Fever Pitch
Product Details | Similar Products | Customer Reviews | Author: Nick Hornby List Price: £7.99 Our Price: £5.99 You Save: £2.00 (25%) Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours  |
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 | Product Details: Paperback 256 pages Release Date: 05 October 2000 Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd ISBN: 0140293442 Rating:   Sales Rank: 18359 | | Look for similar books by subject:
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| | Customer Reviews: Might be the best book ever dealing with football (23 July 2008)Nick Hornby's warm autobiographical book deals with his life as a football fan from 1968 (when he was a teenager) until 1992, especifically as he supported his beloved Arsenal during that time. There's some good insights about football culture (for a true football fan, football is not really an entertainment, a concept that is probably hard to understand in the US, where sports are just a part of the entertainment business) as well as football tactics (there are few good passers in the sports, he says, as hard as this might be to believe to outsiders; Liam Brady, one of his favorite players, was that rare player, a great passer). Each of the chapters (so to call them) deals with a particular football match that he remembers during that period. And along football, he also makes comments on his relationships, be it with his family or with girlfriends. What Hornby tells is the story of English football in his last throes, a time when hooliganism ruled, but when it also was a genuine, integral pastime of the English people. When the Premiere League was established (in 1992, the year this book ends), and the megamoney and the huge tv contracts came along, and some clubs (like, say, Arsenal) did not put in the field a single English player, it became more of a commercial business and less of a cultural phenomenon. And while I like football, it's hard not to come out from reading this book with the impression that being a football fan at the level Hornby was is not a colossal waste of time. Unique and interesting. (02 January 2008)'Fever Pitch' is an interesting and captivating book, I recently read it and would read it again. I am not a football fan but came closer to understand what it feels like to be one, which was very insightful - you needn't be into football to enjoy this book because football is only the backdrop to discussing relationships and issues in life. The Pandora's box was open.... (12 September 2007)This was it, the book that opened up the floodgates for "footie" to become the supposed obsession of the chattering classes. All over Hampstead, Notting Hill and Camden middle-class, Grammar-school educated chaps like Nick Hornby were suddenly given wings, free to fly everywhere expressing the love for "the beautiful game" that previously had dare not speak its name for fear of inspiring dinner-party sneers. The media was thus annoyingly overrun by David Baddiel types who previously had not given a damn about football. What had previously been a sport for the genuine working class, lower middle class office workers and a few crazed public school eccentric maths masters was depressingly hijacked by Jeremys, Edmunds, Rachels and Sophies everywhere. This was all down to Nick Hornby and his accursed book. Not that it is bad first offering from a writer who has now become the virtual personification of the North London "metrosexual" new man, dressed in his shoe-style Doc Martens and skinny black jeans, his prematurely balding hair close shaven to avoid a "comb-over" and just as happy to change nappies as he is to sink a pint of best. It is just so indulgent, so self-obsessed, so (at times) smug. It is as if Hornby is constantly telling his audience "look at me, I'm educated, middle-class, articulate, literate, yet my passion is football - how cool is THAT ?". Many of Hornby's reminiscences are bona fide and certainly strike a chord with someone such as myself who is of exactly the same generation and background. However, it is extremely irritating to read of Hornby's self-glorified schoolboy/student encounters with a seeming string of fragrant home counties university girls. Again, it is a ham-fisted way of Hornby saying that not only was he the salt of the earth but he couldn't half pull posh totty as well. Yes, Nick, we know you've had a few girlfriends, most of us have, but really, we're not actually interested in "Carol Blackburn" or whether or not she let you under her cream cashmere sweater. By all means read this book, as it is socially, culturally and chronologically very important, but, please, do not bestow it with a classic status it simply does not deserve. Fever Pitch (01 September 2007)If you're a football fan this is a must read. As a Liverpool supporter I found the description of the Michael Thomas goal particularly painful but still enjoyed the book. Hornby describes the blind devotion you have to your club extremely well. It's a fantastic read about the 'beautiful game' that most football fans will relate to. Disappointing (22 August 2006)I finally got found to reading this book recently and I wasn't that impressed. Although Hornby sums up a lot of the experiences of being a football fan well, something doesn't work; he never really gets to the bottom of the pain of defeat (and particularly relegation). OK so he's an Arsenal fan and so he's not experienced this, but this is still a book written resolutely from a successful, big club perspective. This, for me, is the main drawback with the impact of this book; it is only really 'true' to the experiences of a very few fans - those of the elite 6 or 7 perenially successful English football teams. But because its influence was so broad it has been adopted as the standard 'excuse book' for newcomer, fairweather fans. | |
