Rating: 
Summary: Fever Pitch is a novel to which you can relate.
Review: Nick Hornby's autobiography about his obsession with the Arsenal football club is poignant and well-written. But most of the best of the book is overshadowed by reviews that call this book "The funniest book of the year!". What makes the book an especially good read is not Hornby's nostalgic, humorous story-telling, but his discursions to such various subjects as class, male behavior, and identity. The book is also a great description of what it means to be a fan of any sport anywhere. Even the most avid opposer to football (soccer) can identify with Hornby's description of obsessive fanaticism, especially sports fans. Possibly the best facet of the book, however, is how Hornby's obsession with football acts as an embodiment of all his emotions. Everything revolves around football for Hornby. His loves, passions, sadnesses, and joys are rooted in Arsenal.
Rating: 
Summary: Best sports fan book ever
Review: Sports fan? You'll like this book.
Soccer fan? You'll really live this book.
English soccer fan? You'll love this book.
Arsenal fan? This will be one of your favorite books ever.
I am all of the above. But I am also a fan of good writing. Nick Hornby has proven (with books such as "High Fidelity " and "About a Boy") that he's an excellent writer. In tackling (pun intended) the sport and team he is obsessed with, Hornby is being faithful to the notion that writer's should deal with topics familiar to them.
"Fever Pitch" is a love story. It is about one person's unconditional love for a sports team. There have been other such books before, but none better. Hornby explores the intersecting of love of team (and living and dying with their results) with the annoying business of the "rest of life." Any sport fan will be able not to just relate to the book, but seem themselves in it. Those familiar with English football (soccer to the heathen) will identify all the more.
Sports fans should read this book for a glimpse at how others see us.
Rating: 
Summary: Painfully, painfully boring
Review: This book was extremely pointless. Since each entry is a memory, they are written like them so they don't have an insteresting story-telling narrative. Also, some of the entries were just how the game was played and who won, with absolutely nothing interesting to say. And that for 300 pages, completely redundant. This book has no beginning, middle, or end. Just entry after entry of complete pointlessness. Now, it may be because I am not interested in sports, but this is just a football (soccor) journal and nothing more. Hornby was able to shove in a little bit of angst and childhood problems, but it is not nearly significant enough to keep the reader interested. Though the book had some very funny parts, it doesn't make up for the ennui I experienced while reading this book. You know, they made a movie out a this.....HOW?!! It barely works as a piece of fiction or reference book...but a movie?! Jesus. I'm sorry but this was one of the most boring books I've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: black and white and read all over
Review: This is a cool book, and a very good book, but a tiny little "je ne sais quoi" keeps me from giving it that last and final fifth star. To summarize the book superficially in a sentence, it's an autobiographical retelling, in a very witty first-person voice, of the author's (London journalist Nick Hornby) lifelong love of soccer and his passion for the English pro soccer team Arsenal (which plays in London). Thrown in are side stories about his boyhood, his relationship with his parents, and his posse of friends, love interests, and workmates who either do or don't share his love of the sport. One problem for North Americans is that this is a truly English book, in that it contains tons of references to little villages in England, little UK customs, judgments and descriptions of London neighborhoods, etc., that left me feeling like a Yankee hick who'd never left the trailer park. Indeed, that is my problem and not the author's, but North Americans who don't know English culture well will feel lost at times. Another problem is that the book, like the TV show "Seinfeld," isn't really about anything. Sure, there's a lot of chatter about soccer, but not in any sort of methodical or educative way. It's basically a willfully disorganized diary about 20 years in the life of a clever, witty Englishman (from about age 10 to about age 30) who allows soccer to dominate his worldview and, alas, his whole life. It comes down to the amusing musings of a 30-something Londoner, which makes the book fascinating but not monumental. The obsession with soccer is the strength and the weakness of the work. If you want to learn about English pro soccer, you will be disappointed. If you want to learn first-hand, from a very imaginative and clever soul, about what it was like for one particular person to grow up soccer-mad in southeastern England the 1970's and 1980's and how it impacted the rest of his life, then this is the book for you. I'm a big fan of Nick Hornby, and a better book of his, and a better "starter book" for him, is "High Fidelity."
Rating:
Summary: Not a penny worth
Review: When I saw this book, I thought that Nick Hornby will tell us about his experiences at the stadium, for example:
The first time that I went to a stadium to see the San Diego Chargers (I live in Mexico but my brother lives there). My brother asked me if I want to go to the game and I told him that yes, so the next day he didn't offer me nothing for breakfast, I didn't comment anything because I thought that we will eat some hot dogs at the stadium, then I saw him to take some beers, sodas, meat and everything to do a barbecue so I asked him if we are going to a barbecue after the game, he just smiled.
When we get to the parking lot at the stadium I just didn't believe my eyes, everybody was having a barbecue I just started to laugh and laugh because here in Mexico you will never do that. (I don't remember who won that game nor the others games that I will tell you in this review). The second time I went to see the Chicago Bears with a friend, I knew that in the stadium they only sell two beers per person per time so in the line for the beers I told my friend:
"Buy two beers.
"No, I don't like so much beer, I only want one.
"I didn't asked you what do you like, I told you what to do!
At the end of the second quarter I asked him for my beer, and he told me that he already drank HIS second beer. The third and last story is when I went to see the Houston Oilers at the Astrodome. Behind me was a group of ten or twelve persons, in that stadium were glasses that contain three beers, so they make a competition to see who drinks all the beer faster, so the first started and he drank almost all the beer but part of it went directly to his pants, everybody was laughing, so when the second started, the first make him laugh and happened almost the same as the first one, to make the story short, at the end, the person who won the competition was the one who has more wet his pants. Now, in this book the writer just wrote all the results of his favorite team of Soccer in England since 1968, that shows us one of two thinks: He has an excellent memory or he has a sports book to write them down, I think that nobody will check if those results are true or not, nobody cares even if you leave in London. If the book would say his stories at the stadium, it doesn't matter which sport is because you are not interested in the sport, you are interested in the people who goes to see that specific sport. If I went to a stadium about 10 times in my life (to see football) and I have this and others stories, I am sure that a person who goes to the stadium to each game of his favorite team must have many stories like this to write them, some of them funny and some sad, but that will keep you interested in the book.
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