The National Year of Reading theme for August is all about sport and reading.
Sport has always attracted great writers and 100 years ago at the first London Olympic Games even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was at the White City Stadium to cover the finish of the first ever Marathon.
Libraries have lots of great sports books and you can find some sporty reading lists at Manchester Libraries’ online catalogue. Reserve any title for free and we’ll deliver it to your nearest library.
Do you have a favourite sports book? We want to know about it!
Write a review of your favourite sporting read or recommend a title to other readers. Just click on the comments tag at the top of the page to share your thoughts with other Manchester readers.
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August 14, 2008 at 9:39 am
limey6
I don’t know about great books on sport but I do have an enduring memory of one great sportsman, Alf Tupper. With the Beijing Olympics currently in full swing I cannot help but be reminded of this champion runner who was featured in the ‘The Rover’ comic of my boyhood. On nothing more than a diet of fisn’n'chips, often without a night’s sleep, and usually running in tatty plimsolls (remember when they were called that?) he would usually arrive at the sporting event just in time for the start of his race. Breathless (because he had invariably had to run to the event having missed the bus!) and without even a warmup, he would then thrash the field. Alf was a real Olympian! Finally, when the medal celebration was over, Alf would return home to his welding job and collect a fish’n'chip supper on the way. No Ad**as or N**e sponsorship for Alf, just the pleasure of competing – oh, and of beating all the well-trained and well-heeled ‘toffs’ who he competed against!
August 14, 2008 at 2:30 pm
e-monkey
Would like to have seen Alf race against The Hornet’s Wilson, who, I think, also made a successfull ascent of Everest some years before Hilary and Tensing?
Perhaps the comic book sporting hereos are greater than their literary equivalents.
August 15, 2008 at 8:41 am
Sue
Limey6 – here’s a book for you
Sporting Supermen by Brendan Gallagher…He devotes a whole chapter to Alf Tupper, the ‘Tough of the Track’, then he covers the best of the rest: Skid Solo, Johnny Cougar and Raven on the Wing….
…but they seem to have forgotten Bily Whizz, who could run so fast he could dodge raindrops…
August 15, 2008 at 9:02 am
Limey6
The White Spider: Story of the North Face of the Eiger
This was the first book I read about mountaineering and it came as a recommendation. What a book! We often think to ourselves these days that mountains like the Eiger, K2, Everest and so forth are ‘easy’ climbs and forget that for the early pioneers of these mountains they were often death traps.
The White Spider is an exceptionally well told account of the numerous attempts to climb the Eiger’s notorious North Face. The writer, Heinrick Harrer, who finally made a successful ascent himself, takes the reader on a journey of courage and foolishness in equal measure. I felt like this was the closest to climbing I was ever going to get apart from a ladder!
The title is integral to the story as you’ll find out and I suggest that you pack a warm thermos, plenty of rope and a good sleeping bag before you ascend the North Face with the author!