Rating: 
Summary: For sports fans, obsessives, and everyone else
Review: I assume this book would be a joyous, justifying experience for a devoted fan of any sport - "I'm not alone!" - and I can assure you that it's a fun, educational read for someone who has no interest in any sport. It's a look at the way fanship can be created by, and in turn create, a person's life, and as such should be required reading both for fans themselves and for the people who can't understand them. In other words, if you completely understand why an important win could turn your entire life around, or why you would have to miss your sister's wedding if it coincided with a game, Fever Pitch is for you. And if you don't understand this at all, the book is also for you. Now, having said that, there are a few problems with this book for Americans who don't know much about football. (You know, soccer, not American rules football.) If you don't know thing one about the game, you can still read the book, but you won't understand big chunks of it. Hornby either never expected this book to be published in America, or he can't imagine an audience that isn't intimately familiar with football argot. (And, having read the book, I'm betting on the latter.) So you'll need either to read a book about football before you read Fever Pitch, or to have on call a person who knows football. As it happens, I had both. I read the decent book The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro before Fever Pitch, so I knew about, for example, relegation and promotion. And I happen to know a person who watches football. And still I didn't get everything; what the heck is the Arsenal offside trap? What was the Ibrox disaster? (Double whammy, since apparently it also happened before I was born.) What's the penalty spot? I don't know, and Hornby didn't take the time to tell me. So - not perhaps the best book to introduce you to football. Still, this a fascinating book, a book that contains a wealth of self-knowledge for the obsessed and astonishing revelations for everyone else. Read it. If nothing else, you'll learn that the person in your life that you thought was as obsessed with team X as it is possible to be is merely a fly-by-night fan.
Rating:
Summary: I can relate...
Review: ... I grew up in Philadelphia, watching (and suffering through) many a dismal baseball season, with my dad, as the Phillies would implode year after bloody awful year. I can definitely relate to Hornby's obsession with Arsenal (who play in the Premiership, not the First Division: it's the difference between the majors and Triple AAA). Great book, especially for us Gunners fans, but you won't have to love soccer to love it.
Rating:
Summary: for fans of any sport
Review: This book is a great read. it is an autobiographical account of Horby'slife written as a series of match reports of Arsenal football matches. Each match report alsop includes refelections on his current strate of mind and events going on around him. Hornbys reflections on Heysel and hillsborough are very insighful and show how these disasters did not just affect the people and teams involved at the time but how the affected all fans of the sport. hornby is best known foer his "male confessional" books - High Fidelity and About a Boy. Fans of those novels should read Fever Pitch to get a better insight into Hornby's way of thinking. This is book that all football fans will love and relate too . However anyone who is an sereious fan of any sport will relate withg Horby's description of how his team became part of his life. read this book and find a small part of yourself in it!
Rating: 
Summary: A Funny, Personal Glimpse of Sports and Life
Review: After three books, Hornby seems to be the master of intimate narration. In "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy" I felt as if I was a part of the story, sitting inside his brain like a character on the canceled TV show Herman's Head, wincing at the mistakes and laughing at the happiness. You're along for the ride and you're emotionally attached all the way through. The books end and you're left with a sense of disbelief, wondering: "What happenned to our relationship? Why am I shut out?" and you sit around and wait for the next to come out. Fever Pitch precedes the two abovementioned books, and the narration is more raw and personal. Greater sadness, wistfulness comes through; instead of guessing that the main character is supposed to be Hornby, you know it's him. Reality can be more drab and longwinded than the fiction, but it's worth it. Hornby is poignant and honest and the overall effect is wonderful. Like other reviews mention, you don't need to be a sports fan to appreciate this book, although some practical knowledge of teams and grounds might help. A fine book, and something I'm happy was allowed to be published.
Rating:
Summary: For all football fans
Review: Hey, come on. We invented the game, so we get to call it football! This is a very special book, not just for the die-hard fans who go to every game, but also for those who stand outside a TV shop at 4.45 on a saturday afternoon. Its not simply a celebration of what it is to be a fan, more an emotional journey through a lifetime of football. Parts of it are very moving, and it conjured up moving memories of my own as a I read it. Its a book that is easy to read again, and that for me is the ultimate test. 5 stars if ever any book earned them!
Rating:
Summary: Much less boring than Arsenal!
Review: Was I reading about Nick Hornby or myself? There was one subtle difference. He was writing about Arsenal whereas the source of my joy and pain since 1966 has been Everton. But apart from that I saw myself on every page. It was quite liberating. Was I the only intelligent professional English male who felt sick on matchdays, and worse when we were playing Liverpool? No. Was there any rational explanation for my total refusal to listen to a game on the radio because this will guarantee a heavy defeat? Yes. We are all in this together. Nick Hornby's books are always witty and engaging. But most of all he is able to communicate the male psyche to an unbelieving world. (See also High Fidelity). It's OK to be male. It's OK to sit in the cold and rain and watch us lose 0-3 to Ipswich Town, knowing that we will be back next week for more of the same. I intend to buy this book as a present for anybody who dares to question my sanity.
Rating:
Summary: Inside the head of the diehard sports fan
Review: Nick Hornby is now desevedly well known for High Fidelity, but in my opinion this book is even better. The story centers around his obsession with the English Division 1 football team Arsenal, but you don't have to like or care about the sport to really enjoy this book. If you happen to be somewhat on the fanatical side of devotion to a particular team in any sport, you'll see a lot here that will ring very true. My own life-and-death sports devotion is tied to another sport (American college football) and another team (Ohio State), but I was nodding my head in recognition of my own feelings and behavior many times through this book. As in High Fidelity, Hornby really captures the essence of this experience and expresses it in a way that is precise, revealing and humorous. Hornby may be a novelist, but he's a very good psychologist too. So if you are a fanatic devotee of a sports team (doesn't matter what team or what sport) or you'd like to understand someone who is - then read this book. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Not Obsession - Life
Review: Any English male with the normal obsession for football will identify with the character in Hornby's first book. I grew up in West London supporting a hopeless lower division team and my life between the ages of 10 and 30 was defined by their successes (few) and failures (many). This was the first book that intelligently defined how this obsession is life itself - everything else, work, family, girlfriend etc. takes second place to the all consuming passion for the team (not for football itself but your team). Hornby's later work is more accessible to the non football fan but this one will forever be my favourite.
Rating: 
Summary: Be warned! This book is not as accessible as his later work
Review: Just a quick, simple warning to potential buyers who liked "High Fidelity" and/or "About A Boy": "Fever Pitch" is not quite in the same vein. It's a fine book on footie--and is the perfect gift for any Arsenal fan--but the book should more accurately be titled "Literary Journal of an Arsenal Fan." Each mini-chapter is catalogued by a specific Arsenal match (score, date, and pitch), and although there're some autobiographical vignettes about life/love, these are few and far between amidst pages and pages of discussion about Arsenal -- the team, its players, its matches, its history. In short, and I submit this review only to distinguish this book from Hornby's later stuff (and because I saw it being touted on the Amazon splashpage): "Fever Pitch" is not fiction, and there's not much of a plot. And unless you're already a moderate football fan, you're gonna' be bored and disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: My Pitch against this book.
Review: Many sports fans end up basing their world so completely around their chosen sport that it ends up eclipsing everything else in their lives. Everything and everyone in their life suffers and the sport becomes a addiction. Nick Hornby is addicted to football and describes this humorously through showing his remarkable memory for facts and witty recollections of many moments gone foggy in the minds of other soccer fans. Unfortunately its just not very interesting after fifty pages, to hear of the authors anguish over Arsenal crashing out of the Rumbelows cup in the second round, again. His writing has about as much descriptive power as that of the New York Post or Boston Herald and our sympathies for his character and the other walk-on parts in his obsessed life barely register. Not litreature, not clever not for everyone.
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