After a book that takes forever to get through, I always go to one I know I can easily read in just a few days.

After William Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom!” the quick read this time was Carl Hiaasen’s “The Downhill Lie.” It’s about his journey as a self-described “hacker” to return to playing golf many years after quitting the sport.

As a fellow hacker, I found it interesting to get inside the mind of someone who plays at exactly the same level. My usual playing partners are both better than I am, so while we are always out there to just have fun there’s something to knowing you are the weakest link in any group.

I think Hiaasen would enjoy my general outlook on playing with those who consistently beat me — if they shoot an 88 and I rock a 95, we paid the same amount of money but I got to hit seven extra shots.

One thing I found troubling about Hiaasen is that he’s a University of Florida journalism graduate. When I worked in Florida, it seemed like three-quarters of my coworkers went to the UF J-school, and really, nothing good can come of that. (OK, they were pretty cool, but having to hear about Tim Tebow every day will wear on you).

But Hiaasen did redeem himself by introducing me to a new term I can use to describe my golf game. Actually, it’s one of Hiaasen’s friends who tells him about “Ray Ray golf.” In the hacker world, our rounds are marked by stretches of a few good holes that make us feel like we can actually play this game, and then holes so disastrous we wonder how our friends can stand to watch such a spectacle. In the words of Hiaasen’s friend, “One hole you play like Ray Floyd, and the next you play like Ray Charles.”

The thing about those good holes is that they are sustaining. It only takes a few good shots to keep you going. “That’s the secret of the sport’s infernal seduction,” Hiaasen says. “It surrenders just enough good shots to let you talk yourself out of quitting.”

He talks later about the effect of even one good shot, the way it feels to swing a club and have a little white ball go exactly where you want it to. “That’s the killer. A good shot is a total rush, possibly the second most pleasurable sensation in the human experience. It will mess with your head in wild and delusive ways.”

He’s right. There’s something about a perfect shot that makes you feel slightly superhuman. When you hit the ball right in the sweet spot of the club, it feels different. There’s an ease with which the ball flies off the club face and continues to an exact point off in the distance.

The setting helps enhance that feeling. You’re out on a narrow strip of grass, maybe nestled between the woods with nothing but the sound of birds around you. You pause for a second in that stillness, the club in your hand and your eyes on the ball in front of you. And then your actions — the way you pull back the club, rotate your body into a corkscrew and then unravel it all — cause this pinpoint flight as if you had just picked up the ball and set it down exactly where you wanted to hit the next shot.

It’s kind of like hitting a home run in baseball. To the observer, there’s the really violent action of a bat slamming into a ball that has been hurled in its direction. But crushing a baseball — hitting it in just the right part of the bat at the right angle — can feel smooth and effortless in a way that can seem totally opposed to the resulting flight of the ball.

You don’t have quite the same control over where the ball lands, but a few of those will definitely make you forget some of the strikeouts and feeble groundouts to second base.