Tut, tut, it looks like rain.

I just finished Katy Lederer's Poker Face, which I really liked an awful lot. It's interesting to read about a family that produced two of today's best poker players, Howard Lederer and Annie Duke. It's not a book that will in any way prepare you to play, or teach you much about the game of poker, but her descriptions of her family and of Las Vegas are captivating.

It also struck a chord with me because she's a writer, and passages such as the following took on a special relevance on this humid, cloudy morning:

In the end, it wasn't altogether impossible for me to adjust to the the gambler's relationship with his action, for it resembles to a close degree the writer's relationship with his writing. When things are going well, all is cheerful and bright in the world, but when things are going badly, a glumness comes to dominate the atmosphere, like a tenebrous cloud hanging over your head, intermittenly storming.

I'm actually glad the weather is crap on what marks the beginning of the home stretch write-a-thon I've entered, so I don't keep wistfully staring out the window, sighing melodramatically at the sun. But I do hope the dark cloud she so accurately described finds someone else's head to bother for a while.