Mumsnetters I need your help. Last year I took part in the ultimate popsugar reading challenge over on goodreads (the name is offputting but there’s some thought provoking prompts and lots of recommendations over there if you’re interested) and am going to attempt it again this year because I like the way it makes me try books I wouldn’t normally.
This prompt however - a book about or involving a sport - is seriously troubling me. Every single sport ever invented could fall off the face of the Earth and it would make precious little difference to my life, except I’d lose my two evenings with sole charge of the tv remote if DP couldn’t play football. I will watch some athletics, the odd game of tennis and even a smidge of football if pressed, but I don’t care for it in my fiction. I always find the big match/race/fight scene of a film that is supposed to be the climax to be rather tedious, and I’ve even less interest in reading descriptions of them - I even skipped the quidditch sections in Harry Potter.
So are there any books you’ve read that are about sport but not really? Anything you could recommend me that involves sport but doesn’t focus on it exclusively or give blow by blow accounts of various matches/games etc. I like literary type fiction really, but am not adverse to a bit of trash now and then. I could do a non fiction book if it had a social/historical focus rather than being a straight history of x team or y sport. Or maybe a really good biography of a sporting figure that also had a fascinating life outside sport?
Everything being recommended on the goodreads group seems to be pretty USA focused, I was thinking if I must read about sport I’d rather avoid baseball etc, though why I think it’ll make a difference I don’t know. I’ve read both Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby and (the infinitely superior ) Polo by Jilly Cooper many moons ago so if it comes to it a reread of one of those might have to do.
So please can you recommend anything that involves sport but would still be of interest to the non- fan, or failing that something that is at least very short?
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A book about or involving a sport?
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Composteleana · 02/01/2018 01:47
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