Monday, May 25, 2020

Five of the best books for sports fans

Nige Tassell's book Bottom Corner: Hope, Glory And Non-League Football was named among Waterstones’ top twelve sports books of 2016, while Three Weeks, Eight Seconds: Greg LeMond, Laurent Fignon And The Epic Tour de France Of 1989 was shortlisted in the Cycling Book of the Year category at the Sports Books Awards and has since been published in the Netherlands, Spain and the US.

His other books include Mr Gig: One Man’s Search For The Soul Of Live Music, Butch Wilkins And The Sundance Kid: A Teenage Obsession With TV Sport, and Boot Sale: Inside The Strange And Secret World Of Football’s Transfer Window.

At the Guardian, Tassell tagged five favorite sports books, including:
Even this kind of close observation [of Bissinger's Friday Night Lights] wasn’t enough for Adharanand Finn, who puts himself into the action in Running With the Kenyans. A fan of Kenya’s long-distance runners since childhood, Finn decides to uproot his family, swapping rain-lashed Britain for the scorched earth of east Africa. It is only by running alongside its future stars that he can understand how the country has dominated marathon-running in recent times. Coasting along in his slipstream is a fine place to be.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue