Sports books...

[fajrdrako]

From August 14, 2008: Do you or have you ever read books about the Olympics? About sports in general? Fictional ones? Or non-fiction? Or both? And, Second: Do you consider yourself a sports fan?

The easy answer is "no", and "no". Whatever instinct makes people like sports, I don't have it.

There are some sports I love: fencing, equestrian sports, archery, gymnastics. But I don't find myself making any time to watch them. I just love them in theory.

I watched a few minutes of the Olympics coverage with josanpq the other day - swimming events - and was somewhat amazed at how boring I found it, how uninteresting even the most beautifully toned and muscled bodies, how full of platitudes the announcers and the athletes were. I was more interested in catching glimpses of China.

The only sport I like watching on TV is European football.

So - do I read about sports? No, though sometimes sports come into things I read. I once (in my teens) went on a spree of reading Paul Gallico, after seeing and loving the Disney movie, The Three Lives of Thomasina, based on his novel. Paul Gallico was a sports reporter for years, and I read all his short stories about sports - and loved them because I liked his style of storytelling. Subject matter was irrelevant.

The Olympics have been featured in some books I've read about ancient Greece. Now, that was fascinating. Cynisca, winning the Olympic gold in 396 BC - yes! Go for it, girl! But it was history, not sport, I was reading.

I can't recall otherwise reading books about sports, ever. Most movies about sports bore me. The only sports movie I can think of offhand that I actually enjoyed was Bend it Like Beckham.

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, I would highly recommend Paul Gallico - though I probably haven't read a book by him in forty years! He also wrote The Snow Goose and Mrs Arris Goes to Paris. He seems to have lapsed into obscurity now - undeservedly so, in my opinion.

And wasn't The Three Lives of Thomasina a gem of a movie?

[jkluge.livejournal.com]

I can still watch Thomasina today and enjoy it. Thanks so much for the link about Paul Gallico -- I'll definitely want to read his cat books. I had no idea he wrote The Poseidon Adventure, too (not a fan of that one, I have to say).

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I didn't much like the orignal movie of The Poseidon Adventure, and haven't seen the remake. But I have such good memories of some of his other books! He wrote a couple of mysteries that I really enjoyed, too, though I can't recall the titles now.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I didn't much like the orignal movie of The Poseidon Adventure, and haven't seen the remake.

The Doctor Who version was best!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Much better!

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

And wasn't The Three Lives of Thomasina a gem of a movie?

I beg to differ. Non-Highlanders tend to impose whimsical or patronising or annoying "noble savage" fantasies on the Highlands. This is one of the whimsical sort. (The likes of Gabbled-On fall into the other categories.) You becomes a sort of Disneyland themepark on which others impose their version of "authenticity", which bears little relation to reality.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, but I don't expecting anything more than whimsey from Disney. I'm not usually a big Disney fan but that movie came out at just the right time for me, to think Patrick McGoohan and Susan Hampshire were wonderful, and - though I've never been much of a lover of cats - to love the whole cat-mystique thing going on. I never thought of it as authentic anything, but a kind of romantic fantasy that include circuses and Egyptian gods.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

I loved all his Mrs 'Arris books, and the Snow Geese is a classic. (Did you know that a British author named William Fiennes was so inspired by reading The Snow Goose while recuperating from an illness, that he made a trip from Texas to the Arctic following the migrating snow geese? His book about the trip (The Snow Geese) is beautifully written.)