Journal 1990, like all of San Francisco writer Joseph Sutton's yearly journals, is not only a short history of one year in his life and the country's life, but it also reads like fiction in the sense of "What's going to happen next?" A major portion of Journal 1990 deals with Little League baseball. What's going to happen with Sutton's relationship with his 9-year-old son as he plays Little League baseball for the first time? How will Sutton's team fare in his first attempt at coaching? There are other parts of Journal 1990 that deal with the first war with Iraq, getting a book published for the first time, plus the highs and lows of being a writer.