7/10. All of the psychology behind this was really interesting, but the amount of detail about individual matches was pretty tedious at times!

Fun to read, but not really in the time that I knew Arsenal. Would love a sequel where you talk about the years with Bergkamp, Vieira, Henry and Van Persie.

Given my complete distaste for soccer I think it’s a credit to Hornby that I not only finished this book but thoroughly enjoyed parts of it. Had I been a soccer fan I’m sure I would have completely loved it. Takeaway the soccer though and what’s left is a depressingly real look at fandom and how our lives intertwine with our loves. Well written as expected.

Nick Hornby escribe de maravilla y leer sus novelas, para mí, es siempre un placer y una garantía de disfrute lector. Pero ojo con este libro. Yo le he puesto cinco estrellas porque me encanta el tema, pero creo que es muy muy difícil que lo disfrute (incluso que lo entienda) alguien que no sea, o haya sido, un auténtico fanático del fútbol. Además, el libro tiene ya bastantes años e incluso para mí, que conozco bien esa "fiebre en las gradas" de la que habla el autor, en muchos momentos me perdí un poco en anécdotas de los años 70 y 80. Pero bueno... para mí son 5 estrellas sin duda, aunque me pensaría mucho recomendárselo a alguien ajeno al mundo del fútbol.

Påbegynt rett før og fullført på en fotballtur til blant annet San Siro. Som Jo Nesbø skrive i etterordet: ikke la deg lure, boka handler utelukkende om fotball; livet er bare det som skjer med deg innimellom kampene.

Enten skjønner du det, eller så gjør du ikke det.

Had this book on my shelf for many years. I kept looking at it, but I'm just not a big soccer (european football) fan. I enjoy a World Cup or Euro Cup, but I've never understood the different levels in Europe. And I guess I never really tried. But every All-time Best Sport Books list I read kept mentioning this book.

Finally, looking for a book with a sport theme during this 2020 pandemic where, apart from the NFL draft, sports have been 100% replay, I told myself I'd give it a try. And I'm happy I did.

As others have said, the book may be about european football and Arsenal, but it's more about being a sports fan. I've been an avid fan at times. I know many maniacs. I loved Hornby's deep reflections about fandom. Even nearly 30 years after the book was first released, much of what he says remains relevant. There's a certain credibility for suffering as a fan. There's a certain badge of honnor for knowing all the details. (Social media brings this to a whole new level!) There's also something so alive about sports - moments. Hornby captures all of this and more.

Writen like a long conversation - it's fun and easy to read. I can almost see the creation of an app where a true team supporter could write diary entries following every game in Hornby's format and find him or herself with their own Fever Pitch/Field/Rink/Court/Course account.

If you are a real sports fan, live with a real sports fan or even just know of a real sports fan, I recommend this book.

I love this book more than I can express. I read it for the first time after a particularly painful baseball season (Mariners expelled from the playoffs by demonic Yankees) and I've probably read it every year since. I'm actually reading it again right now because I am painfully baseball deprived until spring training.

Now I realize that it is not actually about baseball specifically- and please, never speak to me about the Americanized movie starring Jimmy Fallon because I will cry and shriek- but sometimes it's the only thing that can make me feel like part of the universe again after my brain has been completely taken over by baseball fanaticism and I need to come down.

In a review of Moneyball, Nick Hornby said this:"I understood about one in four words of Moneyball, and it’s still the best and most engrossing sports book I’ve read for years. If you know anything about baseball, you will enjoy it four times as much as I did, which means that you might explode." For me that completely applies to Fever Pitch, but substitute English football (or as I like to say, "soccer") for baseball. The ridiculous, futile, completely self-inflicted pain of being a sports fan is universal.

If you like this book at all, and even if you're a Red Sox fan- no, especially if you're a Red Sox fan, do not ever watch the American movie. There's a perfectly pleasant and enjoyable British movie that stars Colin Firth, and you can probably find it on Netflix. It's very satisfying, and it doesn't insult the entire world of sports by shoving Drew Barrymore and David Ortiz together.

NB: I received a free copy of this book from the Goodreads First Reads Program, but that has not affected the content of my review.

I wanted to like this more than I did. I've read several of Nick Hornby's novels, and as I generally enjoy reading about sports and I enjoy memoirs and humor, I figured this book would be a gimme for me. But sadly, it wasn't.

To say that Nick Hornby was obsessed with football/soccer is an extremely large understatement. And like all people with true obsessions, if you let them, they will talk in excruciating detail about the object of their obsession, and they will talk about it endlessly, sure in the knowledge that the subject of their fascination is so interesting that whoever is listening can't help but appreciate every last bit of detail they can provide you with. Chances are, if you haven't been on the receiving end of that kind of informative onslaught, you've been the one doing the talking (or wanting to do the talking). I have been both (whoops).

The funny things is, listening to someone (or reading their writing) about something they are well-informed at or skilled at can be pleasurable. But there's a fine line between giving them information that will keep them interested and giving them so much it threatens to drown them. Unfortunately, I think that's what happened here, for me.

Hornby talks about soccer with a level of detail that assumes his reader already knows what he's talking about. He talks about soccer in a way I didn't know it was possible to talk about soccer. There were times entire sentences meant nothing to me because the words or concepts he was using rang no synaptic bells whatsoever. And that was frustrating, especially so because the rest of the book was very good.

Hornby ties his soccer obsession in very nicely to his relationship with is father, his childhood, growing up. It's also a very funny book. Hornby is unflinchingly aware of not only the negative (and positive) effects of his obsession on his own life, but is also extremely self-aware and reflexive about it. He talks about his love for soccer, and specifically his loyalty to his team, Arsenal, not as something he chooses to love, but which he literally can't help but to love, even if he doesn't want to. At times, it seems more like loathing than anything else. It's actually pretty fascinating. I just wish the lengthy bits about soccer had been a little less impenetrable.

[3.5 stars]

Me cuesta mucho encontrar libros que me vuelen la cabeza y que logren que no los pueda dejar de leer; Fever Pitch fue uno de estos. Hornby logra entrelazar su vida personal con el fútbol de una forma tan irónica que es imposible no sentirse representado con lo que escribe. Si te gusta el deporte es una lectura obligatoria y sino también. Librazo.

Nick Hornby'nin yarım bıraktığım tek kitabı oldu. Kendisi en sevdiğim yazarlardan biri ancak bu sefer mesele ikili ilişkiler veya müzik olmayınca anlatıcıyla kendi aramda bir özdeşleşme yaşayamadım, duyguyu hissedemedim. Aslında kitabın orijinal ismi olan fever pitch'in "aşırı heyecan duymak" benzeri bir anlam taşımasından mütevellit, futbolun yerine basketbol veya beni heyecanlandıran başka bir hobimi koyarak bu empatiyi yaşayabilirim diye düşünmüştüm ama olmadı. Çünkü metinde anlatılan çoğu şey direkt olarak futbolla, futbol taraftarı olmakla, hayatı futbol üzerinden kurgulamakla alakalı. Futbola saygı duysam da yürekten içinde olduğum bir alan değil. Çeviride belirgin sıkıntılar olduğunu da not düşmek gerek.

“We do not lack imagination, nor have we had sad and barren lives; it is just that real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.”

I learned a couple of important things from Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. First, I'm a lightweight when it comes to sports fanaticism. And second, I need to suffer a lot more before I'm allowed to complain about Liverpool.

The first NFL game I remember watching was a Super Bowl over at the Waters' place. My whole family joined their whole family and while we kids messed around all over the house, the adults watched the game. I recall two things about that day: the Steelers won the game, but I left there a Cowboys fan. Since that day, the NFL became the Cowboys and a bunch of teams the Cowboys play. I still can't imagine being a fan of any other NFL team. It's Cowboys or nothing.

How does that kind of attachment occur? How does one get so tied up with a team that the fortunes of that team actually affect the quality of one's day? Hornby has a lot to say about that as he tells the story of his life through his infatuation with Arsenal, a football (soccer) team from London with one of the greatest names ever given a team. We experience the highs and lows of his life along with the highs and lows Arsenal, and he shows us how the two are connected. He's achingly honest. There were several moments where I sat open-mouthed at something he did as an Arsenal fan, to only realize after a few moments that yeah - I could see myself doing something similar. If I had lived anywhere near the Cowboys, I'm sure Hornby and I would have even more in common.

But still - I'm a lightweight, even though how the Cowboys were faring at various times in my life is perfectly clear in my memory, and as much a part of my life as the people I actually interacted with. Like that time in 1985 that I bet Bob Southon that my struggling Cowboys would beat his mighty Bears, and how he laughed and gave me 14 points (which made me laugh, but I took them), and how I came in to school Monday morning knowing that I was going to get humiliated because the Cowboys got thumped 44-0. Yeah, rough. But that's what happens. Fans of a team often act irrationally. When you think about it, every fan but those of a single team end every season in disappointment. Yet every year, we set ourselves up again.

Over the last three years my sport interest has shifted entirely from American football to the-rest-of-the-world football. Lots of reasons why. I watched random Premier League games until one day I watched Liverpool FC. Gerrard and Torres - it was love at first sight. Can't be explained, but that day, things changed. I went from a casual viewer to a fan, and that meant that I would allow Liverpool to affect my mood. This last season, my third (or my second full) season of following them, the wheels came off. Hornby makes it clear several times in the book that I have no right to complain along with Liverpool's lifelong fans. I simply haven't suffered enough yet. I have no context, I don't know where they've been. I didn't live through their history, and therefore won't be happy enough when they win, nor sad enough when they lose.

I understand his logic, believe it or not. Doesn't make me feel any better, but I know that I haven't reached his level of fanaticism. I think I'm better off if I don't get there.