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| Books of The Times: Agassi Basks in His Own Spotlight As described in this autobiography, Andre Agassi’s life is lively but narrow, since his curiosity does not extend far beyond tennis. feeds.nytimes.com |
Alan Gibson tribute brings back fond memories of rhubarb and misprints | Frank Keating A celebration of the cricket writer Alan Gibson awakens memories of an age when dictation could spell disasterTomorrow, William Hill names its Sports Book of the Year for the 21st time. The half-dozen shortlist has a book on motor cycling, horse racing, rugby, cricket, and two on football. Way back, when sports' esteemed "Bookie" prize was hesitantly begun in conjunction with the lamented Sportspages bookshop, cricket books always dominated. No longer: 2009's one cricket entry is a life of Harold Larwood by Duncan Hamilton, a previous winner with his tremendous memoir of Brian Clough.The year before Hill inaugurated its prize in 1988, apparently all of 78 cricket hardbacks were sent to Wisden by British publishers for review. If it were not for the Ashes, how many cricket books would have been published in 2009? About eight, I'd say, if you were lucky. And what does it say in 2009 at the end of an Ashes summer that the only cricket book on a prize-list features an Ashes series 77 years ago?Mind you, Ashes books sure deck the shelves this Christmas. All the usual suspects, all the usual ghosted twaddle and tosh. For a valued and collectable 2009 Ashes remembrance, vivaciously written and dead-on deadline paced, you need only go to either former captain Mike's irresistible Atherton's Ashes (Simon & Schuster £18.99), or Gideon Haigh's The Ultimate Test (Aurum £12.99). Either would be enough to spoil any bookish-sporty child, and his/her cup would be overflowing if you added as a stocking-filler the thoroughly wholesome olde tyme schoolboy tale Unplayable, by the poet/biographer Simon Rae (Top Edge Press in conjunction with the Chance to Shine project, £9.99).If receptive kids lap up Rae's mint-fresh slant on the classic Wodehousian yarn, wrinkled old-timers will particularly relish lingering over remembrance of warming days under pastoral suns with the most handsome celebration of the late county cricket correspondent of the Times, the erudite, appealing, but ultimately tragic Alan Gibson. Of Didcot and The Demon (Fairfield Books £20) is, to extend the alliteration lovingly, both delectation and delight. It was on Didcot's GWR platform that the writer was so often marooned on his way to, or from, the cricket – at which, regularly, his fondest performer was Somerset's drayhorse trundler Colin Dredge, "the demon of Frome".This devoted filial panegyric has been glowingly produced by Anthony Gibson, and is yet another polished, almost peerless, cricket book of the year from publisher Stephen Chalke's humming little Fairfield factory.Gibson died as laptops arrived; a serious drinker, he would usually be more than half-cut as he slurringly telephoned his stuff at close of play to an understandably exasperated copytaker in London. One of the Times classics Chalke quotes is a line from a Lord's match between two counties due to play each other again in a cup final the following Saturday "in the self same arena" – information which appeared in the paper as: "Both sides will appear next Saturday at the Selsey Marina."With printing and proof-reading shared (or not, as the case may be) between London and Manchester, those dear and distant days were made even worse for us on the Guardian. In time, I suppose we vied with each other, merrily boasting who'd been inflicted with the best, or rather worse, of literals and misprints.I still have a fondness for my "The last batsman, Albeit Carefully, survived to lunch". Hurrah for good old Albeit. Or "Uttley, a scrummaging all-rounder, is a typically English futility player". Or who remembers "An unamused, stony-faced Barrington last night accused Griffith of an excess of chuckling"? Or, still, one of my better match-report intros: "Bridgend 9 Newport 6: The quest for two pints has become the overriding factor in this inaugural season of the Heineken League."Pity our poor copytakers, muffled in headphones in their London sweatbox, having to take down at a lick our daily reams of rhubarb, changing paper every second paragraph, and each time retype the story's "catchline" on the succeeding sheet. It could, of course, go on for ream after ream in those long‑winded days of old.One fabled evening David Gray, monarch of these pages and an extremely verbose tennis writer as well, dictated page after page of guff from Wimbledon. The ever-repeatable catchline was "Lawn Tennis". The drooping copytaker had finally put an "End" on David's marathon when her phone at once rang again. This time, a two-thousander from features star Terry Coleman with even more worthy, wordy stuff on poets laureate. Every time his name was mentioned in the piece, which was often, the grandest of our regal rhymsters came out as "Alfred Lawn Tennison".Nobody noticed and it ran through every edition.CricketFrank Keatingguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Hardcover Nonfiction Top 5 at a Glance1. GOING ROGUE, by Sarah Palin2. STONES INTO SCHOOLS, by Greg Mortenson3. HAVE A LITTLE FAITH, by Mitch Albom4. OPEN, by Andre Agassi5. TRUE COMPASS, by Edward M. Kennedy feeds.nytimes.com |
A Man of Influence This evenhanded biography of Antonin Scalia lets the Supreme Court justice describe himself in his own words and offers insight into his judicial philosophy. feeds.nytimes.com |
The Rapture by Liz Jensen | Book review This gripping global-warming thriller reads like a film script but loses credibility towards the end, writes Suzi FeayLiz Jensen's much-praised seventh novel, a global-warming thriller set in the near future, has the feel of a lushly filled out film script. Against a backdrop of swirling skies are set some familiar elements, among them an unstable shrink and a demonic child straight out of The Exorcist. It's the sort of film that, despite the promise of its premise, falls apart in the final half-hour.Gabrielle Fox is a wheelchair-bound art therapist assigned to work with a teenage matricide in a secure unit near Dover. She became a paraplegic after the car accident that killed her lover (and for which she is to blame). She's screwed up and insecure and probably the worst person to delve into the mind of the poisonous and apparently psychic Bethany Krall. Bethany craves ECT, the only thing that seems to alleviate her mental suffering, and after each treatment she rants from the Bible, accurately predicting natural catastrophes. Her obsessive drawings of a diving man turn out to prefigure an earthquake in Rio that dislodges the statue of Christ the Redeemer. Frazer Melville, a passing physicist, falls for what he calls his "sex goddess on wheels", and through Gabrielle becomes embroiled in the Bethany case. As the world simmers, Christian fundamentalism is on the rise; the so-called Faith Wavers are waiting for the Rapture, which the gloating Bethany seems to be foreseeing: the final cataclysm when true believers will be swept up into the heavens. Rejecting the religious interpretation, but fearing the risk of a global disaster is all too real, Frazer and Gabrielle try desperately to warn the experts, all blinkered by their scientific rationalism.Through the angry, despairing Gabrielle, Jensen convincingly depicts the everyday humiliations of the wheelchair-bound, and much of the writing is powerful – for example, in a phrase like: "[I] brainwash myself into erasing the fickle, freckled physicist from my psyche", where even the silent "p" pulls its weight. Towards the end, however, things take a melodramatic turn and the seriousness and quirkiness that promised so much are jettisoned for flashy effects (tiny humans, vast tidal waves) that are just so much CGI.Fictionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |