Fever Pitch
Product Details | Similar Products | Customer Reviews | Author: Nick Hornby List Price: £7.99 Availability:  |
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 | Product Details: Paperback 256 pages Release Date: 05 May 2005 Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0140293442 Rating:   Sales Rank: 17748 | | Look for similar books by subject:
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| | Customer Reviews: Fever pitch (26 June 2010)Fever pitch is a football novel by long time Arsenal fan , Nick hornby. Maybe just to show off but my copy is slightly different to the one above , as I have the Arsenal membership copy, including a foreword by Nick saying goodbye to highbury, but anyway on with the story. ===Story=== Fever pitch is essentialy a diary , telling about the Nicks childhood and his parents divorce , his life as a teacher and his relationships. So the book isn't all about his beloved arsenal but it does have the love stroyline and his refferences to his family. Mainly because football is the only thing he has as a common ground with his father. Set between 1968 and 1992 , we see how Nicks life can be rememberd by certain events occuring alongside football , not only Arsenal , but his time as a student following Cambridge and a spell managing a school team , it all comes into place and means it's a nice story for men and women. Reminding me of a moment in black books , the perfect book for men and women, A man trying to stop a nuclear holocaust whilst trying to marry his wife. ===Writing=== By putting it in the style of a diary , the memories are much more real and allow you to feel more connected the writer. All in all its a much more emotional story because you only see things from one point of view and have to imagine how the other characters are really reacting outside of the story. For a football fan , its also intresting to read about the authors memories of moments like watching pele, or what he was doing when he heard about the hillsbrough disaster. great read (08 March 2010)Nick Hornby books are great when you want to read something that will entertain you, won't require you to keep a dictionary nearby to find out what numerous long words mean, but isn't a piece of mind numbingly dumb fluff. You find yourself, if not identifying with the main character, then at least recognising yourself or someone you know. If you are female don't be put off that the subject is football. Nick Hornby describes everyday events and habits in a way that will have you laughing out loud. I bought this book to replace a much loved copy that was lent but never returned. Surprisingly fun (20 July 2009)I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would. I had agreed in advance that I would read it with a friend but when it came to actually starting the book I wasn't particularly enthusiastic - whilst I like football, I certainly am not obsessed with it (as Hornby is) and so I wasn't sure if I'd like the book or not. I shouldn't have worried. The book pulled me in from the first page. This is the first book I've read by Hornby and it won't be my last. It tracks his obsession with football from his very first game, through the ups and downs, right up to when the book was written. The writing flows and the descriptions are vivid enough that you can imagine you're watching the game. This book is much more than just a book about football. Its a memoir of 99% of football fans out there. Having known a number of football fanatics, this book has made me realise why they are so obsessed with the game. It has made me realise why I cannot ever rely on them when making plans for weekends during the summer The book is filled with Hornby's humour and I frequently found myself laughing at his anecdotes. This was a surprisingly fun book to read and I'm not an obsessive where football is concerned. I would imagine that this book would be the perfect read for anyone with more than a passing interest in football. Landmark novel for 'new wave' footie fans (02 January 2009)Football was going through something of a renaissance in the mid-90's. The improvements forced on clubs by the Taylor report were beginning to take shape, making stadiums more welcoming, safer enviroments.And with the big TV money beginning to flow it was a short lived era where die hard regulars, families and new fans mixed together in grounds that still retained much of the atmosphere of the terraces. A transitional time for the game in our country but a transition that went too far in my opinion, engulfing the game with a greed and disdain for the loyalty of fans that kept many clubs alive throughout the difficult times. Such a shame that the healthy balance between safety and affordabilty proposed in the Taylor report and put into practice for a short period eventually came an inevitable but distant second as football clubs actively chased the buck and pandered to a new type of fan who was fresh, eager and easy to exploit. Loyalty was forgotten as working class fans were conveniently branded as thugs(although it was only ever a small minority of troublemakers even in the bad times) to make it acceptable for the media and clubs alike to brag about having 'A much better 'CLASS' of fan at foot-ball now'. As the old guard were priced out and shoved aside clubs made way for the 90's bandwagon jumpers who flocked to the most successful clubs and who fed on a diet of Fantasy Football and patronising, celebrity endorsed 'foot-ball is suddenly cool' dross such as 'My Summer With Des'. To this type of fan 'FEVER PITCH' was the bible and it made going to foot-ball a living nightmare that just seems to get worse with every passing year. You see there was nothing new in what was been said in this book, nor nothing new being said that hasn't been said before about the passion fans feel for the game. But what it did manage to achieve for better or for worse(and in my view definitely the worse) was to make the chattering classes feel comfortable and at ease with the game. Not a bad thing in itself, but Nick Hornby went a step further by evoking an air of superiority which to this day is apparent and no matter where you sit in a foot-ball ground I promise you will not be far from a smug, self indulgent Nigel who though having never played the game, seen the game or even heard of the game until five minutes ago, now seems convinced that he(she) has some deeper, profound, pseudo intellectual insight into the game that I(as a mere life time supporter) could never hope in all my years of primitive existence to grasp. These annoying, pompous, self-appointed master tacticians are never, I repeat NEVER right about anything but ever since the mid-90's they are everywhere and every match I now go to comes with a running commentary of the glaringly obvious in that most gut scrapingly annoying(I could re-invent the wheel) voice, seemingly convinced he(or she)is a revoloutionary tactical genius who views the game from a higher plain than we mere mortals. These people need to be eradicated and know NOTHING about football I can assure you, but thanks largely to Fever Pitch they now largely dominate football grounds with a bloated sense of self-importance and a love for no team outside the top 4. What ever happened to the breed known as the QPR fan? Go to any pub outside of any stadium in the country and I am certain you will hear a better insight into the game than the one on offer in the pages of Fever Pitch and the avalanche of dinner party footie disciples that were born as a result. It is no newsflash the game today has become a greed-ridden, bloated parody of itself and Fever Pitch played an influential role in inspiring footie delirium in marketing execs up and down the country who could now bore colleagues at work with romanticised, pretentious tales of "Braving the terraces of Grimbsby on a cold windy night". Suddenly football writing was poetic,(as long as you were middle class and went to Cambridge, anyway). Man loves foot-ball(yawn). Man loves football and is a smug intellectual and suddenly the Sunday supplements are enamored with 'the beautiful game'. Cue fresh, beaming 'footies great, isn't it?'(Yes, I already know you tedious cretin) faces the length and breadth of the country and the rest is history. 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. | |
