Literature

I suppose the one good thing reading the Da Vinci code recently was to make me want to read more, irregardless of whether the books are good or bad. My think has been depraved of much literature since my army days, when I would spend spare time reading these novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and George Orwell. I always and will continue to put film before books but I suppose I really ought to read a little bit more than the newspapers and 8 days and FRAME or assorted design books.

Then I discovered I could combine 2 loves in a way I somehow never envisioned before. I've decided I'm going to stock up on a football library.

All this after coming across a fabulous photography pictorial of football related pictures either fans or children playing in Kinokuniya. Then I spotted "England's Worst Footballers". With a title like that, I suppose I just wanted to flip through it but Popular covered it up with plastic. In the end, it may probably be just a one off read though.

Then comes memory. I remember Nick Hornby writing Fever Pitch. A rather celebrated football novel. Then there was "The Miracle of Castel di Sangro", which I saw in Borders in my Orwellian days. (HEHE) Story of a poor club in Italy making it to the Serie B. More recently, on soccernet, I came across an article which mentioned a book by Tim Parks, "A Season With Verona". So I checked on Amazon and found really cool titles like "How Soccer Explains the World" and "Soccer in the Sun and Shadow".

Somehow, I just never realised that there have already been a lot of books written about football. They range from the historical, statistical and fact based, to training manuals, to absurd descriptions of fandom and cult support of unknown clubs and whatnot. Its like the world of football I keep dreaming up in FM 2005 or WE 8.

So I'm going to start by buying a book, finishing it before buying another book, and once in a while, popping a non football book in there.