, in posts past, confessed my love for Charles Kuralt and for Judd Hirsch, but only as Alex on Taxi. But I have to tell you true. There is another. Carl. That man can turn a phrase.

Boomer