The Throwback Special / Chris Bachelder, 213 pp.

Why would I like a book about football?  I have never voluntarily watched a game in my life, but I am a fan of this book, about 22 disenchanted middle-aged guys who meet once a year to re-enact the 1985 game in which Joe Theismann's leg is snapped, ending his career and morbidly thrilling thousands of viewers.

I like it because, of course, it isn't really about football, but about these slightly pathetic but likable men and their stories.  It doesn't hurt that it's also extremely funny.  The men use a super-fancy hand-crafted lottery drum to determine which player they will represent in the 'game;' three men who've all quit smoking light up together, too afraid to admit they've quit; and everyone shares their troubles with Charles, who counsels adolescent girls with eating disorders, because a counselor's a counselor, right?

My theory is that The Throwback Special is a kind of latter-day Canterbury Tales, in which a motley assortment of people enacting a poorly-understood and perhaps meaningless ritual reveal an important slice of life.  And tell bawdy stories.