I am as guilty of it as the next person - reading for comfort. Either we read about worlds with which we are familiar or, and I think worse, to confirm what we believe we already know. I say 'what we believe we know' because that's the risk - isn't it? That we might learn something new, or that we might change our minds, and sometimes that comes in unexpected packages. I read Doug Merlin's
Beast: Blood, Struggle, and Dreams at the Heart of Mixed Martial Arts (Bloomsbury USA, 2015) because Doug is a friend and, frankly, would never have read it if left to my own reading habits. I'm glad that I did.
Jeff Monson was, as usual, running late. He was trying to get his two-year-old daughter, Willow, to eat.
"Here comes the plane, Willow," he said in a singsong voice, holding out a spoon to the girl, who was sitting in her high chair. "Are you ready for the plane?"
Willow threw back her head, covered in red curly hair, laughed, and refused.
Monson wore shorts, flip-flops, and a T-shirt that stretched to cover his muscled frame. His head, which rose out of a triangular based of trapezius muscle, was bald. FIGHT was tattooed on the left side of his neck, directly above an exhortation to DESTROY AUTHORITY.
