Philadelphia author John Grogan?s new Labrador retriever Gracie is the perfect dog. She?s calm, self-possessed and affectionate, but not overly so. Truthfully, Mr. Grogan is a little disappointed.

Gracie is boring compared to his last dog, Marley, whom Mr. Grogan claims was the world?s worst dog. He even wrote a book to prove it called ?Marley & Me?, published in October by the William Morrow company, an imprint of Harper Collins.

?Marley & Me? chronicles the struggles of raising a dog with what one veterinarian dubbed the ?canine version of attention deficit disorder?. The book follows Marley?s life from puppyhood to old age when Mr. Grogan had to put him to sleep.

?Marley & Me? is hugely funny and recounts incidents such as Marley being thrown out of dog obedience school on the first day; a brief but disastrous movie appearance, Marley dragging behind him a restaurant table he had been tethered to, as he madly chases a pretty-young poodle; Marley eating various objects including the Grogan?s positive home pregnancy test and many other madcap adventures.

It follows the Grogans through the early days of their marriage, the sadness of a miscarriage and the joy of bringing three children into the world.

?You wouldn?t think we?d be disappointed that Gracie is such a good dog, but the answer is ?yes we are, a little?,? said Mr. Grogan in a telephone interview with . ?We really loved Marley, this big dopey dog. He really won our hearts over. When we brought Gracie home she was nothing like him. She was calm and self-possessed. At first we interpreted her as being stand-offish. We were use to a very high level of affection from Marley. It took us a little while to get use to Gracie.?

Mr. Grogan and his wife Jenny originally picked out Marley from other puppies in his litter, by shaking a fence and watching which ones dashed away and which ones braved out the noise. This process netted them Marley. Mr. Grogan readily admits that this method of dog selection has been officially retired in the Grogan family.

?My wife, Jenny, said, ?you picked up the last one?. She wouldn?t even take me with her to pick out the next one,? Mr. Grogan said. ?She took the kids and picked out our new dog without me. Gracie is the anti-Marley. We called her Grace because we were hoping she would have a state of grace about her.?

Everyone has heard the story of the writer who struggles for years to get his book published, and papers his walls with rejection slips. This is not Mr. Grogan?s story.

Within a week of handing ?Marley & Me? to an agent, he had six offers on the table. The book made it to the New York Times best-seller list during the first week it hit the shelves, a fantastic achievement for a first-time author.

Five weeks later, ?Marley & Me? is number seven on the New York Times bestseller non-fiction hardcover list and is number eight on the Barnes & Noble bestseller list. It is also available in Bermuda in Bermuda bookstores.

?It is my first book,? said Mr. Grogan. ?I really didn?t expect it to be as popular. I wrote it because I thought it was a story I needed to tell. I was not thinking of it as a commercial book. I wasn?t even sure if a publisher would want it.?

?Marley & Me? has sold largely through word of mouth.

?It is bucking all the the trends,? said Mr. Grogan. ?It seems to have really good word of mouth. People are reading and people are buying.

?I am getting a lot of e-mails from people who say I have just finished your book and I am going to buy five copies for my friends. I think I have tapped into that really special, incredibly close relationship that humans have with dogs. It is something we take for granted, but somehow I have tapped into that. I am getting incredibly passionate emotional letters from people who had dogs.?

Mr. Grogan is a general metro columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He has never been to Bermuda, but he would like to visit. ?I have scoped it out over the Internet,? said Mr. Grogan. ?I am a sailor and I read about Bermuda in my sailing magazines. It sounds wonderful.?

The idea for writing a book about Marley was conceived a few years ago, when Mr. Grogran wrote a column about saying goodbye to his Marley after his death from old age.

?I had always written columns about how bad he was,? said Mr. Grogan. ?I wrote this column about how bad he was but also everything good he brought into our home, and how hard it was to say goodbye. Several years before he died I thought there was a funny book in this dog. He was so over the top; and bigger than life. I enjoyed poking fun at all his foibles. After he died I felt the need to set the record straight. Normally I get a few e-mails in response to my columns, but after I wrote about Marley I got 800.?

Mr. Grogan said writers like Frank McCourt, author of ?Angela?s Ashes?, is one of his inspirations, which is ironic, because on the Barnes & Noble bestseller list he is now only a few paces behind Mr. McCourt?s new book ?Teacher Man?.

?Frank McCourt?s writing really inspired me because he is so candid and honest about how he talks about his life,? said Mr. Grogan. ?If you are going to write about your life it is best to do it honestly. It is pretty darn good to be behind Frank. I am totally honoured and humbled to be on the same list as authors Joan Didion and Thomas L. Friedman. These are all writers that I admire deeply.?

Mr. Grogan is hoping to write another book and is currently working on a proposal. It will probably be autobiographical, but not necessarily about dogs.

In the book, Marley makes a brief and slightly disastrous movie appearance in a baseball movie. Mr. Grogan said he is now tentatively hoping there might be a ?Marley the Movie? out there in the making.

?We have a film agent,? said Mr. Grogan. ?She is subcontracted with an agent in Hollywood and we are looking at the possibilities. The big challenge would be finding a dog that could play this badly behaved, out of control dog, while still being well-trained.?

For more information about ?Marley & Me? check out Mr. Grogan?s website at http://www.marleyandme.com/ .