The world according to Mike Greenberg...plus a book giveaway

Photo by Pamela Einarsen

We're pleased to have Mike Greenberg back at CLC to promote his sophomore novel, My Father's Wives. He was here almost two years ago with the soundtrack to his debut novel, All You Could Ask For (reviewed here). This time, he's talking about his favorite things.

Mike Greenberg is the cohost of ESPN's Mike and Mike, the highest-rated sports talk program in the United States, and the author of the New York Times bestselling books All You Could Ask For, Why My Wife Thinks I'm an Idiot, and Mike and Mike's Rules for Sports and Life. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and a native of New York City. He currently lives in Connecticut with his wife and two children. Follow him on Twitter.

Thanks to HarperCollins, we have THREE copies of My Father's Wives for some lucky US readers!

Synopsis of My Father's Wives:
Jonathan Sweetwater has been blessed with money, a fulfilling career, great kids and Claire, his smart, gorgeous, sophisticated wife. But there is one thing Jonathan never had: a relationship with his father.

Percival Sweetwater III has been absent from his son’s life since Jonathan was nine years old. A five-term U.S. senator, now dead, Percy was beloved by presidents, his constituents, and women alike, especially the five women who married him after Jonathan’s mother.

Jonathan hasn’t thought about Percy or the hole he left in his life for years. Dedicated to Claire and his family, he’s nothing like his serial monogamist father. But then Jonathan discovers evidence that everything in his marriage may not be as perfect as he thought. Hurt and uncertain what to do, he knows that the only way to move forward is to go back.

On this quest for understanding—about himself, about manhood, about marriage—Jonathan decides to track down his father’s five ex-wives. His journey will take him from cosmopolitan cities to the mile-high mountains to a tropical island—and ultimately back to confront the one thing Jonathan has that his father never did: home.

If Mike Greenberg did his own "Favorite Things" show...

1 - Everyone would get a copy of The World According To Garp, by John Irving. It changed my life. And it might change others' too. I find it the most accessible, readable, easily devourable work of great fiction I have ever read. In my case, it inspired me to write. When I finished "Garp," I thought to myself I was either going to be a writer or I was going to be nothing at all.

2 - Everyone would get a copy of the Paul Simon album, Graceland. A quarter of a century after it was released, every song still sounds like you are hearing it for the first time. I am a fan of poets and lyricists, and Paul Simon is both. The imagery in the writing on Graceland is epic. "The way we look to a distant constellation that's dying in the corner of the sky..." He's a genius.

3 - Everyone would get an iPad. I genuinely have no idea how I lived without mine, which, by the way, I am using right now to write this. And when I am done I can use it to listen to Graceland and read Garp, along with about a trillion other uses.

4 - Golf clubs. I love golf about as much as I love anything or anyone I am not related to. And the game is struggling in our country, fewer people are playing, courses are closing left and right. To me this is a tragedy. Golf provides fresh air, green grass and a lesson in patience: three things all of us surely need.

5 - A new car. Doesn't even really matter which kind. It's just that I was raised on game shows, and there was never anything more exciting than when a prize was revealed and the announcer would shout: "It's a new car!!!!" Just once in my life, I'd like to do that.

Thanks to Mike for sharing his favorite things with us and to HarperCollins for sharing his book with our readers.

How to win: Use Rafflecopter to enter the giveaway. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. If you have trouble using Rafflecopter on our blog, enter the giveaway here



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US only. Giveaway ends February 2nd at midnight EST.