Art of Fielding: Chapters 21-30

Oh no. Poor Henry. I didn't realize how much I was rooting for him until I saw stuff go wrong. I'm very much unfairly upset at Owen for this. Completely unjustifiably, but he really could just say something like "hey Skrim, it's not your fault. I probably shouldn't read in the dugout." This is completely unfair and is victim-blaming and again, I'm a horrible person, but dang. Poor Skrim. Anyways, on to the book.

1) Genevieve and Pella: This book only has impossibly beautiful female characters, eh? That are also very forward. In fact, everyone in this book is forward, besides Henry of course. Angeeh was right, the more we get to know of Pella, the more interesting she is.  Still have tons of questions at this point, including; what does she have to prove? To whom?

2) The book's first first kiss is beautifully written. I found myself cooing like at a gif of a puppy. What was your first kiss like?

3) A weird-ass dinner party indeed. Saved, perhaps, by Greek food. Also scotch, though. Couldn't diagram the love affairs going on, but Mike is fantastic yet again. The dinner party is by definition awkward, is it not? Could you imagine such an odd group getting together over something else?

4) Motherfucker. What an awesome workout, motherfucker. I was a king of running stairs in college, I don't mind bragging. I even ran stairs competitively once, topping Chicago's Sears Tower in under 18 minutes. I would love to get to do that again. The anger of Skrim is inspiring, I want to go back to doing body-shredding workouts. He has this inner Pete Rose that we are just now getting to witness for the first time since the beginning of the book. Motherfucker.

5) What's it like to be good at something? It's an interesting question Pella asks, and you can see how she's questioning it. College is a great place to find out if you're good at something or bad at something, and Pella missed that opportunity. After college, we're stuck in a sort of mediocrity. The architect that she left was obviously good at something, but not good enough at something to prove he was good at it. Personally, I ache for something in life I can have the opportunity to be good at, not just competent at. How about you? Is this something that changes with age?

6) I also loved the way the book captured locker room banter so far. Do you have any great locker room stories from your past? Or present?

I unfortunately left my copy of Art of Fielding at home and will be away from it all week, so we will not have an update until 20 January. By then, you will be expected to have read up to Chapter 50.  Those of you who have requested copies should have received them by now. So hopefully you can crush through them and we can meet up again by 20 January. Let's meet then.