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What: “Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks.”

By: Mick Foley.

Price: $24.95.

If you had bet your friends that a 500-plus-page book written by a professional wrestler would wind up No. 1 on bestseller lists, you’d have a lot of money right now. Most people wouldn’t expect Mick Foley’s memoir of his life as Mankind (and his other wrestling personas, Cactus Jack and Dude Love) to be an interesting read, but this is.

Foley gives his all for his profession, and he burns to tell of his adventures. Take the famous tale (to pro wrestling fans) of how he lost most of his ear. It was during the second of two 1994 bouts with Vader (former L.A. Ram Leon White). After getting a broken nose, a dislocated jaw, and 21 stitches in the first match, Foley did his “hangman” routine, wherein he catches his neck between the second and third ropes and spins them into a twist.

As Foley writes: “The end result is the illusion of a man being hanged by his neck while his body kicks and writhes in an attempt to get out.”

Unfortunately, in the prior match, Too Cold Scorpio had the officials tighten the ropes, so Foley tore off his ear to avoid death by strangulation, like “a fox that chews off its paw to escape a trap.”

But the book doesn’t only cover his pro wrestling exploits. Foley, a painfully shy man, recounts his struggle dealing with women as he was a teenager, and is particularly touching when he gives the details of his first date with a woman he had loved from afar for more than a year. Foley finally gets up the nerve to hold her hand as he is saying goodbye on the front porch. She kisses him and as he turns to leave, shouts out to him, “Good night, Steve.”

Mick Foley is a funny, intelligent, interesting man with a fascinating story to tell. Don’t let any bias you might have against pro wrestling keep you from this book. If you have a friend who is a wrestling fan, this would make the perfect gift.