Every so often, some publishing company sees fit to send us a book for review.

Yeah, I don't get it either.

Anyway, the fine folks at Baraka Books sent us a copy of Francois Barcelo's "I Hate Hockey", and here we are.

Barcelo's novel weighs in at an even 100 pages, and was a light and enjoyable read. In fact, I don't even think it took me 2 hours to go cover-to-cover.

The main character of the book is actually a lot of fun. His name is Antoine Vachon, who is pretty much the Quebecois conterpart to Twitter legend Karl Welzien.

He's a loser living above an abandoned gas station, with no job and no marriage, after his wife catches him in a tryst with her intern. They have a son who hockey, a game that Antoine has always hated (hence the title).

One day, his phone rings, and his son's hockey coach has died. They need somebody to coach the team in a hurry, and since he's apparently the only father with nothing else to do, he's more or less drafted into the job.

The story follows along to him coaching a game with pretty funny results. Then he and the team spend a night in a local motel before they complete the journey home. At that point he finds out there were inappropriate relations going on between the old coach and the players. Pretty timely, considering everything going on with Penn State, and Theo Fleury's autobiography from last year.

Along the way there's a couple decent plot twists, and Antoine's own loser story, complete with his own delusions, make the whole ride entertaining.

This book manages to dance the fine line between being funny and being too dark decently enough, and when the book was done I thought it might be fun to see Antoine be placed into other situations.

The book lists at $14.95, and I'd say if you need a read that's quick and light, go for it.