263 Sportswriter loves to read

“If Steve Rushin of Sports Illustrated wrote about politics or cosmology instead of about sports, he would be widely recognized for what he is: a superb writer. (For Rushin at book-length, see the witty travelogue Road Swing: One Fan's Journey into the Soul of American Sports, in which he describes a dying television as "a Zenith at its nadir" and compares a golf course in the Pennsylvania hills to "a green silk tie across a rumpled bedspread.") In this week's blog, Nathan Bierma talks with Rushin about reading and writing, sports, and sports writing.” When asked if writing was easy for him, he says:

“I try to follow the rule that the easier something is to read, the harder it was to write, and the harder it is to read the easier it probably was to write.”

. . . “On our family vacations to California when we were kids, I always went to the library, and checked out books on all the places we were going in San Francisco. … My wife [basketball star Rebecca Lobo] and I live in a small townhouse. If we ever get a house, I don't care what it has except a library. I'd like to just sit in a big chair with a goldfish-bowl-sized brandy sifter, and a globe, surrounded by books. We have boxes of books on bookshelves, boxes in our garage. … I was in a used bookstore and picked up a 1200-page biography of Charles Dickens. I will probably finish it in the time it took Dickens to live his actual life, but I will finish it.”