Book Reviews - Most popular for 2009
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Book Review: The Rivals Game by Douglas Beattie
If you've ever read Four Four Two's regular feature More Than A Game, then there's no doubt that
you'll love this book. For the premise behind it is similar: take two clubs where there's a derby
and look at what makes games between them particularly fierce.
Book Review: Tor
For some reason this book – which is a history of German football - had stood, unread, on my
bookshelf for a couple of years. I had bought it in one of my usual spending sprees and then felt
little inclination to read it. Well, that's not completely true as I had actually started to read
it, not really liked what I saw and dropped it soon after.
Book Review: Genius Does as it Must - Liverpool FC Banners Compiled by Chris McLoughlin and Adam
Oldfield
When people talk about the atmosphere at Anfield, particularly on a European night, they often
refer to the singing and the raw emotion that there is in the ground. Too often, they fail to pick
up on an important element that distinguishes Liverpool fans from many of their English
counterparts: the banners that adorn the stands.
Over the past few days I've been reading the book Secret Diary of a Liverpool Scout which deals
with the life of former chief scout Geoff Twentyman (review of this should be online early next
week).
Author Simon Hughes has done an excellent job of rounding not only players that Twentyman helped
bring to Liverpool but also those that ended up elsewhere.
Book Review: Behind the Back Page by Chris Davies
One the cover of this book there's a quote attributed to Ian Ridley where he discribes the author,
Chris Davies, as being "a funny guy".
Such a comment would normally be the prelude to a long read without any laughs.
From time to time, I'll review books that strike my fancy. The first one would have been a
must-have for my library even if a friend hadn't written it. Hot Winter Nights: A
Game-by-Game History of the Major Indoor Soccer League 1978-92 was a labor of love for my man
Rich Paschette and it's a treasure trove for indoor soccer aficionados and
stat/sports encyclopedia geeks like me.
Much has been written about the Gael Kakuta case which has led to the ban on transfer dealings that
has been imposed on Chelsea. There has been debate about whether the decision was too harsh or not;
others have focused on going over Chelsea's actions to see whether they were right in what they did
or not.
img style="BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; BORDER-TOP: medium none; MARGIN: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: medium
none; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none" height="1" alt=""
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=alivthi-21amp;l=as2amp;o=2amp;a=0715637630" width="1"
border="0" /Normally, I'm either immediately hooked by a book and don't put it down until I finish
it or else I start delaying reading more of it which is a clear indication that it isn't really to
my liking.
Book Review: Wark On by John Wark
It must be impossible for those who played top flight football in the era of pre-Premiership riches
not to wonder how their lives would have panned out had they been born a couple of decades later.
Take Glen Hysen: the Swedish central defender who played for Liverpool in the early nineties
recently ended up on the dole after a Swedish broadcaster opted not to renew his contract.
Book Review: Red Race by Paul Tomkins
If you're a fan of American sport (something that I have to admit I'm not) then you'll be familiar
with the love affair that there is with statistics and how numbers are used to explain almost
everything.
Up till a few years back such an approach was alien to football where the only numbers you were
likely to get were those pertaining to the scoreline.
Meta: I'll be away until Monday, which is really quite handy given the transfer window's just
closed and it's an international break. I will miss the three-year anniversary of this blog
tomorrow, but that's no great shakes. Here's a book review to hold you over. Don't break
anything.
Why England Lose and Other Curious Phenomena Explained
Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski
HarperSport
The title's obviously intriguing, it got a rare five-star review in FourFourTwo, and the
blurbs have compared it to Moneyball.
Grant Wahl discusses his new book, The Beckham Experiment, out now from
Crown
Why do book reviews have to be summaries of the book? I never got that. I understand it but
don't get it. I do get jacket blurbs, though. Those few sentences of praise on the back of a boo
I'm always curious what names are there and what they say.
Big Mal: The High Life and Hard Times of Malcolm Allison, Football LegendBy David
TossellMainstreamSeptember 2009, £7.99, ISBN: 9781845964788We recently introduced to the sidebar a
table of links to some football-related book reviews that we (well, mostly LR) have written, either
on here or Goodreads.
Book Review: The Secret Diary of a Liverpool Scout by Simon Hughes
Now this is an intriguing book. Whilst most of the key architects of Liverpools's lasting success
over the four decades after Bill Shankly took over avtively shunned publicity, most were still
pushed into the limelight.
Book Review: When Football Was Football by Peter Hooton
This was love at first sight seeing that on the back cover there is reproduced one of my favourite
Liverpool images. It does not show a famous game or triumph but simply Bob Paisley sat down sharing
a joke with some of his old friends and with the Champions Cup in front of them.
Book Review: Player by Player by Ivan PontingSome years ago, I accepted to write some Liverpool player profiles for a site, foolishly thinking
that this was going to be an easy job. After all, how difficult could it be to write a couple of
hundred words about players you knew inside out?
As the year comes to a close, it is appropriate to think of what has gone on during the previous
twelve months. There are many others out there analysing Liverpool's best game of 2009, the most
spectacular goal as well as the highs (and, undoubtedly, the lows) of the year so I won't bother
you all by going over those matters.
