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lanikei's review
4.0
I've read a few of the Best American Sports Writing books recently and this one was a little strange. I'm not sure if that reflects that year's guest editor or the year's focus or what.
Several of the pieces seemed only tangentially related to sports, and a few others were fairly similar "I got into sports because of my dad" stories. That's not to say I didn't enjoy those 'barely sports' pieces, but to have so many of them did feel weird. It's also fun reading such dated pieces - covering Shaq's first year, Tonya Harding pre-Kerrigan debacle, Carl Lewis and the Barcelona Olympics, etc. Hindsight makes some pieces particularly hilarious (the Tonya Harding profile being my favorite example).
I think I found myself interested in more pieces in this book than the last one, but that's likely for the tendency towards human interest story over actual sports.
Several of the pieces seemed only tangentially related to sports, and a few others were fairly similar "I got into sports because of my dad" stories. That's not to say I didn't enjoy those 'barely sports' pieces, but to have so many of them did feel weird. It's also fun reading such dated pieces - covering Shaq's first year, Tonya Harding pre-Kerrigan debacle, Carl Lewis and the Barcelona Olympics, etc. Hindsight makes some pieces particularly hilarious (the Tonya Harding profile being my favorite example).
I think I found myself interested in more pieces in this book than the last one, but that's likely for the tendency towards human interest story over actual sports.
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