SMITH recommends…a writer’s attempt to complete his obligatory review of Goncalo M. Tavares’s Neighborhood series in the midst of his excitement about the World Cup.

Bookslut’s Latin Lit Lover columnist, Jesse Tangen-Mills, writes a beautifully mixed-up review that begins with Eduardo Galeano’s Soccer in Sun and Shadow, proceeds to gush about the impending World Cup, and finally, reluctantly reviews two books out of Tavares’s Neighborhood series, Mister Kraus and Mister Henri, a series that Tangen-Mills clearly wants to read and enjoy, but cannot as he has a one-track mind leading to the World Cup. There is less than one day until the World Cup begins, and Tangen-Mills describes it best: “It’s noble; it’s chauvinist; it’s nationalist. It defuses war, while it creates them…In other words, this is serious.”