New York Times book review editor Sam Tanenhaus reviews tennis star Andre Agassi's Open:

"“Open” is one of the most passionately anti-sports books ever written by a superstar athlete — bracingly devoid of triumphalist homily and star-spangled gratitude. Agassi’s announced theme is that the game he mastered was a prison he spent some 30 years trying to escape  . . .

"Equally hard-won self-knowledge irradiates almost every page of “Open,” thanks in great part to Agassi’s inspired choice of collaborator, J. R. Moehringer, author of the memoir “The Tender Bar,” with its melody of remembered voices. Agassi says he read it in 2006, at his last U.S. Open, and then recruited Moehrin­ger to help him write his own book. The result is not just a first-rate sports memoir but a genuine bildungsroman, darkly funny yet also anguished and soulful. It confirms what Agassi’s admirers sensed from the outset, that this showboat, with his garish costumes and presumed fatuity, was not clamoring for attention but rather conducting a struggle to wrest some semblance of selfhood from the sport that threatened to devour him."

Be sure to watch the video of Tanenhaus interviewing Agassi about the book. Terrific.

The new TOP500 list is out. Geeks, like me, get excited about this. The semi-anual TOP500 ranks the world's biggest, fastest supercomputers.

At the top right now is Jaguar, a Cray XT5-HE Opteron Six Core 2.6 GHz, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Jaguary was upgraded this year ...   more »

Colvin's claims on Afghanistan torture, an HST break for B.C., and a $16,000 hospital bill: Listen to my four-minute audio roundup of what's on the front pages of the country's newspapers plus highlights from Friday's Parliamentary daybook by clicking on the link below.

The Toronto Star's restaurant critic Amy Pataki heads out to Toronto's best gourmet burger joints which reminded me of a pic I snapped in Singapore last weekend while covering the annual APEC leaders summit. I took this picture at a burger joint across the street from Suntec City Mall, the site of the media centre for APEC journalists:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Raj Ghat, Gandhi's memorial, in New Delhi Tuesday. On the way out, he signed the visitors book:

Apparently, we -- the Canadian media travelling with Prime Minister Stephen Harper this week -- ruffled a few feathers during our three days here. Here is a review of our coverage written by Sarabjit Jagirdar and distributed by the Indo-Asian News Service . . .

The front pages of all of India's major newspapers are full of this story this morning -- and there's a Canadian connection to the terror threat, just as Prime Minister Stephen Harper begins his second day of visits here:

Nuclear power facilities in India have been put on high alert here after security forces determined that terrorists may target one of them.

Intelligence agencies beefed up security after analysing new information, some of which may have come from Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani-born Canadian citizen who is in FBI custody in Chicago.

The threat to India's nuclear installations comes as Prime Minister Stephen Harper began a series of meetings Tuesday with high-level Indian political leaders, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi.

Discussions about a Canada-India nuclear co-operation agreement and about about combatting terrorism are widely expected to be among the topics at those meetings. [Read the rest]

Our government has been working to repair this long-term damage to our relationship. That is why the Prime Minister is in India this week, rebuilding relationships and deepening our economic ties with an emerging economic power.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrived in Mumbai this evening for a three-day visit to the country. There are more than 1 million Canadians who have their origins in India including several in the House of Commons. For his visit to India, some MPs, all Conservatives, have joined the the Prime ...

The leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries and their spouses, including Prime Minister and Mrs. Harper, gathered for a formal dinner Saturday evening here with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as host. Here is the menu