Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Sunday 12 June 2005
12 June 2005
Hello! So many of you have emailed in to tell each other what you're reading that I thought it warranted a super special Sunday Diary. Hope you don't mind.
First of all it's Tim 'Black And' White, who recommends Here There And Everywhere by David Joss Buckley - a biography of Steve Walsh - while Martyn Wyburn (exiled in Leicester) writes: "I'm reading Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee at the moment which is a very apposite title for a Town fan!" Thank you, gents. Is that Grimsby Fisheries place still on the Welford Road, Martyn?
Next up is John Pakey, who has "a pile of reading" right now. "I've got Roman Abramovichy-whathisface and his secret history shocker story to look at plus Lance Armstrong and his book on the actual Tour de France rather than battling cancer after they were dumped on my desk at work. The book I'm currently getting to the end of and loving every minute, though, is The Fight by Norman Mailer, all about Ali v Foreman. It's bloody fantastic. For the sport fan not into boxing this will give a great insight into the sport. Gets the Pakey thumbs-up. Observer Sport Monthly in May did a readers' poll - I'm using that as a guide. Fever Pitch was voted number one. I'm iffy about that. I liked it, but hated it because the team was Arsenal. I really can't stand Arsenal, or Ewoks. God, imagine an Ewok playing for Arsenal? The horror." I'm clearly missing something at the end there, John - and I've not read OSM since they slagged off Blundell Park last year - but thanks, mate, and I hope Macca's well.
Chris Parrott says: "The 'anorak' in you (and there's a phrase you never expected to read) may be interested by the book recently published by Town/Barnet fan Rob Cavallini - The Wanderers: Five Times FA Cup Winners. This tells the tale of the founding fathers of the modern game - at a time when the biggest decision before most matches was 'which rules shall we use?' Plenty of stats in the back together with pen portraits of players (including the likes of Allsop and Kinnaird)." One for Andy Holt by the sounds of it, then. Thanks Chris.
"I'm not normally a book person," admits Mike Worden, "but on holiday last week started to read The Beautiful Game? by David Conn. I met David earlier this year at the Clubs in Crisis Day at Wrexham and got hold of his book a couple of weeks after. After starting it last week I couldn't put it down. It's a great insight into the murky world of football club chairman and the men in grey suits running the FA. The book includes numerous examples of chairman getting richer whilst the clubs get poorer. No mention of our own club by the way but Sheffield Wednesday get a real slating for their post-Hillsborough disaster attitude and the financial activities of former chairman Dave Richards. Generally the book leaves the reader with a sense of shock at the ease with which chairmen have ripped off the fans at a whole host of clubs and, in some cases, at the expense of safety with tragic results. I'd recommend it. The holiday was good too." Cheers Mike. I'd recommend it too (the book, not the holiday, because I don't know where you went), having read it a year or two ago. Depressing, isn't it?
Thanks also to Chris Howes for a thought-provoking final note. "Add Dynamo - Defending the Honour of Kiev by Andy Dougan to the list of topper footy books," he writes. "About a 1942 footy game between the Luftwaffe and a team from occupied Kiev, made up of the stars from a pre-war Dynamo Kiev team. Makes you realise that there are times when football and supporting your team mean something more than merchandising."
As for the Diary, I try to think about football as little as I can over the summer - not always that easy for me, especially between the hours of 12 noon and 2pm Mondays to Thursdays - and so the sport is rigorously excluded from my reading list. After Douglas Coupland's Eleanor Rigby I shall be reading If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor and Man Walks Into a Pub: A Sociable History of Beer by Pete Brown. I've got Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves waiting as well, but it looks bloody terrifying, to be honest. Maybe I'll just put a record on...