|
|
Reading Rescue, September 2005: Sports Books
By Anne Allen and Mary Anne Fulmer
This month, the Reading Rescuers (helping you
escape from Boring Book Syndrome) invite you to look at sports books. All the books reviewed are available at the Penn Area Library. To help
you locate them, Dewey decimal numbers follow each title.
 Fall means football, so let's begin with H. P. Bissinger's
Friday Night Lights (796.332 BIS). In 1988, Bissinger quit
his job as an editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, packed up his wife
and twin daughters, and moved to Odessa, Texas for a year. Bissinger's
plan was to write about the Permian High School Panthers football team,
a team so important to the town that they play in a stadium that seats
20,000. He followed the players to class, to practice, and to the games
to gain an understanding of their lives. Bissinger then explored town
history and politics, and how they contributed to the football obsession
gripping Odessa. Even if you have seen the movie, pick up the book. It
is a portrait of America, seen through sports.
John Feinstein is a favorite of ours and Open:
Behind the Ropes at Bethpage Black (796.352 FEI) is one of his best. Feinstein begins by telling how, in 1994, David Fay, senior executive of
the U.S.G.A., had the idea to hold the U.S. Open golf championship at a
public golf course on Long Island. We read about the operations of the
U.S. Golf Association, the politics in choosing courses, the work done
and millions of dollars spent to bring the facility up to their
standards. The tournament, held in 2002, is interesting, but the real
fascination is seeing how all the pieces come together, from pin
placements and parking shuttles to television cameras and souvenir
shops.
There's an owner who laid the foundation for his
fortune during the San Francisco earthquake, a too-tall jockey blind in
one eye, a small horse, and a down on his luck trainer. There is also a
mighty opponent, a horse from the Eastern Establishment. It sounds like
a novel, but it is the story of Seabiscuit: An American Legend (798.4 HIL), by Laura Hillenbrand. Seabiscuit caught the imagination of a
nation battered by the Depression and Hillenbrand sets the stage, giving
us not only the story of a horse and his races, but also a picture of
society. Especially fascinating is her description of the jockeys'
lives: riding at county fairs, going to Mexico for a season, and
struggling to keep the weight off anyway they can. The climax, of
course, is the head to head race against War Admiral. Seabiscuit was
nominated for many awards when it was published in 2001 and when you
read it you will understand why.
If ESPN covers it, it must be a sport. Our final
choice is Absolutely 5th Street (795.41 MCM) by James McManus. A poet,
novelist, and teacher living in Chicago, McManus sold Harper's magazine
on sending him to Las Vegas to cover the 31st Annual World Series of
Poker. The crown jewel of the World Series is the No-limit Texas Hold'em
tournament, held at Binion's Horseshoe Casino. The colorful life and
even more colorful murder of Ted Binion filled McManus' daylight hours
and by night he used his advance from the magazine to enter satellite hold'em games, hoping to win one and get an entry into the big
tournament. Can it happen? Yes, it can and McManus tells us what it is
like to play against Howard Lederer, Annie Duke, T. J. Cloutier, Chris
"Jesus" Ferguson, and Phil Hellmuth. (For another look at Lederer, his
sister Duke and their game playing family, pick up Poker Face, a memoir
by Katy Lederer (92 Lederer). The youngest in the family, she focused on
poetry, but knows a little about poker, too.)
We'd like to hear from you. The library's mailing
address is P.O. Box 499, Harrison City, PA 15636; send e-mail to
mfulmer@pennlib.org.
View other Reading Rescue articles |
|
