94 Books Like A Fan's Notes

Galeano was no ordinary sportswriter. He was also a radical journalist, revisionist historian, and clear-eyed social critic whose work redefined modern Latin America in the minds of readers worldwide. In Soccer in Sun and Shadow, the Uruguayan author explores the meaning of soccer far beyond yellow cards and defensive strategies. In a series of short chapters, some no more than a page, Galeano illuminates the Beautiful Game’s legends, known and forgotten, from Maradona and Pele to the match that ended with 44 penalty kicks but whose results no one can quite remember. He is at his best when writing about how players of color from the favelas of Latin American added flare and rhythm to a hitherto stodgy old European game. Lyrical and learned, loving and elegiac, Soccer in Sun and Shadow stands as perhaps the greatest book on sports ever written.  

Zirin, the first sports columnist in the 150-year history of The Nation magazine, is arguably America’s best sportswriter, not just because of his fine prose style and encyclopedic knowledge of the contemporary sporting scene, but also due to his deep understanding of the connections between sports and politics. His biography of the legendary Brown, the most dominant player to ever carry a football, is no mere act of hagiography. While acknowledging Brown’s unrivaled achievements on the field as well as his role as a leader in the Black Power movement and his trailblazing work as a Hollywood icon, Zirin also presents a frank picture of the Cleveland Browns legend’s troubling behavior toward women and his recent opportunistic support of Trump. The result is a thought-provoking, no-holds-barred template that all sports biographies should strive to follow.  

This book was the first (many followed since this book’s publication in the early 1970s) that broke the sacred rule of major league baseball to whit: “What happens in the locker room stays in the locker room.” Major league pitcher Jim Bouton wrote about his descent from a coveted, fireballing starting pitcher on champion New York Yankees’ teams and his attempt to regain a place in MLB by transitioning to a knuckleball pitcher.

Along the way, he talks about what he saw and heard from and about his teammates and opposing players. His revelations about Mickey Mantle, in particular, made major headlines and caused him to be excluded from Yankee Old Timers Day celebrations until the last years of his life.

A superb and gripping account of the hold that American Football has over a small town in the USA. In telling the story of a season, Bissinger captures the glory, tragedy, and futility of sport, and its connection to racial politics, ambition, local rivalries, and a passionate fan base. Led to a brilliant TV series. Elegiac and path-breaking.

This book resonated with me because it’s the story of a journey. A journey of personal discovery and resilience.

I know what it’s like to lose loved ones. My whole family is gone. I know what’s it’s like to have the life you’ve led, the life you’ve believed in, be dismantled. And I know what it’s like to go on an expedition to find yourself again.

It doesn’t matter how that expedition takes form; the journey to find yourself again is powerful, and I’m still on that road.

When I sent my agent the first few chapters of a memoir I was writing, she told me to begin a different project. “You’re not famous, and you don’t have a distinctive, unforgettable voice like Mary Karr.” Harsh words, but so true. No one writes like Mary Karr. Her narration of her hardscrabble, traumatic upbringing in West Texas combines harsh truth, horror, and humor. The book is evidence that real life can be far more fantastical and engaging than fiction. 

I always love writers who play with language, and Mary Karr is an expert at creating wild and giddy combinations of words to present indelible images. She uses her poetic sensibility to distance herself from difficult memories, making it easier for me to read about them. When, for example, her mentally ill mother abandons the family without notice and returns several days later, everyone is so relieved, they can’t stop… show more.

The horror and the humor! This book reminded me of just how absurd the life of an addict is. I found myself laughing out loud at unexpected turns. Of course, we’re talking very dark humor.

The story of his obsession with Candy also reminded me of my own doomed love affairs, the sick love that often mingles with addiction. I’ll never forget the story of his cats, though. Davies’ observations on the behavior of his cats are as compelling (and horrible) as his observations of the behavior of addicts.

All addiction stories are sad in their own way, but as comic John Mulaney has shown, they can also be hysterically funny. And Candy proves it. 

This novel is the best account of the gambling psychology I know. It is a first-person narrative, ruthless in its depiction of the lies that addicts know they’re telling themselves. The story of a resentful compulsive gambler, the poor but superior tutor to a Russian family at “Roulettenburg,” it was itself the subject of a bet. Dostoevsky signed away his next decade’s worth of publishing profits unless he could deliver a new novel within a year. With six weeks to go he hadn’t written a word. He delivered the completed novel several hours before the deadline was going to pass. 

Nearly every Goodis novel features an antihero who has fallen from a higher station in life and is now living on the fringes. In this one, Jim Cassidy, once a highly respected airline pilot until a disastrous plane crash leaves him a broken man, now finds himself driving a bus on a dead-end route, consoling himself with a drink at the neighborhood watering hole where he met his cheating wife and trying to figure out how not to get dragged down even deeper. Of course, things do get even worse for him, and not even the surprising “happy ending” can change the inevitability of the ultimate crash we know is coming for him and for all of us.

This tale of Arturo Bandini, a young would-be writer living on the edge in 1930s Los Angeles, is the book that Charles Bukowski discovered in a local library and was purportedly his inspiration for becoming a writer himself. Like Henry Chinaski in Buk’s autobiographical works, Bandini is a stand-in for Fante, and his personal disasters are mined for their comic gold. He falls in love with a waitress named Camilla, only to watch her fall in love with another man and eventually suffer a nervous breakdown. In the end, Bandini realizes he can't help Camilla and must focus on his writing instead—a conclusion that I, as a young writer, totally identified with.