A Woman\’s Guide to Loving Pro Football
by Holly Robinson Peete and Daniel Paisner
I\’m almost embarrassed to mention this book, but the record of my blog would not be complete (or honest) without it. It\’s been floating on and off my bedside table for more than two years. I picked it up a library sale once because my husband is a football fan (of the San Francisco 49ers) and I wanted to learn a little and appreciate his enthusiasm for the sport. But this book did not give me what I was looking for. It does have tons of information about football- how the game is played, breakdowns of all the positions, spotlights on famous players, even historical aspects- like how certain plays originated, or what the first football was made of. Some of it was interesting, other parts really technical. What I couldn\’t stand was reading over and over about how the author (a famous football player\’s wife) has a childhood association of football with ice cream, or of all the things football-related she finds cute, or the name-dropping of her husband\’s famous friends. I\’m sure all her little interjected woman-to-woman remarks were meant to be engaging. But I didn\’t feel connected, or amused, just annoyed. So after plodding though sixty pages of this book, I\’ve finally pulled it off my shelf for good.
I think I\’d do better with a novel that describes someone\’s experience learning to play football, rather than an instruction book. Something like The Power of One, which taught me a bit about boxing through the personal story of its main character. I hardly ever read fiction that features sports, so I don\’t know where to start looking. Any ideas?
Abandoned 228 pages, 2005
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Elizabeth Willse