Book Review!

Before I get into my book review, I have a little story.  Thursday
night, I was writing my zero draft for my trial brief in legal
writing.  I was summarizing the law for a case, and I needed to write
the word “arising.”  But I found myself typing “arizona” instead.  This
case had nothing to do with sports, and I hadn’t yet read the case with
Barry Bonds (I’ll summarize that one in a later entry).  Obviously, I
REALLY want to be in Phoenix watching spring training workouts and
games.  Can it be March 21 yet?

Finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.

My book review of Confessions of a She-Fan
First,
let it be known that I love reading.  I’ve come to learn that most
people in my generation hate reading.  I can’t figure out why because
it’s so relaxing.  There’s no unnecessary noise in the background. 
There are no special effects.  Sometimes I wonder if any of them could
survive if they were thrust into a place where they had no TV, no
computer, no cell phone, no iPod.  I don’t think most could survive. 
No, I love books.  I’m irritated that a lot of my books from high
school are somewhere in storage in San Francisco.  I digress.

I had been pumped for a while that Confessions of a She-Fan
was coming out.  I love reading and I love baseball, so a book that
combined two of my favorite things just can’t be bad.  It’s
impossible.  Even though I’ve been very anti-Yankees since my rabid
fandom started, I couldn’t help but start to like them a little.  Just
a little.

At the beginning of each chapter, there was a quote
before the narrative started.  I have to admit, I had no idea what that
was.  Thankfully my question was answered later in the book.  It was
something that was new to me because most books I’ve read don’t have
anything like that.  They all just jump into the chapter.  More books
should do this.  I find it interesting.

Reading Jane’s blog
gave me some expectation of what to expect in her book.  A great sense
of humor and a great love for her Yankees.  I got that and much more. 
I got a sense of Jane outside of her blog.  I felt like I got to see
another facet that you can’t really put into a blog.

My
relationship with the White Sox is still relatively young.  But I
already know that I’m well on my way to the level of she-fan that Jane
is already at.  The development of her relationship with the Yankees
provided some great background for how she came to this point in time
where she threatened to divorce the Yankees.

Her journey following around the team she loves has shown me that rabid
fandom is OK, but there are times when I may need to tone it down. 
I’ve learned to love fans of teams I may hate by being on MLBlogs, but
by reading this book, I’ve learned that there are fans who haven’t yet
embraced that idea.  I’ve been fortunate not to encounter the majority
of the types of fans she’s encountered that aren’t exactly nice, but I
know as time progresses I will.

If you haven’t purchased or read this yet, get on it!  It’s a must-read
for every she-fan whether your fandom is brand new, five years old
(me!), or lifelong.  It’s also a must-read for every he-fan because you
never know if you’ll find yourself with a she-fan in your life.  This
could potentially be a partial instruction manual on how to deal with a
she-fan.

Well done, Jane.  I’ll have to expand my Jane Heller collection now. 
Well, once I have enough money to expand my book collection in
general.    I wish I could include my favorite sentence of the entire
book, but the filter would get mad at me.  So owners of the book,
here’s the location.  Page 29, first paragraph, the last sentence.  I
couldn’t stop laughing, even at the expense of my own White Sox.  The
whole paragraph was great, but the last two sentences turned into an
AIM away message that got a bunch of “Jen, what on Earth is this away
message about?” messages.  I told them to go read the book.

Jen Fact of the Day
Since it’s Valentine’s Day (or in my case, Singles Awareness Day), I’ll
tell you about flowers.  My absolute favorite flower is the pink
carnation.  And I despise red roses.  Yes, they’re pretty, but it
reminds me too much of an “I did something wrong, honey.  Here are
flowers to make up for it.” situation.  If I’m gonna get roses from
someone, I’d prefer pink ones.  Or even the blue ones I’ll be buying
from the flower stand when I go to the mall in about an hour.