<![CDATA[Fever Pitch]]>

false <![CDATA[Fever Pitch]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165403945m/4264.jpg 4264 33 In the States, Nick Hornby is best known as the author of High Fidelity and About a Boy, two wickedly funny novels about being thirtysomething and going nowhere fast. In Britain he is revered for his status as a fanatical football writer (sorry, fanatical soccer writer), owing to Fever Pitch--which is both an autobiography and a footballing Bible rolled into one. Hornby pinpoints 1968 as his formative year--the year he turned 11, the year his parents separated, and the year his father first took him to watch Arsenal play. The author quickly moved "way beyond fandom" into an extreme obsession that has dominated his life, loves, and relationships. His father had initially hoped that Saturday afternoon matches would draw the two closer together, but instead Hornby became completely besotted with the game at the expense of any conversation: "Football may have provided us with a new medium through which we could communicate, but that was not to say that we used it, or what we chose to say was necessarily positive." Girlfriends also played second fiddle to one ball and 11 men. He fantasizes that even if a girlfriend "went into labor at an impossible moment" he would not be able to help out until after the final whistle. Fever Pitch is not a typical memoir--there are no chapters, just a series of match reports falling into three time frames (childhood, young adulthood, manhood). While watching the May 2, 1972, Reading v. Arsenal match, it became embarrassingly obvious to the then 15-year-old that his white, suburban, middle-class roots made him a wimp with no sense of identity: "Yorkshire men, Lancastrians, Scots, the Irish, blacks, the rich, the poor, even Americans and Australians have something they can sit in pubs and bars and weep about." But a boy from Maidenhead could only dream of coming from a place with "its own tube station and West Indian community and terrible, insoluble social problems." Fever Pitch reveals the very special intricacies of British football, which readers new to the game will find astonishing, and which Hornby presents with remarkable humor and honesty--the "unique" chants sung at matches, the cold rain-soaked terraces, giant cans of warm beer, the trains known as football specials carrying fans to and from matches in prisonlike conditions, bottles smashing on the tracks, thousands of policemen waiting in anticipation for the cargo of hooligans. The sport and one team in particular have crept into every aspect of Hornby's life--making him see the world through Arsenal-tinted spectacles. --Naomi Gesinger 2961920 book 1992 Fever Pitch total:3867|5:658|4:1293|3:1352|2:436|1:128| 3867 13518 5130 317 5 1 false false Sun Mar 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 15 09:09:53 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 29 11:25:42 -0700 2009
My roommate lent me this book after it came up randomly in a conversation...as I approach 30 and sports fandom becomes more ridiculous proportional to my age, I find myse...more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Jan 11 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 25 13:40:30 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 11 16:07:33 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Sat Sep 15 10:49:58 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 15 12:21:13 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 1 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Jul 28 09:47:59 -0700 2007 Sat Jul 28 09:47:59 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 true false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 16 16:10:38 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 16 16:32:09 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 1998 Sun Jan 18 04:32:05 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 18 04:41:09 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu May 07 06:04:44 -0700 2009 Thu May 07 06:25:06 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Mar 31 22:11:30 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 02 22:14:51 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Jul 19 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 17 07:10:42 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 20 03:22:06 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Oct 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 06 20:44:10 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 09 00:12:18 -0700 2009 1 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Oct 12 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 06 11:30:30 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 13 09:40:16 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed May 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun May 17 02:44:11 -0700 2009 Mon May 25 13:23:01 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Sep 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Sep 12 05:45:52 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 22 06:58:30 -0700 2009 Fever Pitch is laugh out loud funny. I found myself laughing aloud in my living room, on the train, waiting for public transportation. It is a story not only about soccer (football, sorry), but about fandom, passion, and the relationships that go with it.

Nick Hornby details his relat...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 13 13:54:45 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 13 13:59:09 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Dec 21 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 19 19:21:53 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 11 16:41:36 -0800 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Mon Feb 23 18:14:01 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 23 18:16:55 -0800 2009
The book isn't bad in itself, except is a memoir of English football (soccer). I expect if you are E...more...]]> 2 0 false false Sat Apr 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Mar 07 11:06:01 -0800 2009 Sat Apr 04 19:15:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Jul 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 06 09:37:48 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 06 09:43:33 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Tue Aug 18 20:46:17 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 18 20:51:52 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Aug 22 22:44:36 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 22 22:47:47 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=4264