Manhood for Amateurs

Michael Chabon's newest book, Manhood for Amateurs just came out. He's my favorite contemporary American writer. He's just got an amazing way with words. His style is so smooth and seems so effortless, but is so perfect. It's like watching professional sports at their finest.

I got my hands on the book ASAP and read 50 pages on the train-ride home. Admittedly, I've only read 1/6th of it, but I can tell, already, that it is a-freaking-mazing. In those 50 pages I laughed out-loud 25 times (and got disturbed/disturbing looks from my fellow train-riders) and got tears in my eyes 10 times. Admittedly, there was some overlap there, but there had to have been 30 emotionally satisfying moments.

Manhood is a collection of non-fiction essays about life, society, and human nature through the eyes of Chabon as a father. My favorite moment so far:

"Every day is like a kid's drawing, offered to you with a strange mixture of ceremoniousness and offhand disregard, yours for the keeping. Some of the days are rich and complicated, others inscrutable, others little more than a stray gray mark on a ragged page. Some you manage to hang on to, though your reasons for doing so are often hard to fathom. But most of them you just ball up and throw away."