ELIZABETH:
Wow, Kevin. Those are some nice pants you are wearing today.

KEVIN:
Thanks. I bought them for my seven-year-old but he thought they were too "puffy." Whatever.

ELIZABETH:
Moving right along, I know that you read Arthur Bradford's book Dogwalker and loved it, so I wanted to spend some time here talking about how happy that book makes us. Very. It makes us very happy. Bradford has a real taste for the bizarre, and he has the perfect voice to go with it. The stories in his book all have something or other to do with dogs, but mainly they are about strange people who are living strange lives in strange ways. I was definitely hooked on this book by the first paragraph, but the book just got better as it went along. The last few stories in it are just completely weird, but they are so good that their weirdness is like a special addition to the style and the storytelling itself. Let me just say this: it is not every man who can write a story about a singing muskrat, a pregnant woman in an iron lung, and a pack of talking dogs, and then make the characters in the story inspire sympathy from the reader. Arthur Bradford is my new hero.

KEVIN:
Oh yeah, that talking muskrat thing is sooo laugh-out-loud funny. There's also a great story about two guys pulling a stunt where one of them carves initials in an apple with a chainsaw. Doesn't sound so hard, but when the apple is in someone's mouth, it becomes treacherous. It's one of those stories where you just cringe because of the impending massacre. I would say his style is akin to a drinking buddy telling you really horrible and alluring stories that you're not sure you want to hear.

ELIZABETH:
But, here's one of the things that just showcases Bradford's amazingness: he ends that story — that chainsaw story — on a high note. He ends it, after all the horror and mayhem, with a little hint of love. God, that is just so good.

KEVIN:
Yeah, he brings the love. There are actually a lot of books that have me excited lately. Summer is a good time for me to read because it's between basketball and football season. You know, I'm not into baseball at all but the Mariners fever this last season kind of hit me. We've got a few Ichiro books, but there is one that I'm particularly fond of. It's a collection of his quotes with an essay by David Shields, who is great.

ELIZABETH:
Oh, that Ichiro book is deliciously wonderful. It looks nice, it feels nice, it is filled with nice things. Baseball Is Just Baseball is the title. That is one of Ichiro's quotes about the greatest game ever invented — a game that is so much better than football that I don't even know where to begin admonishing you Kevin. So I won't. But, I am glad that you love this book as much as I do, because it really proves how great it is, drawing a non-baseball fan to a baseball book. Impressive.

KEVIN:
Yeah. I read it in an hour. I'm kind of a sucker for cute quote books, especially when they're sports-related, like the books by Charles Barkley and Yogi Berra. Ichiro is almost a Zen version of Yogi.

Sticking somewhat to the subject of sports writing, we hosted George Plimpton recently and I had never read his stuff before. He is so good. You know, he was doing satirical, prankish writing way before this new school of writers. I was reading The Best of Plimpton and I was thinking that some of the pieces could have been published in McSweeney's if McSweeney's was around in the '70s.

ELIZABETH:
Oh, man. It's funny that you mentioned Plimpton, because he wrote an article for Harper's a couple of months ago that was all about his friendship with Terry Southern. Apparently, Southern was a nut. Not surprising to know, having now read some of his stuff. Before I get into that, though, let me just explain that here at Powell's, not only are books shelved alphabetically by author, but within an author's works the books are then shelved alphabetically by title. Having said that, I can now have a legitimate, alphabetical excuse for picking up a copy of Blue Movie as my first Terry Southern reading experience. Wow! That book is DIRTY! I mean, I am no prude, but...WOW. It's all about the making of this, like, esoteric, cutting edge porno flick. Fine, that should have tipped me off about the book's dirtiness, but, I don't know, sometimes I tend to gloss over certain facts.