More Baseball, and a Bonanza of Blogs

Last night I predicted the Yankees would win tonight. I was wrong and glad of it (although I got worried when the Red Sox put Pedro in in the seventh). After thinking about it, I probably will root for Boston in the series, just because I'd like to see the Curse of the Bambino laid to rest after all these years.

Six months ago, I barely knew what a blog was. Then I started reading Ed's Place occasionally and got hooked on it. When I found out Bill Crider was writing a blog, too, I began to read it every day. From those guys I found other blogs that interested me, and now I not only write my own, but I read several others nearly every day. Besides the two mentioned above, my regular stops are:

A Writer's Life (Lee Goldberg)
The Cap'n's Blog (Cap'n Bob Napier)
Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind (Sarah Weinman)
The Rogue Raven (Frank Denton)
Mystery Dawg (Aldo Calcagno)
The Crime Fiction Dossier (David Montgomery)
VinceKeenan.com (Vince Keenan)

Frank Denton's blog is on hiatus at the moment, but I'll be reading it again when he gets back. There are a handful of others I check from time to time.

I had another good writing day, and since there's been some discussion recently on Rara-Avis about Erle Stanley Gardner's Donald Lam and Bertha Cool books under the A.A. Fair pseudonym, I started reading the first one, THE BIGGER THEY COME. I read quite a few of these years ago -- in fact, I've read this one before, but it's been so long ago that I've forgotten everything in it. I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far. I'd forgotten how fast and funny these books are. I like the Perry Mason novels just fine, especially the earlier ones, and the D.A. novels I've read are pretty good, too. But the Lam/Cool books are special, possibly because the first person narration gives the books quite a bit of humor. Donald Lam's smart-aleck personality really comes through. I figure I'll be reading more of these.