Books

Sun Yaoting was 8 when his father castrated him with a single swoop of a razor. The year was 1911, and China was in turmoil. Just a few months later rebels deposed the emperor, overturned centuries of tradition and established a republic. "Our boy has suffered for nothing," his father said, weeping and beating his breast, when he learned that the emperor had been overthrown. "They don't need eunuchs anymore!" Little did he know that the child nevertheless would earn a place in Chinese history.

Michael Lewis' 2006 book "The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game" is a riveting, often heart-wrenching story of Michael Oher, a 6-foot-5, 350-pound African American teenager who is transformed from a homeless vagabond to a star football player, largely thanks to Leigh Anne Tuohy, a dynamic evangelical Christian who helps provide him with a surrogate family and a shot at success in life. When Allen Barra reviewed the book for the Washington Post, he was full of admiration for Lewis' writerly skills.

Comedian Greg Behrendt calls it "that dumb thing I said." He's referring to the phrase "He's just not that into you."

Sony Corp. on Tuesday unveiled a pocket-size electronic book reader for less than $200, which the electronics giant touted as the "most affordable dedicated reading device on the market." Dubbed the Sony Reader Pocket Edition, the new device has enough internal memory to hold about 350 books, comes in three colors -- blue, rose and silver -- and has a 5-inch "electronic ink" display, which shows dark gray text on a lighter gray background.

A Stanislaus County school board banned a celebrated but controversial piece of Chicano literature from its high school classrooms this week because trustees and the superintendent believe "Bless Me, Ultima" contains too much profanity. The Newman Crows Landing Board of Education voted 4 to 1 Monday night to strip the coming-of-age novel by Rudolfo Anaya from the sophomore required reading list at Orestimba High School.

It's a feud that has a hint of Shaq and Kobe to it. Galaxy forward Landon Donovan rekindled images of that squabble when he blasted teammate David Beckham in Grant Wahl's upcoming book, "The Beckham Experiment," scheduled for a July 14 release.

John Foley figures he has pretty much maxed out on explaining to African American mothers why it's OK to call a black man the N-word -- as long as it's in a novel that is considered a classic. For years, English teachers have been explaining away the obvious racism in Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

There's a photo on the back jacket of Norman Ollestad's memoir, "Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival," that could make a parent weep. In it, a man is surfing in the ocean. On his back in a canvas papoose is a baby, blond, happy, oblivious to the danger of a stray wave or sudden paternal miscalculation. The baby is Ollestad, and the man is his father, also named Norman, a one-time FBI agent turned lawyer who devoted himself to training his only son in extreme sports.

There's one bookstore in the world where you'll never, ever find a copy of "The Bookseller of Kabul." That would be the Bookseller's. The epic literary feud that erupted with the book's publication more than five years ago still endures -- at least from the perspective of Shah Muhammad Rais, who hated his depiction as Sultan Khan, a liberal intellectual in public but a tyrant in his own home.

Matt McCarthy's professional baseball career flamed out after one season, 2002, with the Provo Angels in the lowly Pioneer League. He was quietly released the following spring. Now, McCarthy has published "Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit," and the notoriety the memoir has generated ensures that he will be enshrined in baseball and publishing lore.