There are certain writers who can make you weep with the way they construct a sentence, the way they can so deftly wring emotion from a scene, the way they can make you feel just by rearranging 26 letters artfully, over and over again.
Gary Smith of Sports Illustrated is one of those writers. If you're a fan of serious sportswriting -- not flippant Top 10 lists, not announcer chatter over highlights on ESPN, but serious, provocative, get-into-somebody's-head sportswriting -- you owe it to yourself to read "Going Deep," which you can also check out here.
The book is a collection of 20 of Gary's best stories for Sports Illustrated. For my money, as I write in the Oct.21 Charlotte Observer, he's the best sportswriter around. Anywhere. His stories are loooooong, but they read quickly because they are so wonderfully told.
I'm proud to call Gary a friend -- he lives in Charleston, S.C., and we've had a couple of nice conversations and lunches over the years. He doesn't need my promotional help, but because the book is so good I'm going to give him some anyway.
As I have mentioned in The Observer, I'm going to give away a copy of "Going Deep" to ONE reader. If you want to enter this random and free drawing, you must E-MAIL ME AT sfowler@charlotteobserver.com before Wed., Oct.22 at 9 a.m.
I will post the book winner HERE, on this blog, at 10 a.m. Wed., Oct.22nd. And if you don't win or you didn't get to e-mail me in time but you still want the book, hey, I see Amazon is selling it for $17.99. If you like good sportswriting, that's a steal.
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