Pay the man, Shirley!

I didn't end up buying any magazines for my Northwest trip this last weekend, but did buy a new paperback at the Borders at Seatac airport: Paul Shirley's Can I Keep My Jersey?.

Paul Shirley is a professional basketball player who's bounced around between the NBA, the CBA, the ABA, and various European leagues over his eight year career. He's one of those players who's good enough to keep playing, but not good enough to be a star. He's also a writer who kept a blog during his time with the Phoenix Suns in 2004-05 and later on espn.com, telling stories about his life in basketball in his own inimitable style.

Shirley's style is a dry, off-the-cuff wit that isn't for everyone, but I enjoyed reading his online columns and also enjoyed this book. It helped that two of his stops during his career were Yakima, Washington (the city I was visiting this weekend) and Barcelona, Spain (one of my favorite cities in the world that I just visited a few weeks ago), but some of his stories were "LOL funnee" as they say online.

Can I Keep My Jersey? is ideal for summer travel or beach reading, since it reads like a series of Paul's blog entries in printed form. It's all the enjoyment of reading a bunch of blogs without having to drag your laptop along!